We use a lot of open source software for our websites and systems, but what exactly does “open source” mean? Ed Crewe, Senior Technical Developer, explains…
What is it?
Open source is part of the ‘open movement’ which aims to provide open access to the source materials and knowledge with which high technology is developed. It shares many goals with the education and charitable sectors in wishing to spread technological and economic development. Historically it has seen some conflict with commercial and corporate interest, although it is now being embraced by them. Perhaps the most significant recent success for the movement was the open sourcing of the human genome. However it is still mainly associated with its roots in software rather than biotechnology.
Traditionally code had always been open, until the idea of selling software – not just the hardware it ran on - took off in the 1980s. On the Internet this reached its peak in the 90s. This resulted in a move away from open access and standards. In reaction to this, a formal movement began, with the term “open source” being coined in 1998, along with the start of a web standards body, the W3C.
Today open source makes up to half of the software in use, and a quarter of purchased software – more in certain sectors such as the Internet. This is because the Internet and the web were both themselves open source and standards projects. It is often associated with low or no charging for the software itself, to allow anyone to get hold of the code and modify it for their own purposes. The provider may obtain income from sponsorship, charging for extras, for services or advertising. The traditional method is to sell it as a package with the hardware, eg, the software on an iPhone is largely open source. But the OS as a whole is still closed source, which is typical of concealed nature of the recent explosion in use of open source in the commercial sector.
Some people just do it for the kudos, although today most open source is developed via a commercial model. Hence the majority of the software industry has some involvement with open source, even those previously most opposed to it such as Microsoft. Others, such as Google, only keep a small fraction of their core software closed, e.g. its search algorithms.
What has this got to do with ILRT and your website?
If you are a client of ours, you are a user of open source software directly as we use it for the majority of our services. So you have funded open source development. You use it every day whenever you use the Internet. Four out of five software programs are also now written in an open source language. So these days, using open source is just part of using modern day technology.
As a client our use of open source gives you the following benefits:
- It frees you from having to remain with a certain provider
- It removes licensing costs
Currently the majority of the open source software we use is without licensing or service costs. So you only pay for the custom code and design you have commissioned, plus costs to maintain it. - It gives you more control
We can tailor the code to your needs in a way which is not possible with proprietary software (ie closed code).
Open source is driven by its user community. By becoming active members of that community on your behalf, we can help steer development of the systems we use towards your needs.
What is creating open source software like?
We have been involved in releasing open source software for years, most prominently in the area of the semantic web. Over the last year we have tried to release more of our content management system work, ie, the code that runs the websites we produce.
We also attend “Sprints”. These are open source community events where techie volunteers give up their time over a few days get some tasks done. Traditionally these have been coding tasks, but there are also documentation, marketing and other sprints. Anything to advance the particular software that the community uses.
The last year has been relatively successful for us – we have released five software components that have been downloaded 4000 times. Along with the downloads there are a few emails a month from users, confirming that there really are humans out there downloading our software. Not robots!
Personally, I find satisfaction in knowing that, by releasing open source, my work has a wide usage and audience. The more practical benefits are a higher profile in the community. The process of releasing code also encourages separation into reusable modules with better documentation, packaging, deployment and automated testing. In return we get free testing, bug detection and contributions from its users. So improving the quality of the code we write for our clients.
Hopefully we can continue to expand our open source contributions to other frameworks and languages and spread these benefits to all the systems that we work with. If you are interested in how technology has been shaped by the movement over the years I have posted a potted history on another of our blogs.
This entry was posted on 4th December 2009 at 11:18 am and is filed under Briefings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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