Open Source Software:
The Show Moves On …
ECPRD ICT WG Meeting
House of Representatives
Nicosia, Cyprus.
6 November 2003
Andrew Hardie, Information Architect
2003-11-06
ECPRD WPICT, Nicosia, Cyprus
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OSS – The Show Moves On …
Topics:
We have moved on from:
OSS is free!
to:
OSS provides better security
to:
OSS provides better diversity and choice
OSS provides better value for money
OSS provides open file formats
2003-11-06
ECPRD WPICT, Nicosia, Cyprus
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OSS – The Show Moves On …
Topics:
Open file formats
Microsoft’s “Shared Source” and File Format
Licensing for Public Sector
Other OSS developments
Financial, Technical, Business and Political cases
for OSS
Recommendations
Conclusions
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OSS is free!
Yes, but:
Cost of installation, support, people is far
greater percentage of project/system costs
Yes, and:
Updates are vital revenue stream for
software companies, but OSS updates are
free and, usually, faster in coming
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OSS provides better security
Yes and no:
Having the Source Code:
Doesn’t make it inherently lower risk
But, you can make wider assessments of the risks
Having the Source Code:
Doesn’t make the S/W any easier to install
But, you can do what you want with the code:
fix, improve, reuse and redistribute
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OSS provides better diversity
Yes:
Different versions of Linux, optimised for:
Stability – e.g. Debian
Speed – e.g. FreeBSD
Full featured – e.g. Red Hat
European support – e.g. SuSE, Mandrake
CD bootable, turnkey firewalls, etc, etc.
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OSS provides open file formats
The new “real issue” (esp. in Public Sector)
Remember Peru?
Free access to public information by the citizen:
“To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is
indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider.“
Permanence of public data:
“To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the
usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill
of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them.”
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Microsoft’s “Shared Source”
Provides view access to source code
Some versions allow “debug” access
None allow modification or distribution
Availability limited - not available in Europe to:
Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia &
Herzegovina, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Georgia, Iceland,
Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Malta, Moldova,
Romania, Russia, San Marino, Serbia & Montenegro,
Slovakia, Slovenia, FYROM, Turkey, Ukraine
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Microsoft’s “Shared Source” (2)
Source code access is far too complex a
way to solve transparent file access issues
May have a role where MS S/W is used
for democratic activities, e.g. e-voting, but:
Cannot be limited by country
Must be available to election NGOs also
Must be possible to report publicly on issues
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Microsoft’s “Shared Source” (3)
My opinion:
Not a suitable vehicle for solving the democratic
information access issues for parliaments and other
public sector bodies
Not acceptable that a commercial company decides
on a country’s worthiness on such an issue
Often, the countries that may be least worthy in the
company’s eyes are precisely the ones in most need
of the best possible democratic transparency
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Microsoft’s “Plan B”
“Government and Parliament License Agreement for Archival,
Forensic and Security Use of Microsoft Office File Format
Documentation”
Recognises that the file formats are the issue, not the code
Provides for “certain limited, public-sector-specific uses of
Microsoft Office binary file format documentation in a
government's or a parliament’s capacity as a Microsoft
customer”.
Certain what? Limited how?
Available to all countries, as of right, and on an equal basis?
Binary only? What about XHTML? Is it Binary or HTML?
What about email files?
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Microsoft’s “Plan B” – HTML issue
Microsoft says:
“Microsoft is committed to offering customers that use Microsoft
Office the choice to create, edit and save files using one or more
“open” formats, where such exist”
“Microsoft Word 2003 allows people to save documents using
Microsoft formats as well as “open” formats such as HTML and ASCII”
But, which HTML?
“Save as Web page” (with Office-specific markup)?
“Save as Web page, filtered” (traditional HTML)?
So far, no clear answer …
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Microsoft’s “Plan B” –
access or escrow?
licensed to “develop future Office-originated document rendering
technology for internal government or parliament use in the event
no suitable alternative technology is then commercially available”
What does rendering technology mean? View? Analyze? Debug?
Rendering (“presentation & display” the paper says) isn’t the issue:
conversion to non-Microsoft-dependent file formats is the issue!
Is the plain English translation of the “in the event …” bit really:
“as long as Microsoft remains in existence and provides some kind of
technology, of whatever quality, to support old MS Office file formats,
you are not allowed to do anything”? Or any other after-market co.?
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Microsoft’s “Plan B” (4)
licensed to “identify certain meta-data underlying a given
Office-originated document”
Identify - how? Which metadata? Document properties?
And then do what with it? Just make a list? Export it?
licensed to “engage in Office-related security analyses”
And do what with the results? Tell Microsoft only?
What about independent NGO scrutiny?
What will be the position with WordML (Office 2003)?
Implication is that it will be, effectively, “proprietary XML”
As for Longhorn XAML, who knows?
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My Plan
Goal: Parliaments must be able to publish and
archive public interest information in a reusable
“open” format that does not depend on any
supplier’s technology or licensing conditions
(Note: not, necessarily, create in this format)
So, if Word is used to create, the questions now become:
“Will Microsoft permit and support this?”
“If not, why not?”
And, if not, the decision for Parliaments, etc., would then be:
“Does Microsoft have a role in this process at all?”
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My Plan (2) – How?
The with-Microsoft scenario:
Create in Word, with doc. properties, named styles for structure, etc.
Convert to XHTML, retaining the Office-specific markup
Retain this “Word-XHTML” file for corrections, etc (short/med-term)
Also convert markup to generic XML, using UTF8 coding (long-term)
Microsoft then have no control over these converted file formats
What Microsoft needs to do:
Publish the XHTML format and its relationship to Word Doc. model
Agree the use of the information in it to perform such conversions
Or, write a plug-in/filter to do the above and make it freely available
Microsoft does not have to relinquish its proprietary rights
over the binary file format or, even, the XHTML (if it claims it)
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My Plan (3) – How?
The without-Microsoft scenario:
AbiWord, Open Office, etc (not necessarily no MS-Windows)
Convert to XML, UTF8, etc. (If necessary)
Lots of choices, also lots of cross-training and support
issues, but not insuperable
But also remember:
There is no such thing as an enduring file format
There is no such thing as an enduring storage medium
Archive now means a copy of online, not an offload of it
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Other developments 1
Two major studies on OSS:
Danish Technology Board report “OSS in e-Government”
(now available in English)
“The essential requirement to be met for increased application of
open source on the desktop and for greater competition to be
established in the area is for the public sector to make sure that
word-processed documents are exchanged in an open file format”
“… open source as infrastructure software entails substantially
lower costs”
“Significant socio-economic potential in the application of OSS.
[…] great economic scope for investments in both IT skills & pilot
development projects in choosing OSS …”
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Other developments 2
Italian Ministry of Innovation and Technology report (available
only in Italian)
Pub. Admins should not penalize or forbid use of OSS; procurement
criteria must be “value for money”
Custom software must be fully (but not necessarily exclusively)
owned by Pub. Admin.
Necessary to support and facilitate reuse of custom software owned
by Pub. Admins, and the spreading of best practice
All proprietary packages bought under licence must be available for
inspection and traceability. Pub. Admins. must be protected in the
event supplier no longer able to provide support.
Information systems of Pub. Admins must interact via standard
interfaces that must not be bound to any one supplier
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Other developments 3
Italian Ministry of Innovation and Technology report (2)
Documents of Pub. Admins should be stored and made
available in one or more formats, one of which must be open;
others to be chosen at discretion of the Pub. Admin.
Transfer of custom software and licences between Pub.
Admins must be free from ties and should be encouraged
Guidelines needed for planning and procurement of software
in Pub. Admins. Must be effected via promotion and
competence development in Pub. Admins.
OSS can be a useful tool to reuse innovative software
developed by research and technology innovation projects
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Other developments 4
UK government doing nine “proof of concept”
trials of OSS in the public sector (managed by
OGC/OeE, run by IBM)
MS paying Cap Gemini Ernst & Young to do
audit of Newham Borough Council’s IT systems,
aimed at proving MS is cheaper in TCO; full TCO
studies notoriously difficult, but look forward to it!
IBM has chosen Linux for new “Blue Gene”
supercomputers – 65,000 CPUs, 200 trillion Cps
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Other developments 5
Bad year for Microsoft virus and worm exploits
“SOBIG may be the most damaging ever …”
“SQL Slammer was the fastest spreading …”
Welchia/Nachi, Blaster, etc …
Ten settlements in past year of class actions, claiming
Microsoft used its monopoly to overcharge customers,
at a cost of $1.55 billion; 5 more class actions pending
MS agreement with SCO and their lawsuit against IBM
Unclear signals from MS over file format issues
All helps to keep OSS issue high on the agenda of
public sector decision makers and legislators
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Hot OSS Projects (Sourceforge as of 31 Oct)
Gaim - instant messenger app.
Winmerge – source code compare/merging
AMSN - MSN messenger clone
Fire - instant messenger client for Mac OS X
Compiere – ERP and CRM
eGroupware – Enterprise collaboration suite
POPFile – automatic email classifier
phpMyAdmin – PHP front end for mySQL
Tiki – CMS/Groupware
Filezilla – FTP client and server for Windows
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Hot OSS Projects (Freshmeat as of 31 Oct)
CK-Ledger - accounting and back office system for SMEs
wmalms - monitors sensor chip: temperature, fan speed, and voltage
WebSprockets - framework for rapid prototyping of RDBMS-based
dynamic Websites
Minirsyslogd - syslog receiver for hardened log receiver hosts
Jameleon - automated testing tool for application features, with tied
test cases
LANforge - unified multi-prot. net traffic generator & WAN simulation
UBS - run the operations of a radio station completely unattended
GtkAtlantic - client for playing Monopoly-like board games
Layer 7 packet classifier - classify packets by application, not port
yesCoder - program to hide data in ASCII text files
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OSS in Parliaments – Financial Case
Would OSS be cheaper?
Hidden factors (pro):
Downtime (esp. servers) – planned & unplanned
Future legacy data management costs (file formats)
Future changes to commercial license terms and costs
Hidden factors (con):
Retraining costs (users & support staff)
Availability of skills (but this is chicken & egg!)
Enterprise management facilities still lagging behind
Increased service & management costs (IDC & Gartner reports)
Only about 5% of total IT cost anyway
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OSS in Parliaments – Technical Case
Would OSS be more secure?
Outlook – victim of success or bad code?
Before Outlook, there was sendmail
Do “many eyes make all bugs shallow”?
Decisions made by OSS bundlers (e.g. port
& service enabling), esp. changes to defaults
Once OSS becomes mainstream, hackers
will target it – this is inevitable
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OSS in Parliaments – Technical Case
Would OSS be better?
Web/Net appliances – OSS already better
Enterprise servers – it depends on task/load
Database servers – hampered by SQL
variations and “enhancements”
Clients – Microsoft still dominant, but
position is changing significantly now
OSS client developers must look beyond
just writing Microsoft clones
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OSS in Parliaments – Business Case
Change management in Parliaments:
Change to use structured information (reusability, high
quality questions, etc), i.e. internal efficiency
Change to use Web-centric approach (accessibility,
transparency, etc), i.e. external effectiveness
Change to use open file formats – democratic access cannot
depend on need to purchase or licence specific software
Change to OS, Applications, or both, as well?
But, given that the first three have to be done, why not?
A planned migration path is possible, once proprietary file
formats have been replaced by app/platform neutral ones
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OSS in Parliaments – Political Case
If:
More virus/worm attacks
Another increase in MS licence costs
Lack of support for open file formats
Bad corporate governance revelations
Anti-trust decisions (Europe case in progress)
Class action suits and settlements
i.e. enough bad publicity, and …
Then, very quickly, the issue of OSS may become
politically “hot” – are you ready for that?
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OSS in Parliaments - Recommendations 1
(From Den Haag, 2002, slightly updated)
Reconsider your network architecture:
Are you supplier-dependent by design?
How can you redesign to avoid supplier dependence?
Move away from shared drive and folder models – old, platform-dependent
Consider Web-based storage and retrieval techniques, and P2P
Play to the strengths of the Web and its ways:
HTML: was, and still is, a notoriously bad mark-up language
HTTP: protocol so simple as to be almost obstructive
URL/URI addressing: what made the Web fly
REST “Representational State Transfer” model (Fielding)
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OSS in Parliaments - Recommendations 2
(From Den Haag, 2002)
Reduce dependence on things that break REST model:
Use URI, addressable resource model wherever possible
Avoid XML-RPC, SOAP for Internet
Reduce dependence on proprietary content formats
Migrate your legacy document collections
Word, WordPerfect, WhatEver, to non-proprietary, e.g. XML
SGML to XML – most SGML parsers are commercial
No need to change any of these recommendations!
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OSS in Parliaments - Recommendations 3
(New for 2003)
Given that file formats is now a big issue:
Time for that new Information Architecture!
Create an environment for program and content reuse
Start with the content, not with the products (paper, web, etc)
Follow the Internet development model:
Agile model: speculate, collaborate, learn
Play with your data: experiment with structures, then do DTD
Code early, test often, feedback fast
Any project that has run for 3 months and has only paper
to show for it is already in trouble!
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OSS in Parliaments - Recommendations 4
(New for 2003)
Metadata
Go for quick wins. Devise simple metadata structures for:
Members and their constituencies (needed everywhere)
Ministers, Ministries, etc., answerable to Parliament (constantly referred to)
Parliamentary Question/Answer pair (uses both of the above)
Legislation progress (business process metadata)
Use them, learn, then move on to more complex content:
Bills
Debate Reports
Committee Reports
How much of this will be in ParlML?
First suggested in Stockholm, 1999
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Open Source Software:
The Show Moves On …
Good luck with your projects!
Thank you.
Andrew Hardie, Information Architect
ash@cellar.demon.co.uk
2003-11-06
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