Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has written an interesting article over at CIO.com about the lack of policies for open source adoption among enterprises.

The article has some interesting input from the likes of Maryland’s Howard County Library, the H. E. Butt Foundation, specialty tool vendor QEP, the Southern Ute Indian Tribe, Entertainment, HeavyLifters Network, and our very own Jay Lyman.

What becomes clear from the article is there are as many ways of implementing policies around open source adoption and management as there are businesses using open source software. Whether the policies are formally encoded or the collective wisdom of the IT team, Steven reckons there are three main issues that need to be addressed:

“Project stability: Can you trust the project to be there when you need it?

Project support: Can you get support when you need it?

Internal software management: Does your company know what open-source programs it’s using? How it’s developing and deploying them both in-house and to customers?”

Although some of the organizations quoted have strategies in place for making use of open source in place of internal development (”don’t code what you can download” is the mantra at Entertainment) most are taking a very informal stance on internal software management.

I wrote recently about the issue of increasing corporate contributions to open source. It strikes me that perhaps that is getting ahead of the game. For many companies understanding the level of open source software usage as it stands would be a start.