Open source presentation_v03

Free Software Movement

Sergi TORRELLAS
eHealth Area

The historical perspective

In the beginning, no protection for computer software. It
was de facto open source
 Software was seen as a complement of HW

 No copyright until 1980

 No patenting until mid to late 1990s

 Could be kept a trade secret, but not effective

 Richard Stallman in the 1980s - founded
GNU and the Free Software Foundation

 Open Source Movement
initiated by Eric S. Raymond

The historical perspective

1974 UNIX operating system developed at Bell Labs
1976 Richard Stallman published Emacs at MIT AI Lab
1981 First MS-DOS version
1983 Richard Stallman founds the Free Software Foundation
1987 GNU project releases the initial version of GCC
1990 Beginning of graphical OS
Released Windows 3.0 and OS/2.

1993 Linus Torvalds releases first version of Linux built
1995 Windows 95. Microsoft’s first fully graphical OS
1997 Debian Free Software Guidelines released
1998 Netscape releases navigator in source

The source of all: Copyright

• Copyright is a legal concept
 It gives the creator of an original work rights to it
 Limited in time

• Copyright also exists in Sofware
 Open Source model is premised on That
 Copyright is an intangible right; it exists independently of the
code

• Copyright Attaches On Creation of Original Code
 Copyright Notice and Registration Not Required
 Ownership Initially Vests in Authors or Institution

The four freedoms

• The software copyright as approved by the FSF (Free Software
Foundation) states the Four Freedoms (Richard Stallman,1984):
 To freely re-distribute of the software without royalties or licensing fees
to the author
 To get Source code available with the software or made available with
no cost of distribution
 To analyse the code by anyone at anytime
 To mofidy the software or derive other software from it, and to
redistribute the modified software under the same terms.

• The copyright forms not covering are Proprietary software, Closed
software

Misleading software

Some software companies take advantage of the open-
source movement to enlarge their visibility for other
purposes
The general public often gets confused the multiplicity
of terms:
 Freeware : free but no source code
 Shareware : not free and no source code
 Public Domain : without copyright
 Charityware : costs covered by donations

Open Source vs Free Software

• The ultimate goal of FSF (Free Software Foundation) is to
widespread the benefits of software for the whole mankind

• The Open Source Software pursues the technological development
and generation of knowledge in software by means of the available
collaborative tools.

• Open Source Software (OSS) is not as restrictive as the FSF.
Basically, the source code must be available

• The definition of OSS was
based on the Debian Free
Software by Bruce Perens

Let me know …

… before getting asleep.

Open Source Licenses

Licenses define the copyrights of the software

Although the higher number of licenses, they can be grouped
into three categories:

 Strongly protective: Can’t distribute proprietary version or
directly combine (link) into proprietary work (GPL)

 Weakly protective: Can’t distribute proprietary version of
this component, but can link into larger proprietary work
(LGPL)

 Permissive: Can make proprietary
versions (MIT, BSD-new)

Protective License : GPL

GNU General Public License (“GPL”)
 Grants right to copy, modify and distribute

 Requires that source code be made available to future
licenses

 Generally Seen as “Viral” : Any derivative work is applied with
the same license

 Potential incompatible with patents

 Proprietary distribution models difficult

Weakly Protective : LGPL

GNU Lesser General Public License (“LGPL”):
 Similar to GPL but more flexible in the terms

 Somewhat easier for licenses to combine the LGPL code with
a separate program and distribute the combination under
separate licenses

 Often used with Open Source Libraries that are compiled into
an application program

Permissive Licenses: BSD

BSD/MIT/Apache Style License:
 More permissive licenses; claimed to be the open-
source licenses

 Generally allow free distribution, modifying, and license
change; much like public domain software
No future open source requirement

 Variants may include non-standard restrictions
E.g., no military use – but not OSI-compliant

 Disclaims Warranties

 Subject to third-party patent claims

The cathedral and the bazaar (I)

"The Cathedral and the Bazaar“ is an article published in 1997

 The publication has become a prominent voice in
the open source movement

 Raymond Co-founded the Open Source Initiative
in 1998

 The author unveils a “development model"
through the history of the Linux kernel

 This model is presented as revolutionary, since it Eric S. Raymond
is useful to build large systems without
apparently any or few organization at all

The cathedral and the bazaar (II)

The Cathedral: The “classic" model.
 Closed environment.

 Small group of leaders/developers.

 Only “stable” releases on

 Used both in classic models : waterfall, spiral

Examples: Microsoft Office, Acrobat Reader, GCC
The Bazaar: The model introduced by Linus Torvalds.
 Open environment, any person can participate

 There are no clear leaders

 However, there is a benevolent-dictator

 “Release early, Release often".

Examples: Linux, CVS, Fetchmail

Still there?

Don’t worry. We are about to finish …

Bussiness Models (I)

Free Software is promissing but …

I need to get my bills paid.
I need to pay with my mortgage
I need my son to go to the kindergarten
I need my health insurance

How do you we make a competitive
company of all that?

Bussiness Models (II)

Hecker classification (Frank Hecker,1998) is the most widely
accepted bussiness models by the OSI the Open Source
Initiative:
 "Support Sellers," in which revenue comes from media
distribution, branding, training, consulting, custom development

 "Loss Leader," where a no-charge open-source product is used
to promote other traditional commercial software

 "Widget Frosting," for companies that are in business primarily
to sell hardware but which use the open-source model

 "Accessorizing," for companies which distribute books, and
other physical items associated

Bussiness Models (II)

 "Service Enabler," where open-source software is created and
distributed primarily to support access to revenue-generating on-
line services

 "Brand Licensing," in which a company charges other companies
for the right to use its brand names and trademarks in creating
derivative products

 "Sell It, Free It," where a company's
software products start out their product
life cycle as traditional commercial
products and then are continually
converted to open-source products when
appropriate

Companies using open-source

• IBM Corporation
 Uses and develops Apache and Linux; created Secure Mailer
and created other software on AlphaWorks

• Hewlett & Packard
 Uses and releases products running Linux

• Sun Microsystems
 Uses Linux; supports some open source development efforts
(Forte IDE for Java and the Mozilla web browser)

OSS Conclusions

• The Free Software was envisaged by Richard Stallman and is
based in four fundamental freedoms:
 Freedom of execution
 Freedom of study
 Freedom of redistribution
 Freedom of modification

• Open source: supports the access to the source code which
allows to a faster spread of knowledge and enlarge the
community of users/developers

• Open Source Software is becoming the perfect spot for both
academia and industry for research technology transfer

Thank you for
listening!

Silence!
Engineers at work

Open source presentation_v03

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