Few technology initiatives have generated as much interest among chief information officers as the open-source software movement. The open-source model offers attractive license-free infrastructure technology; large, multiuser applications; and desktop applications. Built by development communities, applications evolve and improve as community members offer their revisions to their peers, who reject or accept the changes into the applications' code.

But as open source becomes more mainstream, users discover that the model isn't immune from many of the deployment pitfalls that plague commercial software, including integration hassles and support and maintenance costs.

The following list delineates those pitfalls. The core list was created by Drew Ladner, general manager of the government group at JBoss, a company that distributes license-free open-source middleware, including application server and Web portal technology. The company also provides consulting and support services. Before joining the company, Ladner served as the Treasury Department's CIO. He was president of Zuri Technology, a consulting firm, before taking his current position last June.

Other open-source users and consultants responded to Ladner's list of common mistakes.

Failure to account for full life cycle costs

People forget to consider the full life cycle costs of software, including open source. "The pitfall is that people say, 'We can save money because we're not paying licensing fees,'" Ladner said. "But the reality is you have to look at the whole life cycle, which is the smart thing to do from a business standpoint."

Post-acquisition life cycle costs include financial hits taken during the development, deployment and management phases of software implementations.

"Open source is not free," said John McManus, deputy CIO and chief technology officer at NASA. "You may not have to pay for the code, but it doesn't free you from having to exercise your brain and do whatever integration is required. If you don't think about maintenance, operation and integration costs, you may put zero dollars in your budget for an open-source project and then wonder why you're eating through money so quickly."