Interview with 3 speakers from India

Open Source Testing from India

(Interviewed by Siri Rooseboom de Vries)

Free Test 2009 has many foreign speakers on the program. Those presented here come from quite far away: Rajesh Bharathan, Gaurav Oberoi and Prathamesh Satpute from L&T Infotech in India. They are looking forward to visit Norway for their first time, share their experience and knowledge, and last but not least meet others interested in Free Testing Tools.

1. Why and for whom, is Open Source a good solution?

Open source is a good solution for one and all. Open source can be an excellent option for Organizations/Individuals in terms of-

• Open source provides a great option for companies who want to reduce costs while maintaining the quality of all operations.
• Open Source works well for the people/organization who likes to use software without restrictions.
• Open source allow the customer to pick and choose for different testing needs.
• Open source also allows for independence from vendor lock in as well as ability to choose different tools and frameworks.Open Source tools work well for individuals who are more Technology savvy and who can customize the tools to suit their needs.

2. Can you explain to me the differences and challenges in Open Source Testing vs. i.e. Software Testing?

Few differences between Testing with Open Source tools and testing with commercially available tools are:

• Open Source has certain challenges around the tools that don’t have live community support groups.

• Open source needs an organization to plan for a small technical team to provide internal support to frameworks in case some customizations are needed.

• Open Source enables Organizations to free up certain resources that be used for core business processes and can facilitate speed to market.

• Since the source code of Open Source tools is open, users can evaluate the security vulnerabilities of the tools and can take proper care, while this is not possible for commercially available tools.

• Since the functionality and API (Applications Programming Interface) of Open Source tools is available, users can easily integrate various open source tools as well as commercially available tools to suit their unique testing needs.

• The testing team though functionally strong at times may face challenges while finding work around needed to make small things work.

3. How can free testing tools be used by companies together with quality controls?

Quality controls are more process driven and hence they can be equally supported by free testing tools as well as commercial tools. The key difference is that this process needs to be built over the open source tool selected. These tools help across the entire lifecycle from Unit Testing, Source Code coverage till UAT as well as these tools integrate well with continuous integration frameworks like Hudson and Cruise Control.