Free/Open Source
An Innovation-Friendly
Sofware Engineering
Paradigm
F. LETELLIER
IN'Tech – 12 janvier 2010
François LETELLIER www.flet.fr

Free / Open Source Software
 Free software ≠ freeware
 Four “Freedoms” (R. Stallmann)
to run the program, for any purpose
 to study how the program works
 to redistribute copies
 to improve the program, and release your
improvements to the public
 A whole range of licenses – based on copyright
 Copyleft : GPL, LGPL, ...
 Academic / permissive : BSD, MIT, APL …
 Internationalization : CeCILL, EUPL
 F/L/OSS = Free/Libre/Open Source Software
François LETELLIER www.flet.fr

Source Forge
500 top projects New technology N. for a platform Existing techno.
New market Radical innovation 1% <1%
Existing market <1% 10% No innov. 87%
Source: Innovativeness of open source software projects, K. Klincewicz 2005
François LETELLIER www.flet.fr

structure
input output
R&D expenditure # researchers # patents filed
# start-ups # publications
Licensing
François LETELLIER www.flet.fr

Source: European Commission, “Towards a European Research Area, Key Figures 2001 –
Special edition: Indicators for benchmarking of national research policies”
François LETELLIER www.flet.fr

F/L/OSS =
Software Innovation Dark Matter ?
Hobbyists, part-time contributors
Volunteers or transparent efforts
Anonymous (collective)
Incremental
Free (gratis), Free (open)
François LETELLIER www.flet.fr

The finger
pointing to
the Moon
is not the
Moon
François LETELLIER www.flet.fr

FLOSS potentially saves the
industry 36%+ in software R&D
investment that can result in
increased profits or be more usefully
spent in further innovation
Study on the economic impact of OSS on innovation and the competitiveness os the information and
communication technologies (ICT) sector in the EU, 2006, UNU-MERIT, NL
François LETELLIER www.flet.fr

Uses at home/soho
Builds on other works Sell substitutes Contributes as a hobby
Company
Research XYZ
Lab
Transfers
research results
Worldwide F/L/OSS Code Base
Shares R&D on Develops with
non core-business taxpayers money
Company Company Public
XYZ XYZ Administration
Uses in production process
Sell hw/sw complements Offers services
“publish”
According to a protocol: the license
“subscribe”
François LETELLIER www.flet.fr

Free/Open Source Projects
 Project - the basic unit in F/L/OSS communities
 collaborative development
 technology driven - mostly code production
 Project leaders
 often are at the origin of the project, oversee its major
direction
 personality and charisma are key
 Core members «(sometimes organised as PMC)
 make significant contributions over time
 usually less than ≈ 15 p (over this limit, the project is likely to
give birth to subprojects)
 Active users (aka « contributors »)
 report bugs, write documentation, occasionally patches
François LETELLIER www.flet.fr

Evolutionary dynamics
FLOSS License
Free distribution
Modif. Source
code
(contrib.)
Source
code Source
code
Source Source
code code
Source
code Source
code
Source
code
François LETELLIER www.flet.fr

François LETELLIER www.flet.fr

Source : FOSS-Bridge workshop, Hanoi, 2008
François LETELLIER www.flet.fr

Utilisateurs
Contributeurs
Besoins
« Committers »
Maîtrise du code Diffusion
(légale, technique) Licence libre
Code source
Gestion des versions
François LETELLIER www.flet.fr

Collaborative Development
Environments (“Forges”)
 Mailing lists, forums - form a knowledge base
 Wikis - online documentation
 Source code management - so concurent
development can happen
 CVS, SVN
 Bug tracker
 Bugzilla, TRAC
 Administration tools, user management, stats,
continuous integration, ...
François LETELLIER www.flet.fr

F/L/OSS
Software Engineering Tools
IDEs SCM
 Eclipse  CVS
 TopCaseD  SVN
Test  GIT
 Junit CDE / Forges
 Continuum  Savane
 CLIF  Gforge
 LibreSource
François LETELLIER www.flet.fr

F/L/OSS Languages and...
(Source) Code!
Compilers Librairies, frameworks
 C - GCC  Struts
 Cocoon
Interpreters / script  Spring
 PERL Platforms
 PHP  Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP
 Python... Middleware
 JBoss
 eXo Portal
François LETELLIER www.flet.fr

The F/L/OSS “Adoption Ladder”
Project &
Value appropriated ecosystem
coordination
Development time
Identification,
Adoption, Migration, Collaborate
Training and redefine
Champion
Devt time
Contribute Community
interaction
Use Support to 3rd parties
Time
Denial Engineering driven Business driven
François LETELLIER Source: FLOSSMetrics project
www.flet.fr

F/L/OSS Policies
in Western Companies
27% corporations have a formal FLOSS policy - 18%
plan to adopt one in the coming year
67% companies mostly use FLOSS as ‘gratis’ software
54% use unchanged or adapted FLOSS code in their in-
house developments
49% contribute to FLOSS (bug reports, patches)
11% have FLOSS committers in their staff
Source: CIO.com APR 2008
François LETELLIER www.flet.fr

Selecting F/L/OSS Projects
 # of developers, contributors
 Activity on the mailing lists, forums, rate of release, # of
downloads
 Code quality and maturity, available documentation, bugs
reported and fixed, roadmap
 Reputation, notoriety, references
 Compliance with open standards (even though not in the
requirements)
 Tests, benchmarks, pilot experiments - don't trust the
glossy brochure
 License (& legal)
François LETELLIER www.flet.fr

QSOS
François LETELLIER www.flet.fr

Employment Profile of FLOSS
Developers
Developers: Do you think that proven participation in the
FLOSS community can compensate for the lack of formal
qualifications, like certificates or university degrees?
14,00%
Yes
No
16,00%
Don't know
Employers' perspective: While hiring, how do you compare
a formal computer science qualification to practical
experience as a FLOSS developer?
70,00% 15,00%
28,00%
Formal better
FLOSS better
Both equal
Don't know
Source: presentation by Rishab Aiyer
Ghosh, ICOS 2005
39,50%
17,50%
François LETELLIER www.flet.fr

Associations
of Companies
Associations
of Individuals
Individuals
François LETELLIER www.flet.fr

François LETELLIER www.flet.fr

A Business Ecosystem Platform
The OW2 Value Proposal
Software
Technical Services Academi
a
Vendors
Systems
Forge Companie Integrators
Mailing lists, Wiki, etc. s Government
Individual
s
Community Services
Governance framework Produce
Users
Activities rs
Re-use Use / Integrate
Marketing Services Contribute Feed-back
Projects promotion
Brand and awareness
© OW 2 Consor t ium 2 0 0 8 www.ow2.org 25

26
François LETELLIER www.flet.fr

FLOSS Impact
Estimate in the European Union (2006)
● The existing base of quality FLOSS applications
would cost firms about 12 Billion Euros to reproduce
internally
● This code base has been doubling every 18-24
months over the past 8 years and this growth is
projected to continue for several more years
● Increasing FLOSS share of software development
from 20% to 40% would lead to a 0.1% increase in
annual EU GDP growth, excluding benefits within the
ICT industry itself, ie 10+ Billion Euros annually
François LETELLIER www.flet.fr

“Enterprise friendly”
Management and Governance
Collaborative, Free/Open Source
Project Based Software Engineering
Engineering paradigm Tools
François LETELLIER www.flet.fr

Thank you for your attention!
François Letellier - www.flet.fr
François LETELLIER www.flet.fr