How I learned to stop worrying and love Open Source Software... Colin M. Sharples Advisory IT Specialist IBM Business Consulting Services SQNZ 21 October 2004

Outline ● Definition of Open Source Software (OSS) ● OSS development models ● The economics of OSS ● OSS and Quality ● What does the future hold?

A little history ● 1961 TMRC, MIT's PDP-1 ● 1969 ARPAnet, Unix ● 1980s Breakup of Unix ● GNU, Free Software Foundation, X ● 1991 Linux ● 1997 The Cathedral & the Bazaar ● 1998 Mozilla donated to open source, Open Source Definition

So what is Open Source? ● “Open source promotes software reliability and quality by supporting independent peer review and rapid evolution of source code.” ● “To be OSI certified, the software must be distributed under a license that guarantees the right to read, redistribute, modify, and use the software freely.”

Open Source Definition 1. Free Redistribution 2. Source Code 3. Derived Works 4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code 5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor 7. Distribution of License 8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product 9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software 10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral

What is OSS not? ● Proprietary Software ● Free Software ● Shared Source

OSS Licences ● 54 licences certified by OSI as OSS – GPL/LGPL – BSD – Mozilla Public License – Apache Software License – Artistic License – IBM Public License – Sun Public License – Intel Open Source License – Apple Public Source License –...

OSS Development Models ● Benevolent Dictatorship – Linux ● Rotating Dictatorship – Perl ● Meritocracy – Apache ● Commercial Sponsorship – CollabNet ● Bazaar – SourceForge, Freshmeat ● Donate the crown jewels – Zope, Eclipse

Some benevolent dictators Linus Torvalds Richard Stallman Eric Raymond

Apache Software Foundation ● Non-profit organisation, founded 1999 ● Originally a group supporting the NCSA HTTPD web server ● Meritocracy ● 23 top-level projects – HTTP server – AntLogging – GeronimoStruts – JakartaXML

ASF structure ● Board of directors ● Project Management Committees (PMCs) ● Committers ● Developers/Contributers ● Users

ASF Development Process ● PMC defines rules, goals of project ● Committers make decisions, vote on issues – +1/0/-1 votes ● New projects: – From packages to components – From components to sub-projects – From sub-projects to top-level projects – From donated source (Incubator)

ASF Philosophy ● collaborative software development ● commercial-friendly standard license ● consistently high quality software ● respectful, honest, technical-based interaction ● faithful implementation of standards ● security as a mandatory feature

Economics of OSS ● OSS is not economically viable? – RedHat sells Linux, but you can get it for free ● Who will pay the programmers? – Most software is developed in-house ● How do you make money if you can't sell it? – Sell the use-value, not the sale-value

Economics of OSS ● If it's free, how can it be trusted? – Peer review makes for better security ● Software is not a commodity? – Software is a commodity ● OSS can't attract investment? – Invest in ideas, not the physical product

OSS Business Models ● Loss Leader/Market Positioner ● Widget Frosting ● Give away the Recipe, Open a Restaurant ● Accessorizing ● Free the Future, Sell the Present ● Free the Software, Sell the Brand ● Free the Software, Sell the Content

OSS and Quality ● Maintenance/Enhancement make up more than 75% of the software lifecycle ● Brook's law: – Adding more programmers to a late project makes it later – Complexity and communication costs rise with the square of the number of developers

Beyond Brook's Law ● Small core, large halo of programmers ● Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow ● Users become developers ● Scratch the developer's personal itches ● New features not based on lowest commmon denominator (i.e. what marketing says) ● Security through obscurity doesn't work ● Open Standards

OSS Development Tools ● GNU toolkit ● CVS/Subversion ● Bugzilla ● JUnit ● Ant ● Gump ● Logging ● IDEs (Eclipse, IDEA, NetBeans)

What does the future hold? ● Software as a Service ● Service-Oriented Architecture ● Software developers as a service?

Questions?

Resources ● OSI: ● Cathedral & Bazaar: ● Linux: ● ASF: ● SourceForge: ● Eclipse: