© 2003 Brandon IT Consulting1 The Open Source Movement What is it, why is it, and to what extent should it be embraced? Stephen Brandon Brandon IT Consulting For the British Computer Society, Glasgow 13 January 2003

© 2003 Brandon IT Consulting2 Who is Stephen Brandon? Music and Computing background Technical Documentation (Yamaha, Japan) 5 years Systems Admin at Glasgow University, Music Dept Entered industry working in database and web design Now back into arts/media consultancy –infrastructure, networking, low level programming, web, databases

© 2003 Brandon IT Consulting3 Case Study Faculty of Design and Music, Kingston University The task –Consolidate Macintosh computers in the faculty - planning, purchasing, software and network admin –Integrate information systems, for "single sign on" to leverage campus-wide user information (Novell eDirectory) for Macintosh user authentication Mac OS 9 and OSX There was then no Novell client for OSX

© 2003 Brandon IT Consulting4 Case Study The Lynch-pin OSX can authenticate via LDAP eDirectory can publish on LDAP Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, freely available specification, used in local and wide-area authentication systems

© 2003 Brandon IT Consulting5 Case Study Obstacles Institutional unwillingness to alter eDirectory schema to provide extra information for Macintosh clients Certain key pieces of information (eg UNIX UID numbers) missing from the eDirectory schema

© 2003 Brandon IT Consulting6 Case Study The Open Source Solution LDAP Proxy Server, built on OpenLDAP, with customised scripted backend written in Perl, using LDAP request library called perl-ldap. Proxy Server (KingLDAP) takes authentication requests, manufactures UIDs, GIDs etc on the fly, then forwards the rest of the request to eDirectory. Some calculated information and stats are cached in a MySQL database for ease of access, with a PHP/Apache web interface.

© 2003 Brandon IT Consulting7 Case Study Summary There was no commercial solution available Integrating the authentication of two quite separate networks was made possible by: –Open standards (Lightweight Data Access Protocol) –Open Software (OpenLDAP, Perl, perl-ldap, MySQL, PHP, Apache) The solution can be made available to other institutions (cont…)

© 2003 Brandon IT Consulting8 Case Study Summary (cont.) I earned my wages putting the solution together Others can build on this solution and improve it for everyone I submitted bug reports, bug fixes and general discussion to the actual authors of the software (OpenLDAP and perl-ldap), and received help in return

© 2003 Brandon IT Consulting9 What is this thing called “Open Source” Software? Definition The Internet Runs On It Philosophy Movement

© 2003 Brandon IT Consulting10 Definition (OSD) Free Redistribution Source Code Derived Works Integrity of The Author's Source Code No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor Distribution of License License Must Not Be Specific to a Product The License Must Not Restrict Other Software The License must be technology-neutral

© 2003 Brandon IT Consulting11 Open Source Philosophy Free as in speech, free as in beer Freedom to innovate, and to stand on the shoulders of giants “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” (Eric S. Raymond) The Free Software Foundation, Richard Stallman, and GNU

© 2003 Brandon IT Consulting12 Philosophy OSS Licenses - good starting pointwww.stromian.com BSD license GNU license MIT license Others…

© 2003 Brandon IT Consulting13 Philosophy Richard Stallman and GNU The GNU license, and CopyLeft

© 2003 Brandon IT Consulting14 Philosophy The Cathedral and the Bazaar Eric S Raymond, author of fetchmail Seminal work, deals with: –Collaboration –Project management –Peer review –Kudos and egos –Quality control

© 2003 Brandon IT Consulting15 Philosophy The Cathedral and the Bazaar Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch. Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse). “Plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow.” (Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month, Chapter 11) If you have the right attitude, interesting problems will find you. When you lose interest in a program, your last duty to it is to hand it off to a competent successor. Treating your users as co-developers is your least-hassle route to rapid code improvement and effective debugging.

© 2003 Brandon IT Consulting16 Philosophy The Cathedral and the Bazaar Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers. Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow. If you treat your beta-testers as if they're your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource. The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas from your users. Sometimes the latter is better. Often, the most striking and innovative solutions come from realizing that your concept of the problem was wrong.

© 2003 Brandon IT Consulting17 Philosophy Threats to Freedom Digital content control and licensing Lock-out of free software from tenders Software patents

© 2003 Brandon IT Consulting18 The Open Source Movement Flagship projects Key Companies Key Software and Technologies Key Web Sites Resources

© 2003 Brandon IT Consulting19 Movement Flagship Projects Linux Apache PHP, Perl GNU OpenOffice & Ximian Evolution SAMBA others

© 2003 Brandon IT Consulting20 Movement Key Software & Technologies Desktop –KDE, GNOME Office –StartOffice, KOffice, Ximian; various organisers Graphics –Gimp, FilmGimp Servers –Web, , database, application, filestore, backup, print etc. Internet –Netscape, Konqueror, Nautilus, Mozilla, Lynx; chat clients; P2P & VPN Multimedia –MP3 players, SMix, GSMP (audio editors), MP3 encoders / players etc. –Video playback and drivers –Scanner & printer drivers Emulators –Windows, Atari, Mac

© 2003 Brandon IT Consulting21 Movement Key Companies/Organisations RedHat, SCO, Debian, Slackware, SuSE (Linux) O’Reilly (Documentation) VA Linux (Sourceforge, OSDN) Sun (Java, OpenOffice, hardware), IBM (Linux) GNU Foundation (GNU/Linux) Electronic Frontiers Foundation [EFF] Apple (Darwin)

© 2003 Brandon IT Consulting22 Movement Key Web Sites opensource.org redhat.com sourceforge.net slashdot.com apache.org linuxuser.co.uk freshmeat.net

© 2003 Brandon IT Consulting23 Movement Struggles & Controversies External –vs Microsoft –Government tenders –Protecting open standards –How to make money –Public perception Internal –GNU vs other licenses –How to make money –Philosophy –Organisation and fragmentation

© 2003 Brandon IT Consulting24 Movement Business Models tomandandy.com (film music composers) –funding OSS developers, building tools for internal use falch.net (Palm development software) –funding OSS developer for lower level toolkits, selling upper layer software ximian.com (productivity software) –making money on support and after-sales Accessorising –selling books, compatible hardware or complete systems with OSS pre-installed.