Open Source & Freeware Products

in Maine State Government

B. Victor ChakravartyEnterprise.Architect@Maine.Gov

October 6, 2008

October 6, 2008 Open Source & Freeware in Maine State Government

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Definitions• The Open Source Initiative defines Open

Source through ten characteristics.• Top three characteristics: free redistribution,

inclusion of source code, and permission for derived works. Remaining seven cover further licensing terms.

• The Open Source Initiative is different from the Free Software movement.

• Open Source does not necessarily mean free.• All this is important to purists, but not to the

State.

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What does the State care about?

• Creating software is not the primary business of the State. And even for the software it does create, the State is not in the business of selling or distributing them.

• To the State, Open Source and Freeware products are commodities, no different from proprietary products.

• The real questions for any product: Can it get the job done? How expensive is it? Can it be supported? Etc.

• Whether Open Source or proprietary, the State uses the same criteria to evaluate products.

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Product Evaluation Criteria

• Customer Value (Return on Investment)

• Installed Base

• Scalability

• Sustainability (Viability)

• General Excellence & Market Position

• Supportability

• Alignment with long-term architecture

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Practical Considerations

• Migrations are disruptive• Selective memory of past migrations• Network Effect• Sunk Investment• Is it a vertical product or a horizontal

product? How many are affected?• Proprietary vendors counter-offer with

competitive pricing

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Open Source Office Suite• Created a committee to study alternatives to MS

Office.

• Recommended OpenOffice 2.x. Not as a complete replacement to MS Office, but for co-existence.

• Impediments to complete replacement: Investment in VBA macros and tight relationship with external partners using MS Office.

• Projected real savings. Planned a pilot project.

• MS offered Enterprise License agreement.

• Pilot project abandoned. For the foreseeable future, the State will remain invested in MS Office.

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Open Source Desktop OS• Created a committee to study alternatives to MS

Windows for the desktop.• Decided against any and all alternatives.• Wanted to retain all options.• While the same desktop can be easily loaded with

two office suites, rolling out two operating systems on the same desktop is not customer-friendly.

• Open Source Desktop OS is an all-or-nothing proposition.

• For the foreseeable future, the State will remain invested in MS Windows for the desktop OS.

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Open Source DBMS

• Created a committee to study alternatives to Oracle and MS SQL Server.

• Recommended EnterpriseDB Advanced Server for general-purpose DBMS.

• Recommended MySQL for embedded DBMS.• Oracle offered Enterprise License agreement.• No EnterpriseDB Advanced Server in Maine State.• Embedded MySQL in WebNM, SubVersion,

dotProject, etc. One MySQL-based custom application.• For the foreseeable future, the State will remain

invested in Oracle and MS SQL Server.

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Open Source Server OS

• There never was a committee to study alternatives to proprietary Server OSs.

• Yet Red Hat Linux today co-exists with proprietary Server OSs.

• The reason is simple: Server OS is a vertical product. Most customers do not even know about its existence.

• The State intends to further grow its investment in Red Hat Linux for Server OS.

• Red Hat running on commodity hardware provides low total cost of ownership, and is fully certified by Oracle.

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Horizontal Products in Use

• Google Earth• Google Maps• University of Minnesota MapServer• WikiMedia MediaWiki• SourceForge.Net dotProject• Embedded Sun MySQL (Plixer WebNM,

WikiMedia MediaWiki, SourceForge.Net dotProject)

• One MySQL-based custom application

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Vertical Products in Use

• Apache Ant• SourceForge.Net TOra• SourceForge.Net

QuantumDB• Eclipse IDE• NetBeans IDE• Apache Tomcat• JBoss Hibernate• Mantis Bug Tracker• Tigris SubVersion

• SourceForge.Net JUnit• NUnit• SourceForge.Net

Cobertura• jEdit• Dom4j• JADE• Java, JavaScript, Perl,

Python, PHP, Ruby• Red Hat Linux Server OS

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The Top Three Questions

• How to Support Open Source & Freeware products? The key to good support is advance planning. Whether insourced or outsourced, the support ecosystem should be fully in place before customer rollout.

• Is it really cheaper in the long run? Emphatically yes.

• What about the flexibility & adaptability? Does not matter to the State.

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Conclusions

• The State uses many Open Source and Freeware products, just as it uses many proprietary products.

• The State uses the same product selection criteria for both.

• Since the State is not in the business of creating or distributing software, the State can treat Open Source and Freeware products as just commodities.

• Yes, they do save money. But they are not free.

• Launch a support ecosystem before rollout.