This was an invited talk at Open Source Forum Russia in April 2005. It covers open source at the BBC from the perspective of "why use open source?" "what sort of stuff gets used?" "what has the BBC released as open source & why?" open source vs open standards

1. Open Source at the
BBC
Michael Sparks
BBC Research and Development
michaels@rd.bbc.co.uk
I work on scaling online delivery of BBC
content to as wide an audience as possible
Presented at Open Source Forum Russia, April 2005
BBC R&D

2. Open Source
• The BBC...
• Is a creator of open source software
• Is a user of open source software
• Why?
• Good business reasons
• Good public service reasons
©2005 BBC. Part of the Kamaelia project, http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/ BBC R&D michael@rd.bbc.co.uk

3. Proprietary Systems
For balance...
• The BBC...
• Is a creator of proprietary systems
• Is a user of open proprietary systems
• Why?
• Good business reasons
• Good public service reasons
©2005 BBC. Part of the Kamaelia project, http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/ BBC R&D michael@rd.bbc.co.uk

4. Terminology
• Free/Libre, Open Source Software
• Terms often used interchangeably
• BBC tends to use latter term, since it focusses on
approach, not politics
©2005 BBC. Part of the Kamaelia project, http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/ BBC R&D michael@rd.bbc.co.uk

5. Why use Open Source?
• Why does the BBC use Open Source
• Open source software is not special, per se
• Open Source software represents solutions
• No specific policy for or against:
• Solutions, proprietary and open source are all
evaluated on their merits
• However open source is itself often a extra merit
©2005 BBC. Part of the Kamaelia project, http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/ BBC R&D michael@rd.bbc.co.uk

6. What Open Source Software
does the BBC use?
• Lots, more than could be listed. A subset:
• Running the business
• Network infrastructure - Apache, Perl
• Desktop Applications - Open Office, Firefox
• Desktops - Mac OS X
• Building the Business
• Standards development
• Video codecs, file formats, network systems, ...
©2005 BBC. Part of the Kamaelia project, http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/ BBC R&D michael@rd.bbc.co.uk

7. The real question
• Why would the BBC NOT use Open Source?
• Would you ask about proprietary?
• It would prevent the use of useful technologies:
• It would isolate us from community developments
• It would limit the BBC’s choices
• It would mean, for example, no Apple based systems
• It is difficult to avoid open source software
©2005 BBC. Part of the Kamaelia project, http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/ BBC R&D michael@rd.bbc.co.uk

8. The Real question (2)
• Why would the BBC NOT use Open Source?
• ... or open source derived systems?
• We would not be able to use - the internet, email, the
web
• If would mean no Microsoft based systems:
• Even Microsoft produce products containing or as open
source - “One of the great things about IronPython is it’s
open source”
• If you use the internet, you cannot avoid open source, even
if you tried.
©2005 BBC. Part of the Kamaelia project, http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/ BBC R&D michael@rd.bbc.co.uk

9. BBC R&D Open Source
• Projects available as open source:
• Kamaelia - Network streaming research platform
• Dirac - Wavelet based video codec
• AAF - Professional video/audio authoring and storage
format
• ... and others
©2005 BBC. Part of the Kamaelia project, http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/ BBC R&D michael@rd.bbc.co.uk

10. Why release X as Open Source?
• Variety of business reasons.
• A selection:
• Not your core business, not a saleable product
• Will be in development anyway.
• No feedback is no loss, any feedback or patches back is a
benefit to the business
• Standardisation development
• Collaboration
• Validation of theories and peer review
©2005 BBC. Part of the Kamaelia project, http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/ BBC R&D michael@rd.bbc.co.uk

11. Open Source vs Open
Standards
• Open source and Open Standards are NOT the
same thing.
• Open standards allow any interested party who is able to participate
to join the process
• Often hardware systems result in a paid membership to run the
standards body
• Open Source allows any interested party to fork
the software given a need.
• This may be because of a narrow minded developer/group choosing
to exclude a section of the possible community, through licemsing or
arrogance.
©2005 BBC. Part of the Kamaelia project, http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/ BBC R&D michael@rd.bbc.co.uk

12. Open Source vs Open
Standards
• Good Open source based Open Standards...
• Have a good means of dealing with conflict
• Good examples:
• Internet RFCs, and associated processes
• Python PEPs, and associated processes
©2005 BBC. Part of the Kamaelia project, http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/ BBC R&D michael@rd.bbc.co.uk

13. Benefits of Open Source
• People who need problems solved work together
to get them solved
• Feedback on your solution
• Suggestions of better approaches
• Validation of approach
• It provides a lever to boost the brainpower of your
organisation
©2005 BBC. Part of the Kamaelia project, http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/ BBC R&D michael@rd.bbc.co.uk

14. Experience
• Real Benefits to BBC R&D projects:
• Dirac:
• Community stepped forward to assist and direct
development
• Performance boosts
• Kamaelia:
• Validation of ideas
• “This framework looks like it has a real chance of making a
complex problem simple”
• Opened doors to collaboration with partners
©2005 BBC. Part of the Kamaelia project, http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/ BBC R&D michael@rd.bbc.co.uk

15. Biggest Benefits
• The biggest benefits the BBC gains from releasing
in-house code as open source:
• We maximise the benefit to the BBC and the BBC’s
community of users from the investment the BBC makes in
R&D.
• The biggest benefit the BBC gains from using
open source software:
• We are using code developed by people with similar uses
to use, and who will therefore fix the biggest pain points
first.
©2005 BBC. Part of the Kamaelia project, http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/ BBC R&D michael@rd.bbc.co.uk

16. Software Licensing
• The BBC seeks to safeguard its investment in
development.
• Various options: (simplified)
• You only have the right to use
• You can do anything, as long as you allow others the
same with your code, and credit all authors
• You can do anything, so long as you credit authors
• You may do anything you like
©2005 BBC. Part of the Kamaelia project, http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/ BBC R&D michael@rd.bbc.co.uk

17. Case Study: Kamaelia
“камилия”
• Scalable media distribution experimentation
platform.
• Released December 2004
• Licensing allows proprietary applications to use the toolkit,
but changes to the toolkit must be shared. Also includes
patent pooling style protection.
• Has allowed public discussion, with a variety of
benefits
• System has been ported to mobile phones; validation of
approach; architectural improvements; cross linkage to other
projects.
©2005 BBC. Part of the Kamaelia project, http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/ BBC R&D michael@rd.bbc.co.uk

18. Thank you!
• Any questions?
• michael@rd.bbc.co.uk
©2005 BBC. Part of the Kamaelia project, http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/ BBC R&D michael@rd.bbc.co.uk