There are lots of different ways you can build software and the typical ways in which FOSS development and proprietary development are done are quite dramatically different.

In this article, I’m going to talk about what problems the typical FOSS method can face when open source products are integrated within enterprise environments. I will then go on to talk about two different companies, and how they address some of these issues.

Monolithic Releases

The trend in proprietary software development is to release relatively infrequently, but when you do, to provide a massive update. One of the most obvious examples here would be Microsoft and their development cycle with Windows.

It took them about 5 years to push out Vista following XP, and when they did, they had changed an awful lot between the releases. You could argue this example is a little extreme, but bear with me.

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