Best Free and Open Source Alternative to IBM Rational DOORS

Last Updated on April 30, 2022

International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) is an American multinational technology corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York. They sell computer hardware, middleware and software employing over 370,000 people.

IBM acquired Red Hat in 2019. But you can trace IBM’s history of open source far further back. They were one of the earliest champions of open source, backing influential communities like Linux, Apache, and Eclipse, advocating open licenses, open governance, and open standards.

IBM also collaborates with Linux organisations. For example, IBM works with Ubuntu in areas like containers, virtualization, Infrastructure-as-a-Service, big data analytics and DevOps to provide reference architectures, support solutions and cloud offerings, both for enterprise data centres and cloud service providers.

The company is involved in many open source projects. For example, they helped to create the Apache Software Foundation, and were also a founder member of the OpenJS Foundation, responsible for the development of the Node.js platform, Appium, Dojo, jQuery and many other products.

There are also many IBM software products published under a proprietary license. This series looks at free and open source alternatives to IBM’s products.

Rational DOORS is a requirements management tool that makes it easy to capture, trace, analyze, and manage changes to information. It’s a client-server application.

DOORS is an acronym for Dynamic Object-Oriented Requirements System.

While there is a server for Rational DOORS available for Linux and a web client, it’s proprietary software. What is the best free and open source alternative?

1. Doorstop

Doorstop is a requirements management tool that facilitates the storage of textual requirements alongside source code in version control.

Each linkable item (requirement, test case, etc.) is stored as a YAML file in a designated directory. The items in each directory form a document. The relationship between documents forms a tree hierarchy. Doorstop provides mechanisms for modifying this tree, validating item traceability, and publishing documents in several formats.

The program uses a command-line interface. There is also an experimental desktop graphical interface (GUI) available as a way to perform basic editing tasks.

There are other open source requirements management tools available, but they are either unmaintained, or in an early stage of development.

If you use an open source alternative to Rational DOORS other than Doorstop, please comment below.

All articles in this series:

Alternatives to IBM's Products
	Db2 Database - Db2 is a family of data management products, including the Db2 relational database. The products feature AI-powered capabilities.
	Maximo Application Suite is a single, integrated cloud-based platform that uses AI, IoT and analytics to optimize performance, extend asset lifecycles and reduce operational downtime and costs.
	QRadar SIEM detects, prioritizes and responds to threats. Analyse and aggregate log and flow data from thousands of devices, endpoints and apps across your network.
	Rational DOORS is a requirements management tool that makes it easy to capture, trace, analyze, and manage changes to information.
	Robotic Process Automation helps automate business and IT processes at scale. Software robots, or bots, can act on AI insights to complete tasks with no lag time.
	SPSS is a statistical software suite for data management, advanced analytics, multivariate analysis, business intelligence, and criminal investigation.
	SPSS Modeler is a data mining and text analytics software application. The program is used to build predictive models and conduct other analytic tasks.
	Watson is a data analytics processor that uses natural language processing, a technology that analyzes human speech for meaning and syntax.