In software testing, open-source tools have existed for quite a while and they will keep existing in the future. New testing frameworks and tools appear every single day, so how do you know what works best for you? Are commercial tools better than open-source alternatives or the other way around? There is no clear answer and “it depends” highly on your needs. Teams are unique and should use whatever tools they want in order to be more efficient, productive, and happy.

It has been almost three years since we first published our first comparison & benchmark articles that have become very popular, and we thought an update seemed overdue as some tools have changed a lot in the past couple of years. For this update, we decided to put everything into one huge article - making it more of a guide for those trying to choose a tool.

Today, Docker or Kubernetes are obvious choices. But, back in 2015, these technologies were just emerging and hoping for massive adoption. How do tech companies make the right open source technology choices early?

Open source software (OSS) just celebrated its 20th anniversary and not only does the community have a lot of milestones to celebrate, but also a lot to which they can look forward! OSS continues to disrupt the status quo in groundbreaking ways, but it’s also becoming increasingly mainstream. Thus, if you’re an IT leader of any-sized organization, you should be thinking about and planning for how to incorporate OSS into your infrastructure.

In 1998, Netscape decided to release their source code in an effort to attract new users to their product and new developers who could easily integrate applications with the browser. At the same time, there seemed to be a groundswell around a culture of open and collaborative development, with legacy software companies beginning to acknowledge Linux and open source software (OSS) as a legitimate option for enterprise solutions.

When it comes to solutions for the big data sector, there is a clear split between the legacy and next-generation approaches to software development. Legacy vendors in this space generally have their own large internal development organizations, dedicated to building proprietary, bespoke software. It’s an approach that has worked well over the years.