Free and open source software such as the Firefox browser and the Apache web
server has often been presented as an inexpensive alternative to expensive
proprietary software. However, many businesses have been reluctant to adopt
open source software, partly because they have not had a good way to identify
those products that are suitable for widespread use and there is no way to
evaluate based on operational support information such as bug resolution
metrics. The Business Readiness Rating (BRR) has been developed as a
framework for the evaluation the business readiness of open software, based
in large part on metrics available from the project itself. There have been
numerous activities following BRR's introduction as a proposed industry
standard in August 2005, includin... (more)