1. OSS Watch
I am
Sebastian Rahtz:
- Information Manager for Oxford University Computing
Services
- Manager of JISC's OSS Watch, the UK
national Open Source Advisory Service. JISC (Joint
Information Systems Committee) coordinates educational IT
structures in the UK. Directly funded by the state at the
same level as research councils
sebastian.rahtz@oucs.ox.ac.uk
OSS Watch provides unbiased advice and guidance about free and open
source software for UK further and higher education.
2. Objectives
- Give an overview of what it means to use open source software
- Outline some recent UK government work
- Discuss what a university open source policy might say
3. Technically, what does ‘Open Source’ mean?
Software for which:
- the source code is available to the end-user;
- the source code can be modified by the end-user;
- there are no restrictions on redistribution or use;
- the licensing conditions are usually intended to facilitate
continued re-use and wide availability of the software, in both commercial and
non-commercial contexts;
- the cost of acquisition to the end-user is often minimal.
‘Open Source’ is a development methodology; ‘Free Software’ is a
social movement.
4. Virtues of free and open source software
- It has no secrets: the innards are available for anyone to inspect
- It is not privately controlled: so likely to promote open rather
than proprietary formats
- It is typically maintained by communities
rather than single corporations:
so bug fixes and enhancement are often frequent and free
- It is usually distributed free of charge (developers make their money
from support, training, customisation and specialist add-ons; not marketing)
5. Licensing
The three basic licence models for people writing code:
- GPL
- If you extend a GPL program, or create a composite with it, you
cannot release your work except under the GPL and
must offer the source code to the full program to everyone
you give the program to
- LGPL
- If you extend an LGPL program, as with GPL. If you create
composites with LGPL code you must offer the source code of the
LGPL portion, but may retain the source code to your portions
- BSD
- You must continue to display the copyright notice on any derived
work
If a system is built of two parts eg communicating via SOAP,
they are considered separate programs.
6. What about Creative Commons?
This is not about open source, but about simplifying
the licensing of creative work in general, and encouraging
the release of ‘artistic’ works under liberal licences.
The CC range of licences covers areas (eg licensing for
‘non-commercial user’) which are incompatible with Open
Source.
http://creativecommons.org/
7. The GNU license question
50-80% of OSS uses the GNU General Public License.
The GPL does
not require you to release your modified
version.
- You
are free to make modifications and use them privately, without ever
releasing them. This applies to organizations (including companies),
too; an organization can make a modified version and use it internally
without ever releasing it outside the organization.
- If you
release the modified version to the public in some way, the GPL
requires you to make the modified source code available to the
program's users, under the GPL.
Thus, the GPL gives permission to
release the modified program in certain ways, and not in other ways;
but the decision of whether to release it is up to you.
8. GPL urban myths exploded
- You can sell GPLed programs with no problem
- You can sell support, training and certification for GPL programs
- The GPL does not apply to things you create with GPLed
tools
- You can change the programs and keep the changes to yourself; so
long as you don't distribute them
- GPL software does not have any stamp of approval or follow any
special standards
- The copyright owner is not bound by the licence
9. The current practical picture for OSS deployment
| Browser |
|
| Desktop OS |
|
| Content Management System |
|
| Digital library services |
|
| Email |
|
| Integrated groupware |
|
| Library catalogues |
|
| Network services |
|
| Office suite |
|
| Payroll |
|
| Scientific workstation |
|
| Student records |
|
| VLE & portal |
|
Being possible does not make it best
10. How we choose software
|
tempered by |
|
Functionality
|
Need
|
| Impact |
Reliability |
| Interoperability |
Support |
| Future direction |
Migration |
| Exit strategy |
Cost
|
11. Open source is a development methodology
- Programmer commitment, because the programmer is also the user
- Rapid change, because programmers want to see results
- Unconstrained specifications, because there is no external client
- Collective responsibility for the code
- Response to change, dictated by (perhaps unexpected) user
12. Open source is about community
Those who ‘merely’ deploy open source
software are also part of the open source community
13. Why do people keep working on open source?
The desire to learn technical skills by joining an open project is
strong. Typical reasons for staying in OSS are:
- improving skills: 32%
- ideology 31%
- improving software: 24%
- seeking recognition: 12%
14. Communities of practice
from the world of learning theory, COPs are:
- informal networks that emerge from a desire to work
more effectively or to understand work more deeply among
members of a particular speciality or work group.
- small groups of people who've worked together over a
period of time and through extensive communication have
developed a common sense of purpose and a desire to share
work-related knowledge and experience.
- communities of apprentices where newcomers learn by
gradually going from peripheral participation to full
participation in the community.
Sound familiar? this is how open source works.
- Learning is presented as a process of social
participation in a community, not as a process of
internalisation of knowledge by the learner.
- ‘Legitimate peripheral participation’ leads to
full participation, and this takes place by sociocultural
transformations in the context of the shared community of
practice.
15. How to define communities of practice
- joint enterprise:
- the collective understanding of the
community by its members and the accountability to each other
- mutuality:
- the norms and relationships of members' mutual engagement
- shared repertoire:
- the languages, tools, artifacts, etc, produced by
the community.
Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991),
Situated Learning, Legitimate
Peripheral Participation, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press.
16. Open source is about conflict and change
Our industry has an almost totally monopolistic provider:
| .NET | Single framework | No room for choice |
| Office | It does everything | It has
insufficient security barriers |
| Windows | A smooth upgrade path | No room
for innovation |
It is not easy to decide whether this is good or bad
17. Open Source Software: UK Government policy
Version 2, 28 October 2004:
- UK Government will only use products for
interoperability that support open standards and
specifications in all future IT developments.
- UK Government will seek to avoid lock-in to
proprietary IT products and services.
- UK Government will consider obtaining full rights to
bespoke software code or customisations of COTS (Commercial
Off the Shelf) software it procures wherever this achieves
best value for money.
- Publicly funded R&D projects which aim to produce
software outputs shall specify a proposed software
exploitation route at the start of the project. At the
completion of the project, the software shall be exploited
either commercially or within an academic community or as
OSS.
18. Open Source Software Trials in Government
Final Report, 28 October 2004:
On the basis of the empirical evidence and experience reported from
the trials and elsewhere, the current study has concluded that:
Open Source software is a viable and credible alternative to
proprietary software for infrastructure implementations, and for
meeting the requirements of the majority of desktop user
19. The JISC open source policy (draft)
Three parts:
- Policy guidelines for JISC when writing calls for
proposals, ITTs etc
- Policy guidelines for JISC services (and JISC projects generally)
- Policy guidelines for JISC-funded software development
activities specifically
20. JISC policy and copyright
- Copyright owner ship of software, diagrams, schemas,
documentation, manuals, user interface and source code
must be recorded,and may be vested with a JISC-appointed body
- Projects must maintain an IPR register,listing all contributors to
their software and who owns the copyright on contributions
- The ownership of code which is to be developed in joint projects must
be established before work begins
21. JISC policy and licensing
- Copyright of software, documentation, design
materials, manuals, user interface and source code must be released
under an OSI-approved open source licence, unless the bid
explicitly argues why this should not be the case and proposes an
alternative licence.
- Software must in any case be licensed and
publicly available, for any use and at no financial cost, throughout
UK higher and further education
- The open source licence most
appropriate in any given circumstances will depend on the mechanism
chosen for exploitation and/or on-going development.
22. A university problem?
We need to deal with:
- individuals contributing to open source software
- staff creating software which they want to open source
- teachers making online resources
- research projects collaborating with industry
- partnerships with other academic institutions
23. The legal and contractual situation in the UK
- any act of creation generates copyright—it does not
have to be claimed
- most academic contracts specify that all creations are
property of the employer
- usually, there are specific exclusions for books and
articles
- copyright in learning materials is usually claimed by
the university
- the employee has a duty to assist the university in
exploiting any created material
- software is hard (but not impossible) to patent
24. Difficulties arising
- the university's exploitation system for software only knows about
selling licenses
- the university does not have a revenue-sharing
arrangement for consultancy-based exploitation
- the lawyers are reluctant to sanction open source
exploitation because they see it as liability without
revenue
- if the university relinguishes copyright, it is at the
risk of having to buy back a later release of the product
25. Examples of (e-learning) open source exploitation in academia
- uPortal
- portal framework, development by top American
universities (‘stone soup’ group) to meet their specific needs
- Bodington
- Small UK open source VLE, developed by Leeds, Oxford,
UHI; community based on shared problems
- Moodle
- Simple but very effective VLE, distinguished by its
exemplary open source community
- LAMS
- innovative e-learning mediating framework from
Australia, new work being funded under an open source model
26. Towards a university open source policy?
- Open source release is a viable method of exploiting a
software invention
- Staff involved in software development must
allowed to share in the income from consultancy- and
training-based exploitation
- All IPR generated by the University staff must be
recorded in a central register
- IPR in non-exploitable software (including patches to
existing projects) will be assigned to an independent body
controlled by the university which will release it using an
open source licence
27. Depending on your viewpoint
The current excitement and debate about free/libre/open source software is:
- Just politics relating to the current Microsoft monopoly, it'll go away
- A legal and cultural sea change, which will take years to follow through
- A technical matter of software engineering
- Just trivia for sandal-wearing bigots to worry about
28. Conclusions
- Embracing open source software is an attitude, not a binary choice
- Can you define the costs of flexibility of choice versus a single
unified vision?
- Standards for your data are as important as current ease of use
- There is no stasis. Things will always change
It is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 England & Wales licence.
OSS Watch is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee.
