The RISCOSS Solution

The RISCOSS project was initiated to address issues raised by communication equipment manufacturers looking to integrate open source code into their products. They needed a comprehensive approach that would integrate the whole decision-making chain, from technology criteria to strategic concerns. RISCOSS develops both a methodology and a decision-making platform. The platform,  developed as an application integrated in OW2 project XWiki, will be an open source project freely available to all.

While leveraging recent advances in statistics, the RISCOSS platform is designed to cover the real-requirements provided by five use-cases. OW2 will leverage RISCOSS to complement its SQuAT (Software Quality Assurance and Trustworthiness) quality program. Telecommunications provider Ericsson Italia will use RISCOSS in the risk management program it is implementing to support its migration to a full open source paradigm. Spain's Cenatic will test RISCOSS in enabling the dissemination of open source solutions in the public sector. XWiki and Moodbile.org, two open source projects, will leverage RISCOSS to enhance the consistency of their user- and community-driven feature roadmaps, and put the focus on reliability, stability and support for backward compatibility.

The objective of RISCOSS is to assist conventional companies in overcoming the fear of adopting open source software. Understanding the possible risks and the possible solutions can help with addressing the inherent uncertainty that they tend, rightly or not, to expect with this type of software.