Open Source Software: The Show Moves On …

2003-11-06 ECPRD WPICT, Nicosia, Cyprus

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Open Source Software:The Show Moves On …

ECPRD ICT WG MeetingHouse of Representatives

Nicosia, Cyprus.

6 November 2003

Andrew Hardie, Information Architect


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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


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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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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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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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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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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 SMEswmalms - monitors sensor chip: temperature, fan speed, and voltageWebSprockets - 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 casesLANforge - unified multi-prot. net traffic generator & WAN simulationUBS - run the operations of a radio station completely unattended GtkAtlantic - client for playing Monopoly-like board gamesLayer 7 packet classifier - classify packets by application, not portyesCoder - 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-dependentConsider 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 languageHTTP: protocol so simple as to be almost obstructiveURL/URI addressing: what made the Web flyREST “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. XMLSGML 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 [email protected]

Open Source Software: The Show Moves On …

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