H2O.ai CEO/Founder: Sri Ambati Keynote at Wells Fargo Day
Open Source & Open Development
1. Open Source & Open Development
Sander van der Waal
sander.vanderwaal@oucs.ox.ac.uk
2. Agenda
OSS Watch
Open Source & Open Development
Case studies of successful open source projects
Break
Copyright, policy, licensing and governance
Business models for open source
Case studies for commercial success with open source
3. OSS Watch – What we do
Advise on all things open source
Services
Consultancies, events, presentations
Project support – community development
Software sustainability beyond funding
Core services free to HE / FE in the UK
4. Find out more!
osswatch.jiscinvolve.org
newsletter.oss-watch.ac.uk
www.oss-watch.ac.uk
5. What is Free and Open Source Software?
Software that the user has the right to adapt and distribute
Access to the source code
Often available at minimal or no cost
Often maintained and developed by a community
Increasingly high public profile and market share (Linux, Apache
httpd, Firefox, OpenOffice.org, Android (mostly))
Basis of later open licences like Creative Commons and Open
Database License
6. Some History
Until the late 1970s most software thought to have little intrinsic value
Exchange of software and its source code normal (with licences that allowed
adaptation and redistribution)
Arrival of personal computers in the mid 1970s changed the perception of
software's value
Software became productized, source code kept private
Many developers, particularly within academic communities, felt that this
was detrimental to software quality
7. “The amount of royalties we have received
from sales to hobbyists makes the time spent
[on] Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour.
Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists
must be aware, most of you steal your
software. Hardware must be paid for, but
software is something to share. Who cares if
the people who worked on it get paid?”
Bill Gates Computer Notes 1976
8. “I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I must
share it with other people who like it. Software sellers want to divide the
users and conquer them, making each user agree not to share with
others. I refuse to break solidarity with other users in this way…
So that I can continue to use computers without dishonor, I have decided
to put together a sufficient body of free software so that I will be able to
get along without any software that is not free.”
Richard Stallman, GNU Manifesto, 1985
9. The FSF's Four Freedoms
The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your
needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for
this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor
(freedom 2).
The freedom to improve the program, and release your
improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits
(freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
10. “Linux is subversive. Who would have thought even five years ago (1991) that
a world-class operating system could coalesce as if by magic out of part-time
hacking by several thousand developers scattered all over the planet,
connected only by the tenuous strands of the Internet?”
Eric Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, 1996-7
11. Open Source Initiative
In early 1998 Netscape decides to release the source code of its struggling
web browser to the world
Raymond's apolitical, business-friendly explanation of the virtues of the
Free Software ought to have an advocacy group
In February 1998 the Open Source Initiative is founded, with Raymond as
its first president.
The term 'Open Source' begins to be widely used.
The OSI adapts the Debian Free Software Guidelines to define what it
means by ‘Open Source’
The resulting Open Source Definition gives ten criteria for an ‘open
source’ licence
12. Open Source Definition
Freely Redistributable
Source Code Included
Derived Works Permitted
Integrity of Author’s Source Code (diffs and patches)
No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavour
Distribution of Licence (no additional licences required)
D
Licence Must Not Be Specific to a Product (or distribution)
Licence Must Not Restrict Other Software
Licence Must Be Technology-Neutral (no 'click wrap')
L
13. Open Source Initiative
Over seventy licences are accredited by the OSI as meeting these criteria
The most commonly used are the BSD (permissive) and the GPL (copyleft)
T
The sheer number of OSI-approved licences is officially considered a
problem
For practical purposes OSS Watch defines its remit with reference to the
OSI approved licence list
14. Words and Tensions
Many ‘Free Software’ supporters, including Richard Stallman, see the OSI
as a deliberate attempt to appropriate their movement while stripping it of its
political aims.
The language itself has become politicised
Whether one says ‘Free’ or ‘Open’ has become an indicator of which ‘side’
one supports
The unwieldy phrase ‘Free and Open Source Software’ is used by those
who do not wish to take sides
Stallman also campaigns against use of the phrase ‘intellectual property’
15. Open development is…
“Open source is a development method for software that
harnesses the power of distributed peer review and
transparency of process.” - http://www.opensource.org/
A way for distributed team members to collaboratively develop a shared
resource
16. Open development is…
Particularly useful in distributed self selecting teams
Very common in open source projects
Key attributes include:
User engagement
Transparency
Collaboration
Agility
17. Open development is agile…
Many agile practices evolved from or alongside open development, e.g.
Collective code ownership
Incremental design and architecture
Real customer involvement
Revision Control
18. Open development is Not agile…
Some Agile methods are not appropriate
e.g. Does not require co-location
Does allow anyone to participate
NOTE: this does not mean that anyone has the right to modify open
source code in the core repository
19. Platform for collaboration
Using the common tools in open projects:
Mailing Lists / Forums for communication
Website / blog / wiki
Issue tracker
Version Control System (GIT, SVN, Mercurial)
Community development
20. Open Development is managed
Progression through project roles
User -> Contributor -> Committer -> Maintainer
Governance
How are decisions made?
How are conflicts resolved?
How do you gain influence?
IPR management
22. TexGen
• Textile CAD modeller
• Developed at Nottingham’s Department of Mechanical,
Materials and Manufacturing
• Generate geometric models of textiles and their
composites
23. Why open source TexGen?
• People can download TexGen and use it for free
• Better level of both knowledge transfer and verification
• Encourage third-party use / citation
• Potential for collaboration
• IPR issues are simplified
24. Why not commercialise traditionally?
• Limited commercial value
• Commercial customers would expect support
• Small market - casual use does not occur
• All development has to be undertaken in-house
• Danger of inhibiting research collaborations
25. Results
• Over 5,000 downloads on SourceForge
• Collaborations with previously unknown partners
• Renewal of EPSRC's prestigious Platform Grant in 2009
• Investment from commercial companies such as Boeing
• In total approximately £1m research income
26. Lessons learned
• High ROI to open source code
• Excellent marketing
• Free publicity of research group’s expertise
• Opportunity to create new partnerships
• There’s no one single way of doing it
• Best application of open innovation in software
• Funders love it
27. Apache Wookie (incubating)…
Server for uploading and deploying widgets
Implementation of emerging W3C standard
Extracted from larger EU project context as a discrete project
A good fit with Apache Software Foundation
Already some interest from outside the project
28. Networking opportunities
• ASF community
• Other interested projects
• Mobile apps/widgets community
• Android community
• W3C Social Web XG
30. Results
• Very substantial value added by community
• Income generated for next 3 years: ~£700k from two FP7
projects
• Only actually core funded from Dec 09-Sep10 @ 0.2FTE
(around £12k)
• Stepping stone to Apache Rave (Incubating)
33. Copyright...
is a form of 'intellectual property'
is an unregistered right – it comes into existence at the same time that the
work is 'fixed'
protects the 'fixed' form of an idea, not the idea itself
protects literary and artistic material, music, films, sound recordings and
broadcasts, including software and multimedia
generally does not protect works that are 'insubstantial' – thus names and
t
titles are not protected (although a 'passing off' action may be a possibility)
gives the author exclusive economic and moral rights over the copyrighted
material
34. What exclusive economic rights do copyright owners have?
Making copies
Issuing copies to the public (publication, performing, broadcasting,
online distribution)
Renting or lending copies
Adapting the work
35. What exclusive moral rights do copyright owners have?
In the case of software, none. Unlike other creators of literary works,
software authors have no statutory protection against derogatory
treatment of their code or automatic right to be identified as the author of
their code
36. When does copyright in software expire under UK law?
For literary works including software:
70 years after the death of the author
Calculating copyright expiry is made more complex by the fact
that the duration has changed over the last 20 years. Luckily in
the case of software its novelty and relatively short shelf-life
mitigate this.
37. What can I do with my copyright material?
Sell it (assign it) – transfer ownership of your rights
License it – grant use of your rights, possibly for a limited
period or within a limited geographical area.
38. A word about patents
Not at all the same thing
Generally OSS licensing of code is incompatible with the
exploitation of software patents embodied in the code in
question
European Patent Convention 1973 Article 52:
“(1) European patents shall be granted for any inventions which are susceptible of industrial
application, which are new and which involve an inventive step.
(2) The following in particular shall not be regarded as inventions within the meaning of paragraph 1:
...
(c) schemes, rules and methods for performing mental acts, playing games or doing business, and
programs for computers;”
39. A word about patents
In fact, over the last 20 years this exclusion has been rendered
moot by repeated approval of patents by the EPO and national
patent-granting bodies which are, in effect, for software.
Symbian’s recent win in the High Court against the Intellectual
Property Office seems to indicate that software patents are now
obtainable in the UK
Despite this, there seems to be a general reluctance to litigate
in support of these patents in Europe.
40. How FOSS Licensing Works...
What is a FOSS Licence?
A licence to exercise rights normally reserved to the
author by copyright law
Consistent with Open Source Definition (or Four
Freedoms)
Either explicitly perpetual or practically so
A licence which offers a grant of rights to anyone
41. How FOSS Licensing Works...
How does copyright law protect FOSS software?
No explicit communicated acceptance necessary
Copyright law effectively prevents copying, adaptation and
distribution of copyright material without a licence
FOSS licences provide an avenue to licensed use if the user
abides by the conditions
Without the licence, it is likely no permission exists, and
the author can take action for copyright infringement
Generally considered to work, but little case law
42. How FOSS Licensing Works...
How do FOSS Licences deal with patents?
Some licences (Apache 2, Nokia, Microsoft Reciprocal
Licence and many others) explicitly grant rights to licensor's
patents that are necessarily infringed by use or distribution
Even those that do not will grant implied licences (in some
jurisdictions) by permitting acts that would require a patent
licence
Some licences terminate their patent grants if the licensee
initiates patent infringement litigation against the licensor
43. Varieties of FOSS Licence: Permissive
Allow inclusion in non-FOSS software
Suitable where widest uptake is desirable
Examples of permissive licences are:
Modified BSD
MIT
Academic Free
Apache Software Licence
44. Varieties of FOSS Licence: Copyleft
Derivative works, if distributed, must use same licence
Cannot be incorporated into non-FOSS products
Suitable when desire is to legally enforce FOSS status
Examples of copyleft licences:
GNU General Public License
Open Software License
Common Development and Distribution License
45. Partial Copyleft
Derivative works, if distributed, use same licence
May be incorporated into non-FOSS products
Suitable in order to keep a portion of the work FOSS
compromise between full copyleft and permissive
Examples of weak or partial copyleft licences:
GNU Lesser General Public License
Mozilla Public License
Eclipse Public License
46. Varieties of FOSS Licence: Badgeware
Only one 'badgeware' OSI-approved licence
Common Public Attribution License
Adaptation of Mozilla Public License (partial copyleft)
Derivative must prominently display original author's
details or organisation at runtime.
47. How to choose a licence?
Only considering popular licences?
Copyleft vs. Permissive?
How to deal with patents?
Jurisdiction?
48.
49. Copyright Ownership Models
• Centralised ownership
• Copyright is owned by the project owner
• Contributors assign copyright to project owner
• Project owner releases under chosen FOSS licence
• Aggregated ownership
• Copyright owned by original authors
• Contributors license their code to project owner
• Project owner releases under chosen FOSS licence
50. Copyright Ownership Models
A Flawed Copyright Ownership model
•Distributed ownership
•Contributions individually licenced as FOSS
•Common in the academic world
•Collaboration Agreements
Don't use this model
•Legal action against infringers hard to coordinate
•Legal action against project requires coordination from
defendants
•Outbound licence changes require agreement from all
51. Contributor Agreements and Governance
• Contributor Licence Agreements (CLA) required
• Solve problems of distributed ownership
• Can be a barrier to contribution so keep them simple
• Well-run projects need a clear contribution policy
• what agreement is needed?
• who can commit?
• who decides what code is included in the release?
• And more..
• info@oss-watch.ac.uk
52. Employees, Academics and Contractors
• Who owns “internal” contributions?
• Employment contracts
• IP Policies
• Consultancy contracts
• Default position is that:
• Employers own employees work
• Contractors own their own work
• Academics often own their copyrighted work
• See contract and policies
53. An example policy: Oxford
• Release form from Research Services
• Straight-forward assessment of components written and used
• Sent to legal team
• Also sent to our technology transfer unit ISIS Innovation
• Departmental policy for Oxford University Computing
Services
• Staff members may contribute code to foundations
• Central registry of projects contributed to
• Contributor Licence Agreements may be signed if needed
• Example: Apache Software Foundation
54. Making sure your code is releasable
Strongly consider obtaining contributor licence agreements
Keep track of your inbound licences and what they oblige you to
d
do (licence compatibility)
Keep track of the employment/consultancy agreements of
contributors, including all institutional regulations that they
import
Keep track of funding conditions associated with contributors
Use versioning system as a basis for this record-keeping
Establish what (if any) patents might be obtainable in relation to
the work, and plan your code accordingly
Assess your competition and your risk
56. Business and Sustainability Models
These are mostly not mutually exclusive, and will most often be used in
combination as appropriate – more accurately they are elements of business
models
This is still an emerging area of business practice
Some of the current success of FOSS software exploitation techniques
may be attributable to dissatisfaction with more traditional proprietary
techniques and their associated big-name vendors, rather than any innate
superiority
It remains to be seen whether the current global financial difficulties will
help FOSS business or hinder it. Analysts are currently predicting both.
57. First - what you cannot / should not do
Charge for licences for specific uses of your code, for example commercial
use (Open Source Definition point 6)
Charge for licences in general (Possible but subject to low/zero-cost
competition from all recipients)
Tweak an existing FOSS licence for your purposes and still call your
software Free Software or Open Source Software (Strong community
rejection of these practices)
Silently incorporate FOSS software in your proprietary offering without
abiding by the licence conditions (detection is likely, and although legal
damages are unlikely, damage to reputation is certain)
58. Academic Community Development
FOSS licensing permits a varied group of contributors to work on software
that addresses a particular problem domain.
Institutions and their academics can gain public profile by contributing to
such projects and becoming associated with respected tools in specific areas
of research. It can also help ensure the continued existence of useful
solutions.
Examples include BioImage Suite (biological image analysis software)
YARP (experimental robotics software) and The Versioning Machine
(software for aligning differing versions of xml-encoded texts).
Recognition for work on academic tools is still, however, some way behind
more traditional forms of academic recognition for publication etc
59. Establishing a separate legal entity
Adds to sustainability by isolating risks (IP infringement, event organisation,
damages from failure) from the parent institution
Facilitates donation of money and simplifies tax issues
Most research institutions are already well-practised in setting up spin-out
companies. In the case of sustaining FOSS projects some kind of not-for-
profit entity may be just as or even more appropriate
Such an entity can still have an affiliated commercial entity engaged in
exploiting the software and the brands that it stewards
60. Moving into an external foundation
The benefits of foundation status have led to the establishment of umbrella
foundations holding multiple FOSS projects.
Examples include the Apache Software Foundation, which supports
Apache HTTP Server, Cocoon, Lucene, Software in the Public Interest,
which supports the Debian Linux distribution and PostgreSQL, and the
Software Freedom Conservancy, home to Samba, Busybox and Wine
Entering an umbrella foundation can radically reduce running costs for
projects that receive financial donations, as the foundation will handle the
necessary book-keeping, as well as providing the risk management benefits
that come with separating legal responsibility for a project from your host
institution
61. 'Community Source' Foundations
Where a number of separate institutions see a benefit in jointly developing
a piece of FOSS, they can adopt a model which has come to be known,
somewhat confusingly, as 'Community Source'
Each institution contributes resources to developing the code, the
ownership of which rests in an external foundation
In the initial phases the code may be unavailable outside the foundation,
although it will eventually be released under a FOSS licence
Contributing resources to the foundation buys institutions early code
access and influence on the governance of the project and its functionality
Mellon-funded projects Sakai and Kuali both began using this model
62. Consultancy
Consultancy is another traditional technique for educational institutions
looking to financially exploit their resources
A more traditional model might be to sell licences to a piece of research-
derived software and sell consultancy services and/or bespoke development
services alongside it
Potentially a FOSS release of the software can improve uptake, given its
low cost of acquisition, and drive the market for associated consultancy and
development services more successfully than the traditional model
63. Internal Cost Reduction
Institutions may be happy to sustain an internally-developed FOSS project
themselves if the project can demonstrate that it drives down the running
costs of that institution or solves an institutional problem
Projects that reduce costs in one institution may have good potential, when
mature, to be deployed in others. This provides opportunities for paid
consultancy and/or provision of the software as a service (see below)
64. Provision of Paid Support /
Documentation
Just because your code is freely available, it does not mean that the
documentation or your help needs to be (as with the consultancy and
bespoke development model)
Support can be provided in time- or incident-limited bundles
Support can be in the form of guaranteed performance on specific
hardware
Documentation can take the form of paid access to a knowledge base of
previously resolved issues
HOWEVER, in this case one is in competition with the software's user
base/community, who may be willing to provide peer support for free
65. Integration / Managed Upgrades
Managing the integration of various FOSS technologies, with their varying
dependencies and release cycles, is a service that people are prepared to
pay for
Similarly managing the deployment of upgrade patches can be a paid
service
Bundles of tested, integrated FOSS software can be sold along with,
potentially, support agreements
HOWEVER, close integration may trigger responsibilities in particularly
copyleft licences that could prevent integrated distribution – read the licences
66. Competitor Disruption
Sometimes a FOSS alternative to a competitor's product can disrupt their
business model and provide competitive advantage (although this is almost
never the sole motivation behind the release or distribution)
Examples (arguably) include Sun's OpenOffice.org, Google's bundling and
distribution of Microsoft-competing software such as OpenOffice.org, Firefox
and Chrome (the 'Google Pack'), Netscape Corporation's FOSS release of
Netscape Navigator
67. Software as a Service
Increasingly consumers are becoming comfortable with so-called 'cloud'-
based software offerings – software that is accessed and used over the
internet, and which stores data remotely from the user
SaaS can be a useful solution to the problem of institutionally developed
software that relies integrally on copyleft-licensed code
Provision of service using copyleft software does not count as distribution,
and thus does not trigger copyleft's reciprocal licensing responsibilities
HOWEVER – this is a known 'bug' in copyleft licensing, and licences such
as the GNU Affero GPL v3 are already in existence to 'fix' it.
68. Advertising / Referral
Your software or accompanying web site may be able to direct network
traffic to an entity that is willing to pay for hits (although of course this
functionality can always be engineered out by technically apt users)
This is Mozilla Foundation's main source of income
Firefox's built-in search box directs queries to Google
The vast majority of Mozilla Foundation's revenue ($132m in 2010)
comes from Google under this deal.
Wordpress, the FOSS blogging software and hosting platform is partly
funding their parent company Automattic through this model
69. Training and Accreditation
As well as support and consultancy, generalised training documents,
courses and qualifications may be viable products
Control of an associated trademark enables the provision of 'X-Certified
Professional' style programmes
Actual training and examination are readily out-sourced
70. Trademark Licensing / Merchandising
Just because your code is available under a FOSS licence, you do not
have to permit universal use of your project's name and associated symbols
Unlike copyright, trademarks are a registered form of IP, meaning that you
have to apply to relevant government agencies for ownership. However,
compared to patent application, trademark registration is relatively
inexpensive
Owning your trademark facilitates the sale of associated merchandise and
accreditation and marks like “Powered by X” and “Using X technology”
Can be a deterrent to forking if the brand is strong enough – the motivation
to increase personal reputation by providing functionality outside project “X” is
partially undermined by the inability to call the new project “Improved X”
71. Proprietary Versions and Components
Sometimes referred to disparagingly as the 'Bait and Switch' model
A FOSS edition of software is offered which lacks some of the functionality
of a paid edition, either throughout its code or in the form of missing
proprietary components
While the existence of better-supported or hardware-accredited forms of
FOSS offerings is generally accepted by the FOSS community, proprietary
components and versions are less well-liked (although there is perhaps
growing acceptance as the community matures)
HOWEVER, this is another example of competing with the community. The
FOSS model means that anyone can produce freely available versions of
your paid functionality, given enough time and expertise
72. Dual Licensing
Provided that you have the necessary ownership or sub-licensing rights
over your project's code, you can provide it under differing licences
In the classic case, these would be a copyleft licence and a paid
proprietary licence
Customers who wish to build software product incorporating your code and
who do not wish to use the copyleft licence must pay for the proprietary
licence
This is therefore most suitable for code which is readily susceptible to
inclusion within commercial software products, for example database
backends
74. Example: Cranfield University
Library developed a survey tool based on Plone
Released as open source in 2006
Development has occurred internationally
Africa, North America, India and Europe
Eg. a major contribution from a South African company
Cranfield recognised within Plone community
Get development effort back
Ability to provide consultancy services
75. Moodle at ULCC
-
A Shared Service
Success
www.ulcc.ac.uk
80. Moodle Activity*
*Moodle activity is defined as any form of accessing, uploading and editing content by a registers ULCC Moodle user
www.ulcc.ac.uk
81. Average Activity (Activity per
user)
*Moodle activity is defined as any form of accessing, uploading and editing content by a registers ULCC Moodle user
www.ulcc.ac.uk
87. ULCC’s e-Learning Service
• Hosting Levels (1-7) and support that fit your requirements
• PRINCE2 project management support for transition of VLE
• 24/7 customer support
• Integration with your existing IT systems (SITS, Agresso, Talis, etc.)
• Individual and bespoke staff training to maximise VLE usage
• Pro-active management of software upgrades
• Active customer community to share best practice and experience
www.ulcc.ac.uk
90. ULCC’s successful open source strategy
Share code and expertise with Moodle community
Build reputation in Moodle development
Successful service model
Now recognised team
Hosted MoodleMoot 2010 and 2011
91. Do get in touch:
info@oss-watch.ac.uk
http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk
@osswatch
Hinweis der Redaktion
In 1985, as a reaction to the growing trend towards ‘closed source’ software, MIT Artificial Intelligence researcher Richard Stallman wrote a new software licence His licence (the GNU General Public Licence or GPL) permitted free redistribution and adaptation by anyone but mandated that derivative works must carry the same licence (“copyleft”) Stallman also founds the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in 1985, committed to maintaining software 'Freedom' as both a pragmatic and political aim Unfortunately, in English, this use of 'Free' is widely thought to refer to price, not liberty (free beer vs free speech) Echoing President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 ‘ Four Freedoms ’ speech, Stallman created four software-related freedoms that his organisation sought to protect. Being a computer programmer, Stallman started his numbering from ‘0’
In 1991, a Finnish computer science student called Linus Torvalds starts working on Linux , a Unix-like operating system that will run on IBM-PCs and is licensed under the GPL v2 Over the next five years, Torvalds builds a fully functioning Unix operating system with help from other remote programmers leveraging the power of the internet and the freedom to adapt and redistribute provided by FOSS licensing In 1997 programmer Eric Raymond publishes an essay called 'The Cathedral and The Bazaar '
Yet More History In early 1998, partly as a result of the success of Raymond's essay, Netscape decides to release the source code of its struggling web browser to the world Some within the Free Software community decide that Raymond's apolitical, business-friendly explanation of the virtues of the Free Software ought to have an advocacy group In February 1998 the Open Source Initiative is founded, with Raymond as its first president. The term 'Open Source' begins to be widely used.
Business and Sustainability Models These are mostly not mutually exclusive, and will most often be used in combination as appropriate – more accurately they are elements of business models This is still an emerging area of business practice Some of the current success of FOSS software exploitation techniques may be attributable to dissatisfaction with more traditional proprietary techniques and their associated big-name vendors, rather than any innate superiority It remains to be seen whether the current global financial difficulties will help FOSS business or hinder it. Analysts are currently predicting both.
First - what you cannot / should not do Charge for licences for specific uses of your code, for example commercial use (Open Source Definition point 6) Charge for licences in general (Possible but subject to low/zero-cost competition from all recipients) Tweak an existing FOSS licence for your purposes and still call your software Free Software or Open Source Software (Strong community rejection of these practices) Silently incorporate FOSS software in your proprietary offering without abiding by the licence conditions (detection is likely, and although legal damages are unlikely, damage to reputation is certain)
Academic Community Development FOSS licensing permits a varied group of contributors to work on software that addresses a particular problem domain. Institutions and their academics can gain public profile by contributing to such projects and becoming associated with respected tools in specific areas of research. It can also help ensure the continued existence of useful solutions. Examples include BioImage Suite (biological image analysis software) YARP (experimental robotics software) and The Versioning Machine (software for aligning differing versions of xml-encoded texts). Recognition for work on academic tools is still, however, some way behind more traditional forms of academic recognition for publication etc
Establishing a separate legal entity Adds to sustainability by isolating risks (IP infringement, event organisation, damages from failure) from the parent institution Facilitates donation of money and simplifies tax issues Most research institutions are already well-practised in setting up spin-out companies. In the case of sustaining FOSS projects some kind of not-for-profit entity may be just as or even more appropriate Such an entity can still have an affiliated commercial entity engaged in exploiting the software and the brands that it stewards
Moving into an external foundation The benefits of foundation status have led to the establishment of umbrella foundations holding multiple FOSS projects. Examples include the Apache Software Foundation , which supports Apache HTTP Server, Cocoon, Lucene, Software in the Public Interest, which supports the Debian Linux distribution and PostgreSQL, and the Software Freedom Conservancy , home to Samba, Busybox and Wine Entering an umbrella foundation can radically reduce running costs for projects that receive financial donations, as the foundation will handle the necessary book-keeping, as well as providing the risk management benefits that come with separating legal responsibility for a project from your host institution
'Community Source' Foundations Where a number of separate institutions see a benefit in jointly developing a piece of FOSS, they can adopt a model which has come to be known, somewhat confusingly, as 'Community Source' Each institution contributes resources to developing the code, the ownership of which rests in an external foundation In the initial phases the code may be unavailable outside the foundation, although it will eventually be released under a FOSS licence Contributing resources to the foundation buys institutions early code access and influence on the governance of the project and its functionality Mellon-funded projects Sakai and Kuali both began using this model
Consultancy Consultancy is another traditional technique for educational institutions looking to financially exploit their resources A more traditional model might be to sell licences to a piece of research-derived software and sell consultancy services and/or bespoke development services alongside it Potentially a FOSS release of the software can improve uptake, given its low cost of acquisition, and drive the market for associated consultancy and development services more successfully than the traditional model
Internal Cost Reduction Institutions may be happy to sustain an internally-developed FOSS project themselves if the project can demonstrate that it drives down the running costs of that institution or solves an institutional problem Projects that reduce costs in one institution may have good potential, when mature, to be deployed in others. This provides opportunities for paid consultancy and/or provision of the software as a service (see below)
Provision of Paid Support / Documentation Just because your code is freely available, it does not mean that the documentation or your help needs to be (as with the consultancy and bespoke development model) Support can be provided in time- or incident-limited bundles Support can be in the form of guaranteed performance on specific hardware Documentation can take the form of paid access to a knowledge base of previously resolved issues HOWEVER, in this case one is in competition with the software's user base/community, who may be willing to provide peer support for free
Integration / Managed Upgrades Managing the integration of various FOSS technologies, with their varying dependencies and release cycles, is a service that people are prepared to pay for Similarly managing the deployment of upgrade patches can be a paid service Bundles of tested, integrated FOSS software can be sold along with, potentially, support agreements HOWEVER, close integration may trigger responsibilities in particularly copyleft licences that could prevent integrated distribution – read the licences
Competitor Disruption Sometimes a FOSS alternative to a competitor's product can disrupt their business model and provide competitive advantage (although this is almost never the sole motivation behind the release or distribution) Examples (arguably) include Sun 's OpenOffice.org, Google 's bundling and distribution of Microsoft-competing software such as OpenOffice.org, Firefox and Chrome (the 'Google Pack'), Netscape Corporation 's FOSS release of Netscape Navigator
Software as a Service Increasingly consumers are becoming comfortable with so-called 'cloud'-based software offerings – software that is accessed and used over the internet, and which stores data remotely from the user SaaS can be a useful solution to the problem of institutionally developed software that relies integrally on copyleft-licensed code Provision of service using copyleft software does not count as distribution, and thus does not trigger copyleft's reciprocal licensing responsibilities HOWEVER – this is a known 'bug' in copyleft licensing, and licences such as the GNU Affero GPL v3 are already in existence to 'fix' it.
Advertising / Referral Your software or accompanying web site may be able to direct network traffic to an entity that is willing to pay for hits (although of course this functionality can always be engineered out by technically apt users) This is Mozilla Foundation 's main source of income Firefox 's built-in search box directs queries to Google In 2007 'the vast majority' of Mozilla Foundation 's $75m revenue came from Google under this deal. They are now being investigate by the US IRS Wordpress , the FOSS blogging software and hosting platform raised $29.5 million in its last round of investment and is expected to move to this business model in the future
Training and Accreditation As well as support and consultancy, generalised training documents, courses and qualifications may be viable products Control of an associated trademark enables the provision of ' X-Certified Professional' style programmes Actual training and examination are readily out-sourced
Trademark Licensing / Merchandising Just because your code is available under a FOSS licence, you do not have to permit universal use of your project's name and associated symbols Unlike copyright, trademarks are a registered form of IP, meaning that you have to apply to relevant government agencies for ownership. However, compared to patent application, trademark registration is relatively inexpensive Owning your trademark facilitates the sale of associated merchandise and accreditation and marks like “Powered by X” and “Using X technology” Can be a deterrent to forking if the brand is strong enough – the motivation to increase personal reputation by providing functionality outside project “ X” is partially undermined by the inability to call the new project “Improved X”
Proprietary Versions and Components Sometimes referred to disparagingly as the 'Bait and Switch' model A FOSS edition of software is offered which lacks some of the functionality of a paid edition, either throughout its code or in the form of missing proprietary components While the existence of better-supported or hardware-accredited forms of FOSS offerings is generally accepted by the FOSS community, proprietary components and versions are less well-liked (although there is perhaps growing acceptance as the community matures) HOWEVER, this is another example of competing with the community. The FOSS model means that anyone can produce freely available versions of your paid functionality, given enough time and expertise
Dual Licensing Provided that you have the necessary ownership or sub-licensing rights over your project's code, you can provide it under differing licences In the classic case, these would be a copyleft licence and a paid proprietary licence Customers who wish to build software product incorporating your code and who do not wish to use the copyleft licence must pay for the proprietary licence This is therefore most suitable for code which is readily susceptible to inclusion within commercial software products, for example database backends
Average activity increase due to implementation of Personalised Learning Framework
The five grey areas show the so called discourses in which learning takes places with the blue squares outlining technology solution that supports/facilitates learning in that area, i.e. The VLE sits within the institutional area, whereas assessments is driven by national & professional standards, supervised/enforced by the institution.
Assessment and e-ILP are modules developed around Moodle SITS/MIS direct integration with students record systems Echo, campusM, Mahara & Equella are strategic partners Eprints expertise of DART team to integrate with academic repositiories