OSS Watch Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes, 3 October 2006

by Sebastian Rahtz on 3 October 2006

Introduction

Present: John Norman (chair), Randy Metcalfe (OSS Watch manager), Sebastian Rahtz (OSS Watch director); Brian Kelly, Mike Banahan, Phill Camp, Matthijs den Besten (pp Paul David), Andrew Charlesworth, Ann Borda, Tony Linde, Mike Fraser, Philip Butler (pp Julian Bream), Bill Olivier, Josie Fraser (pp Sally-Anne Saull).

Apologies from Julian Bream, Paul Browning, Chris Cartledge, Paul David, Andrew Savory, and Stephen Tanner (PD and JB sent substitutes).

Welcome and introductions

The meeting started at 11am.

Each member present introduced themselves and gave an example of an OSS package they loved. Firefox, Postgres, Gaim, R, Mediawiki, Mono, OpenOffice, Moodle, eXist, Reload, Sakai, Inkscape, and ELGG got plaudits and discussion.

Minutes from the previous meeting

The minutes had been circulated by email and were accepted

Actions arising

The OSS Watch manager had invited new members to join the committee in conjunction with the Chair. Sally-Anne Saull, Tony Linde and Andrew Charlesworth had duly joined since February.

Chair election

Committee members not attending the meeting had been invited to send in their top 3 ranked preferences for Chair in advance of the meeting; none were received, so everyone present voted on paper.

Tony Linde was elected chair, and duly took over the meeting.

Manager’s report

Randy presented the manager’s report of the past six months.

OSS Watch staff during this reporting period were as follows:
Sebastian Rahtz: Director (0.2 FTE)
Randy Metcalfe: Manager (1.0 FTE)
Rowan Wilson: Research Officer (0.5 FTE)
Stuart Yeates: Research Officer (0.5 FTE)
Barry Cornelius: Research Officer (0.5 FTE)
James Wilson: Development Officer (0.5 FTE)
Judy McAuliffe: Administration
Sophie Wright and Emma Thompson: Events Management (0.3FTE)
Elena Blanco: Content Editor

Two new recruitments were in hand for a 1.0 FTE Research Officer (software development) and a 0.5 FTE Development Officer.

The OSS Watch web site and wiki were discussed in some detail. The growth of the wiki was rather slow, but the main web site was developing according to plan and well-used. There was some discussion of Google’s analysis of the site, which demonstrated that OSS Watch was about holding its own against eg. the BBC.

OSS Watch had published a quantity of briefing material:

Crossing the chasm: report from the Open Source and Sustainability Conference, Oxford, 10-12 April 2006
Integration in service provision
Linux Desktops at the University of Oxford
Open Sources 2.0: the continuing evolution - review
Using Moodle - book review
Open source projects: criteria for success
Open Source Software (senior management briefing paper for JISC Communications)
Open source business: differentiation and success
Open Source Leadership: Debian
Dual licensing (second version)
Can you contribute to an OSS project?
Digital learning - could open source hold the key?
GPL v3 consultation
Second International Conference on Open Source Systems, Italy, June 10 2006
Business Readiness Rating There was a period of discussion about the Can you contribute to an OSS project? document and the possible place of OSS Watch in positively pushing universities towards looking at their policies in this area.

Presentations during the reporting period were as follows:

CETIS e-Learning programme meeting - Sustainability and Communication
UKUUG Linux conference
- What are all these distributions and how should I choose one?
- The State of Open Source in Higher and Further Education
Open Source VLEs: the next generation - Open source software and the VLE
Oxford ITSS conference - Engaging with open source
IWMW - What does open source mean for the institutional web manager?
RSC Northern Ireland - Engaging with open source
BCS Aberdeen - Open source is for real, and it’s for you
Higher Education Academy - Open source: an introduction
RSC Eastern E-Learning Forum - Open source: an introduction
Open Source and Sustainability
- Open source: an introduction
- The Linux Kernel: evolving into sustainability
- The open source licensing framework
RSC Wales Moodle Users Group - What is open source and does it matter? It was noted that, increasingly, base-level information about Open Source was taken for granted.

In the description of activities of OSS Watch since February, high points were

the national survey, finally published in August
the April conference on sustainability The survey produced a great deal of press and blog coverage.

Forward planning

Randy summarized the OSS Watch plans for 2006-2007 and beyond, as a result of the successful bid to JISC for continued funding. The main objectives are to be:

Raise the level of awareness and understanding concerning free and open source software amongst our key stakeholders in UK further and higher education through.
Provide practical advice and guidance to JISC projects engaged in open source development and/or needing clarification of open source licences.
Engage with and develop appropriate materials for institutional research services, legal services and technology transfer units as a key new stakeholder group.
Evaluate the state of open source development and deployment in UK further and higher education.
Liaise and collaborate with other relevant national, European and International bodies to enhance the sharing of best practice and raise JISC’s profile as a implementor of best practice in this area.
Conduct an external evaluation of the service during the second year of its workplan.
Manage the service effectively and efficiently according to the guidance set out in the JISC Project Management Guidelines.

There was discussion about sustainability of work in the increasingly complex world of JISC projects, in the broadest sense.

The new technology transfer liaison work package stimulated a discussion of the difficulty of identifying who to talk to.

Input on forward planning was solicited from the committee on the subject of what they considered the most pressing issue in the free and open source community in the next 12 months. Where could OSS Watch best put its effort?

The Ithaka study (http://www.ithaka.org/strategic-services/oss/oss-organization-for-open-source-software-study) was brought up, and it was asked whether we had enough comparable community feedback in the UK about open source. Should we promote a similar study? It was suggested that JISC would look at this at a higher level; BO would investigate.
A UK repository to offer a faster more local service than Sourceforge?
In the Web 2.0 world, OSS Watch needs to keep understanding the changing nature of software.
Open Document Format will grow and grow. OSS Watch needs to promote open standards like this even more.
Software archives. We need to keep access to software sources long term. OSS Watch should continue to work with the Digital Curation centre in Edinburgh (http://www.dcc.ac.uk/).
Development to Service is going to get bigger in JISC, more work will not come amiss.
The new GPL3 licensing work will be an important thing to watch. It may not turn out well. In general, licence proliferation and licence interoperability will continue to be an area where expert advice and support will be needed.
Support models for sectors like FE which traditionally do not do in-house support and development and want commercial support for OSS. OSS Watch could produce case studies of successful examples. Commercial support may need assistance in the short term — it is relatively expensive to develop expertise for a new project. One model is for groups of institutions to commission support packages up front.
Continuing to work with research councils, fitting into the pattern of standards and data concerns.
OSS Watch should produce more material on business models for OSS support.
Do we want OSI 2.0? A debate on whether certification by OSI is the last resort.

AOB

There was no other business. The meeting closed at 15:32pm.

Date of the next meeting

The date of the next meeting was proposed for 20th February 2007. t.b.c.