1. Presented by: Dr. Mohsen Kahani http://www.um.ac.ir/~kahani/
Open Source Software
Presented by:
Dr. Mohsen Kahani

2. Contents Introduction What is OSS? Why OSS? OSS Economy and Governance
Famous OSS Projects
OSS repository sites
Conclusion

3. Introduction Everybody likes free software
Internet has eased distribution of free Software
Licensing model for software products:
Commercial
Shareware
Open source

4. What is OSS? Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code
OSS is software distributed under a license which meets some criteria in general:
free to redistribute
source code must be freely available
modifications and derivative works allowed
no restrictions on who uses the code
Most widely used licenses:
GNU General Public License (GPL)
BSD, MIT X license, etc.

5. OSS License (www.opensource.org)
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. The License Must Not Restrict Other Software

6. Historical Highlights
1979 BSD license
1984 AT&T commercializes Unix
1984 Richard Stallman organizes GNU
1984 MIT X
1989 GPL
1991 Linus Torvalds releases Linux
1998 Netscape announces open source
98-99 IBM, HP, Oracle, Corel Supports

7. Why OSS? Quantitative Vs. Qualitative Discussion
Quantitative Measures:
Market share
Reliability
Performance
Scalability
Security
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

8. Market Share for Top Web Servers, Aug 95 – Nov. 2001
Linux is #2 Web Server OS After Windows (49% vs. 29%)

9. Reliability Of the 50 sites with the highest uptimes
92% use Apache
50% run on OSS operating systems
IIS-based sites have more than double offline time (on average) than Apache
Linux is more reliable than Windows NT/2000

10. MySQL equal performance as Oracle, outperforms others
Linux/Apache 16%-50% faster than NT/IIS
eWeek Survey:
MySQL equal performance as Oracle, outperforms others

11. Scalability Linux support a wider range of platforms than any other OS
OSS development processes can scale to develop large software systems
Red Hat Linux 7.1, has over 30 million SLOC, representing 8,000 person-years or $1 billion

12. Security Difficult to measure security with numbers
Attrition.org's survey:
Defaced systems: 59% Windows / 21% Linux
“hacker insurance” costs 5-15% more for Windows vs. Linux
IIS was attacked 1,400 times more frequently than Apache in 2001

13. Total Cost of Ownership
OSS costs less to initially acquire
OSS often use older hardware more efficiently
The supporting cost is nearly the same
2001 InfoWorld survey:
32% over $250,000 per year
60% over $50,000 per year

14. Qualitative Discussion
Iterative and incremental development
Potential to revolutionize the entire software industry
No risk of single source solutions
Greater flexibility
Platform independency

15. Problems (perceived or real)
Lack of support
Lower quality software / programmers
Not ready for enterprise level operations
Not user friendly
Missing applications

16. Software Economy Commercial Open Source
Proprietary control of code allows it to generate income, which can be used to compensate programmers.
Greater control in allocation of specific resources
Costs associated with the need for secrecy in development of code and for copy protection efforts
Open Source
Reduced revenues when code is given away
Reduced costs associated with
“Alumni effect”: Freely available code gets incorporated in teaching activities, which leads new generations to adopt the same software, reducing downstream training costs. (Unix)
Customization and bug-fixing: Direct external benefit associated with parallel development and innovation
Transparency of process and functionality
Full initiative
Minimal lock-in

17. OSS Governance Issues
Large open source projects need leadership and rules to avoid splintering
Leadership activities
Provide a vision of the end result(s) of the project
Assemble a critical mass of initial code to demonstrate value of the project and promise for the future
Organize production modules
Components must be doable and contribute to the overall project
Attract programmers to the project
Ensure that component modules provide sufficient challenge
Hold project together
Be able to make hard-nosed decisions about which components end up being part of the “official” version of the software
Governance
Single strong leader (Torvalds with Linux)
Governance committee

18. OSS Commercial Strategies
Provision of complementary products and services
Documentation
Installation and configuration wizards
Support
Provision of expertise in support of open source projects
Intermediation between corporate clients and open source community
Certification
Conduit to venture capital community
Example: Collab.Net

19. OSS Development Strategy
Release
Early &
Often

20. Who Makes OSS? Public Sector Big Companies
Everybody should use software generated from people’s money (eg. GreenStone Digital Library)
Big Companies
Generate income from support (eg. Redhat)
Control Market, sell other products (eg. IBM)
Individual freelance programmer
Altruism
Becoming famous

21. Linux Started by Linus Torvalds in 1991 as a UNIX clone
Several distributions are available: Red Hat, Debia, Suse, Mandrake …
Red Hat 9 is very reliable, easy to install and use
Special purpose distributions also available

22. Started by patching NCSA HTTPD
The most widely used web server
Available for most platforms
Can be expanded through modules
Is supported by Apache company

23. The most popular Open Source SQL-based relational database
Fast, multi-threaded
MySQL vs MySQL Max
Platform Independent
Newest version (V4.0) provides most features of expensive commercial DBMSs

24. HyperText Pre-Processor
HTML-embedded scripting language
Object-Oriented / Syntactically similar to C
Well suited for Web applications
Two many utilities/add-ons available
Makes development process fast and easy

25. Other Applications Perl Python PostgreSQL LaTeX Star Office
SMTP-BIND-…

26. OSS future High quality office suites available
More mission-critical applications available
Clustering / high availability
Increase in the number of service providers
Steady increase in the use of Linux

27. OSS Repository Sites

28. Some Remarks Stick to mature, highly visible OSS products
Too many alternatives; difficult to choose
Plan for support / education
More difficult to manage

29. Conclusion OSS has become a major player in computer industry
OSS seems a better solution in many cases
Many big organization are using OSS
OSS options should be carefully considered for any project.
The future looks bright

30. Thanks for your Attention