My Experience with Open Source Testing Tools -1

Since a year i've been working on testing tools unleashed from open source efforts. At first i thought that using open source tools are risky considering three areas:Learning curve,maturity and support.Now after spending a while on these tools i would like to share my experience in a couple of posts.

Learning Curve:

-----------------

In general, learning a open source testing tool needs a high learning curve compared to proprietary tools.But do not assume this characteristic as a disadvantage. The reason is for most of the proprietary tools the underlying scripts are also proprietary. So when a tester migrated from that tool to another tool all his scripting expertise in that proprietary language become obsolete. Anyway the basic building blocks are same for all scripting languages but still a person should put a reasonable amount of effort to learn a new language.  

In case of open source testing tools, all most, all the tools developed by embedding existing main stream scripting languages which are proven as very robust, flexible and useful. For ex, Watir is developed using Ruby and selenium supports whopping six languages.So when a tester equipped with tool expertise invariably he accumulate so much knowledge base in that scripting language which will not be obsolete.In addition to that a tester can write simple utilities on native platform such as search and replace utilities, build preparation scripts etc.. using the gained scripting prowess.It is like possessing sword having both edges sharpened.

I conclude that learning open source testing tool is a win-win situation for both the company(need not pay huge amounts of money to tool vendor per seat base) as well as to individual(equipped with one scripting language which is quintessential for a future tester).