Open source governance is critical, but it doesn't have to be hard. 

The Industry Standard summarized a recent survey by Gartner as follows.

"According to the study, 85 per cent of companies surveyed are currently using OSS in their enterprises and the remaining 15 per cent are expecting to in the next 12 months."

According to The Industry Standard, the Gartner survey identifies governance as the biggest inhibitor to using open source.

"Governance, or the lack of it, was the No 1 challenge for OSS users in the survey, followed by conflicting terms and conditions and the availability of too many license types and forms."

And Gartner tells companies to start with a policy and follow that with a governance process.

"Just because something is free doesn't mean that it has no cost," said Laurie Wurster, research director at Gartner. "Companies must have a policy for procuring OSS, deciding which applications will be supported by OSS, and identifying the intellectual property risk or supportability risk associated with using OSS. Once a policy is in place, then there must be a governance process to enforce it."

The good news is that creating or refining your open source policy doesn't need to be hard.  At OpenLogic, we've worked with many companies to create or review their open source policy.  Our Policy JumpStart Workshop takes a commitment of 1 day from representative stakeholders in the company to formulate a policy, followed by a review and approval process.  Companies that participate in the workshop will typically have a draft policy within 1 week and a final policy within  2-4 weeks.  In the Workshop, we cover best practices and experience from working with a wide variety of companies on open source governance.

Companies that already have a policy can proceed straight to implementing a governance process to enforce the policy.  OpenLogic's SaaS-based system for open source governance — called OLEX Enterprise Edition – provides a complete cradle-to-grave solution to govern the use of open source.  Because it's SaaS, you can be ready to go in a matter of hours with a minimal investment.  You can start with a free trial to evaluate OLEX Enterprise Edition.

In a very short time you can establish an open source policy and governance process and start to realize the cost savings associated with using open source software.