Key elements of understanding Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Prepared for the Senior Executive Team at Wits University Prof Derek W. Keats Deputy Vice Chancellor (Knowledge & Information Management) The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg Dudes, just say FOSS

The four freedoms of Free Software Freedom 1 and Freedom 3 require the source code

Image from Wikipedia The two layers of FOSS space in the operating of computing devices

Image from Wikipedia There are relatively few of them, even with all the variations There are many of them, and a lot more room for creativity

OpenSolaris Image from Wikipedia Proprietary FOSS GNU/Linux AppleMac

Proprietary FOSS

Individual developer  Scratching an itch  Having fun  Doing good  Becoming more marketable  Involvement in a community

Hardware makers

Businesses based on services

Businesses built on a FOSS stack

User organizations (communities) Tufts The Open University Rhodes

Major foundation & private sector players Foundation initiative

May be consumed by one consumer without preventing simultaneous consumption by others Consumption by one consumer prevents simultaneous consump- tion by other consumers All digital goods are non-rivalrous

In a competitive economy, prices decrease to just above the marginal cost of production

The marginal cost of production for software is zero.

ScarcityAbundance Proprietary softwareFree software The scarcity is entirely artificially maintained

The natural state of software in a truly competitive economy

users can be a major source of innovation Eric von Hippel, Professor & Head of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at the MIT Sloan School of Management

Barriers to innovation Starting point Knowledge Permission Successful innovation Cost

Barriers to innovation Starting point Knowledge Permission Successful innovation Cost

No such thing as scratch Operating systems Databases Webserver Compilers Programming languages Scripting languages Frameworks Digital object store Libraries Core applications Version management Desktop applications Web applications Integrated development environment Embedded environments Testing tools Scalability tools Load balance Deployment tools Complete applications Communities use studyadapt Collaboration tools

Built on a stack of FOSS applications and libraries using a suite of FOSS development and collaboration tools

Fedora gstreamer GNU/Linux PHP MySQL PEAR Open Office SWF tools CURL Chisimba FFmpeg The stack Java Python Flash Open fire RED5 Javascript jQuery extJS Jabber Cross platform RESTful API Ajax Mashable XMPP Mobile phone Online package management Version 4: fully distributed & cloud-ready prototype SWORD Open Zoom

Barriers to innovation Starting point Knowledge Permission Successful innovation Cost

Knowledge When you have an idea, limited coding experience, and few resources, how do you learn to code it? Free Software as a learning resource Dissect Study Use Community as a learning resource return $objTwitter-> show($find, TRUE);

Barriers to innovation Starting point Knowledge Permission Successful innovation Cost

Permissions Every permission is a barrier Proprietary licenses severely limit permissions Every permission may also have a cost It may be extremely difficult to determine what permissions you need early in a project or what it will cost to acquire them Even without the cost factor, the permissions alone can be enough to reduce the likelihood of success Please sir, I want to license two more CPUs

Barriers to innovation Starting point Knowledge Permission Successful innovation Cost

Start-up costs Scaling out costs Lock-in costs Maleability costs Abandonment costs Uncertainty barrier

A wealth-creation perspective

Some recent major software innovations Started in parents garage in Durbanville in 1995 Still a student at UCT when he started experimenting VeriSign acquired Thawte for US$575 million in 1999 Started Canonical and Ubuntu GNU/Linux to give back to FOSS while creating a new business initiative.

Some recent major software innovations Founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford University Maxed out their credit cards to buy hardware Became a private company on September 4, 1998 Larry & Sergey #5 on Forbes list in 1997 with a net worth of $18.5 billion each

Some recent major software innovations Launched Facebook from Harvard University dorm room on February 4, 2004 Time magazine named Zuckerberg as one of The World's Most Influential People of 2008 Market value of $15 billion in 2007 Mark Zuckerberg

Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bush, image from Wikipedia I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the Transmission Control Protocol and domain name system ideas and — ta-da! — the World Wide Web Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the first webserver from Wikipedia When core things are free and open, there are no barriers to innovation. When Bob Khan and I created TCP/IP and a bunch of us built a platform for internetworking, we did not patent the technologies used. We set TCP/IP free. Had we not done so, it is doubtful if the Internet as we know it today would have come into being. The freedom given by Cerf and Khan, and Berners- Lee, together with Free Software made it possible. The original Google servers, from Wikipedia

Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bush, image from Wikipedia I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the Transmission Control Protocol and domain name system ideas and — ta-da! — the World Wide Web Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the first webserver from Wikipedia When core things are free and open, there are no barriers to innovation. When Bob Khan and I created TCP/IP and a bunch of us built a platform for internetworking, we did not patent the technologies used. We set TCP/IP free. Had we not done so, it is doubtful if the Internet as we know it today would have come into being. The freedom given by Cerf and Khan, and Berners- Lee, together with Free Software made it possible. The original Google servers, from Wikipedia

Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bush, image from Wikipedia I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the Transmission Control Protocol and domain name system ideas and — ta-da! — the World Wide Web Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the first webserver from Wikipedia When core things are free and open, there are no barriers to innovation. When Bob Khan and I created TCP/IP and a bunch of us built a platform for internetworking, we did not patent the technologies used. We set TCP/IP free. Had we not done so, it is doubtful if the Internet as we know it today would have come into being. The freedom given by Cerf and Khan, and Berners- Lee, together with Free Software made it possible. The original Google servers, from Wikipedia

Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bush, image from Wikipedia I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the Transmission Control Protocol and domain name system ideas and — ta-da! — the World Wide Web Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the first webserver from Wikipedia When core things are free and open, there are no barriers to innovation. When Bob Khan and I created TCP/IP and a bunch of us built a platform for internetworking, we did not patent the technologies used. We set TCP/IP free. Had we not done so, it is doubtful if the Internet as we know it today would have come into being. The freedom given by Cerf and Khan, and Berners- Lee, together with Free Software made it possible. The original Google servers, from Wikipedia Layers of innovation built on Freedom

Why FOSS for Wits?

FOSS is not new to Wits Our java applications are foss based WAMS (departmental mark system) meal booking system traffic system, etc Academic departments Student labs with Linux Digital arts Electrical engineering Computer Science

Digital technology savvy Wits An innovative Wits A Wits showing technology leadership Great new things can grow A sustainable technology ecosystem

Alignment to academic freedom, ethos, and the open sharing of knowledge

Future proofing The most future proof systems will be: based on open standards loosely coupled supported by a strong ecosystem of which we are part make use of our engineering capability vendor agnostic and largely open source

“We need to create an environment that supports and encourages innovation so that we can get another 'Google' or 'Sun' from our midst. Not possible when the environment is restricted.” Innovation

Free as in Freedom

Enterprise architecture

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