Open Standards and Open Source Software

1
Open Standards and Open Source Software

• Similarities and Differences

2
Outline

• Open standards
• Open source software
• OSS free of charge?
• OSS versus closed source software
• OSS freedom
• Similarities between OS and OSS
• Using OS in CSS
• Combining the strengths of OS and OSS

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Standardization

• A fairly old means to reduce complexity and to
  simplify working procedures, communication
  protocols ..
• ICT-systems standardization has evolved rapidly
  over the last ten years gt TCP/IP, web
  technology,.
• These standardization processes have been fairly
  open due to organisations like IETF and W3C.
• Next challenge
• Standardisation at information level and at
  interfaces of software applications that exchange
  this information
• Standards at these interfaces make it possible to
  use software from different parties to work
  together and improve the interoperability between
  these applications.
• Openness of standards is generally accepted as a
  means to make this interoperability work as much
  as possible.

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Open Standards Definition

• There is no standard definition for the openness
  of a standard!
• Definition from the Dutch Programme OSOSS
• The standard is adopted and will be maintained by
  a not-for-profit organization, and its ongoing
  development occurs on the basis of an open
  decision-making procedure available to all
  interested parties (consensus or majority
  decision etc.).
• The standard has been published and the standard
  specification document is available either freely
  or at a nominal charge. It must be permissible to
  all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or
  at a nominal fee.
• The intellectual property i.e. patents possibly
  present of (parts of) the standard is made
  irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.
• There are no constraints on the re-use of the
  standard.
• Definition is reused by the European
  Interoperability Framework of the European
  Commission. It
• ensures good accessibility of a future-proof
  standard,
• optimal consensus about the standard and
• acceptable payment.
• In this way, there is no single party that can
  manipulate the standard for its own purposes.

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Open Source Software

• A piece of software is called open source,
  whenever access to the source code and the
  application (target code) itself is free of
  charge and that the program can be adapted, used
  and under certain criteria be redistributed.
• Primarily a juridical discussion
• Different license as usual
• Guarantees a number of liberties
• Sometimes the same liberties hold when the
  software is changed and redistributed.
• Open Source Initiative (OSI)
• a non-profit organization
• has defined ten characteristics of open source
  software and its licensees.
• certifies open source licensees
• publishes a list of certified open source
  software.
• Most well-known licensees
• GPL (GNU Public License)
• MPL (Mozilla Public License)
• BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution).

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OSS Free of charge?

• Widespread mistake OSS is completely free of
  charge because of the liberties laid down in open
  source licensees.
• OSS whats the business model?
• Indeed, no fees for the use of the software.
• Using software in an operational environment
  needs support it has to be installed,
  configured, managed and updated which also
  involves costs.
• Companies deliver and charge for these services,
  such as the publishing of a book or CD with this
  knowledge and consulting end-users.
• The open source operating system Linux is living
  proof of this business model. IBM, Suse and
  others are making revenue this way.

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OSS versus Closed Source Software

• Closed source software software of vendors of
  which the source code is not publicly available.
• Technically speaking, there is no difference
  between OSS and CSS
• The technical components of both types of
  software do not differ.
• Basically no difference in quality, stability,
  security and functionality.
• Mainly determined by the level of programming
  skills of software developers and the software
  development process they use.
• OSS is usually build using a modular approach, in
  order to simplify control of the software
  developments in a large community of independent
  software developers.
• Extensions can be easily added without loss of
  stability and quality.

8
OSS Freedom!

• OSS has advantages over CSS. A well-known analogy
  is the car with the sealed hood
• Whenever the motor of a usual car breaks down,
  the driver can open up the hood and try to repair
  the motor himself. Thus, the driver has a choice
  with sufficient knowledge of mechanics, he can
  fix the motor himself or he can call the
  road-service for assistance. For the latter he
  will of course be charged.
• Whenever the motor of a car with a sealed hood
  breaks down, the driver has no choice and has to
  call for assistance and be charged.
• CSS there is usually only an executable program
  (byte-code or binary code) without access to the
  source code.
• It cannot be easily changed and that is even
  prohibited by the vendor (the hood is sealed).
• It usually comes with a license that only allows
  the use of the software and adaptation and
  redistribution of the software is prohibited.
• This is a problem unknown with OSS

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Similarities between OS and OSS

• Based on similar objectives and advantages

Confusion comes from these similar objectives and
advantages!
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Using OS in CSS

• Main difference between OS and OSS
• OSS is concerned with source code
• OS is concerned with content and meaning of
  information.
• Open standards do not depend on whether the
  software in which they are being applied is open
  or closed source software.
• Using open standards at the interfaces of CSS
• This strongly depends on the market forces
  between end-users and software-vendors.
• In some sectors, the competition between
  different software-vendors is large enough to
  make them implement upcoming open standards
  fairly quickly.
• In other domains, however, there are only one or
  two software-vendors that dominate the market. In
  that case, the end-users have to strongly require
  the use of open standards in their tender towards
  the software-venders.
• With OSS, this is a non-issue!

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Combining the strengths of OS and OSS

• OSS inherently prefers the use of open standards
• OSS development communities generally use rather
  a good open standard instead of a badly
  constructed proprietary one.
• OSS developers have no interest in keeping their
  standards private or closed, because this is
  against the principle of openness that they
  propagate for their software.
• The costs for using proprietary standards is
  higher.
• The label OSS does however not guarantee that
  open standards are used
• proprietary standards are mainly used because
  there are no good open alternatives.
• in that case, it is hard to keep the
  specifications of the proprietary standard
  confidential and they will usually be publicly
  available.
• however, this doesnt make them completely open,
  because for instance they can still be maintained
  in a closed decision process.

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Concluding

• Combining open standards with
• open source software implies
• 11 3!