Sam Higgins has written an article evaluating OSA, a project on open source and alternative analysis, in the new issue of Longview, the newsletter of Australian analyst firm Longhaus.

Higgins stresses the need of analysis to be set in context, and how services are often needed to make research useable.

When considering the role of OSA within the open source model, it is important to remember that it is the product that is open source – the whole-of- life costs for open source product are rarely – if ever – offered under an open source model (…) You just can’t have open source services because there is no tangible output. A service is essentially any exchange of money (consideration) for the acts of an individual or group of individuals. To my way of thinking, for a service to be open source it must be volunteer work and I’d love to meet an analyst who can volunteer 100% of their time.

Amusingly, Higgins uses the OSA checklist for open source on his former employer, Forrester Research: he gives them five out of eight.