OSS Benefits

F/OSS Beneﬁts

Jean-Bernard Stefani

INRIA Grenoble-Rhône-Alpes

Jean-Bernard Stefani (INRIA Grenoble) F/OSS Beneﬁts 11/2009 1 / 23

Outline

1 General Beneﬁts of Free/Open Source Software

2 Excursion: On the Nature of F/OSS and Generativity

3 Free/Open Source Software Infrastructure

4 F/OSS and Academia

5 Parting thoughts


Outline





5 Parting thoughts


Beneﬁts of F/OSS (IT consultancy)

Flexibility and Freedom
ability to evolve solutions as business changes (esp. for infrastructure
components)
freedom from vendor lock-in, single vendor syndrome
Support
freedom to choose support supplier
Reliability
Linus’Law: “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”
Stability
mitigating “vendor-push”, freedom to stay
Auditability
Cost
often free as in “free beer”
a function of other beneﬁts
[source: http://open-source.gbdirect.co.uk]

Benefits of F/OSS (Soft. engineer)

No penalty on software quality
reliability, scalability, performance, security
No penalty on economic front
TCO, market share, support, innovation
Difficult-to-quantify benefits
Freedom from control by another (single source vendor)
Protection from licensing litigation and management costs
Flexibility to tailor products
Innovation through collective involvement and externalities of a shared
commons

[source: “Why Open Source Software / Free Software ? Look at the Numbers” —
http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html]


Benefits of F/OSS (US DoD)
Improved reliability and security
“identification and elimination of defects through continuous and broad
peer-review”
Flexibility
“enables rapid response to changing situations, missions and future
threats through modifiable source code”
Freedom
“reduces barriers to entry and exit”
Cost
“rapid provisioning of known and unanticipated users through
net-centric licensing model”
“cost advantage when many copies of the software are required”
“reduces TCO through shared manitenance costs”
“particularly suitable for rapid prototyping and experimentation,
through ability to test drive the software with minimal costs and
administrative delays”
[source: OSS memo 20091014 - Clarifying Guidance Rearding Open Source Software
(OSS)]

Benefits of F/OSS (Soft. eng. company)

Freedom, Flexibility and Control
Configuration management
Revision Management and Product Evolution
Product Enhancements
Debugging & Testing
3rd party Tooling
Licensing
Software quality
Debugging & Testing
Evaluation & Benchmarking
Security
Cost
Licensing & Upgrading
No lock-in costs
[source: http://www.theaceorb.com/product/benefit.html]


Benefits of F/OSS

F/OSS benefits accrue from building a software commons
intrinsic value as “inputs to a wide range of productive processes”
“positive infrastructure externalities benefiting society as a whole”
F/OSS benefits accrue from its economic incentives
For individual contributors: signaling incentives, acquiring expertise
For commercial firms: complementary symbiosis, disruptive positioning
F/OSS provides a foundation for transparent and accountable
regulation
“open code is open control”
[sources:
B.M. Frischmann: An Economic Theory of Infrastructure and Commons
Management
J. Lerner, J. Tirole: The Economics of Technology Sharing: Open Source and
Beyond
L. Lessig: Code 2.0 ]


Outline





5 Parting thoughts


Generative devices

Paradigmatic example: natural language
Features of generative devices:
Leverage: ability to facilitate diﬃcult endeavors
Adaptability: ability to be built on or modiﬁed to cope with changes
Ease of mastery: ability to be mastered for adoption and adaptation
Accessibility: ability to be accessed for use and adaptation
Transferability: ability to transfer changes to others
[source: J. Zittrain: The Future of the Internet]


Benefits of generative devices

Output benefit: innovation
organic change and innovation
low barriers to entry foster disruptive innovation
enables user innovation
Input benefit: participation
individual expression and craftmanship
decentralized and cooperative production


F/OSS as a generative device

Richard Stallman’s freedoms as the hallmarks of a generative device
The freedom to run the program, for any purpose
leverage, accessibility
The freedom to study how the program works
accessibility, ease of mastery
The freedom to change the program
leverage, ease of mastery, accessibility
The freedom to redistribute the program and its changes
accessibility, transferability


F/OSS beneﬁts as generativity beneﬁts

Innovation
disruptive F/OSS: e.g. Linux, MySQL, JBoss, JOnAS
user innovation: e.g. Apache
organic change and innovation: e.g. GCC, Linux
Participation
user-producer innovation
beyond signaling incentives
user-producer ecosystems


Outline





5 Parting thoughts


these four constraints. Changes in any one will affect the regulation of the
Code as Law
whole. Some constraints will support others; some may undermine others.
Thus, “changes in technology [may] usher in changes in . . . norms,”8 and the
other way around. A complete view, therefore, must consider these four
Sources of regulation and control
modalities together.
So think of the four together like this:

In this drawing, each oval represents one kind of constraint operating
on our pathetic dot in the center. Each constraint imposes a different kind of
[source: costLessig: dot for2.0 ]
L. on the Code engaging in the relevant behavior—in this case, smoking.
Jean-Bernard The cost from norms is different from the market cost, which is different
Stefani (INRIA Grenoble) F/OSS Beneﬁts 11/2009 15 / 23

Infrastructure software as intellectual commons

Freedom and transparency
government and market regulations in check
“the best code is modular and open” (societal values)
Generativity
innovation and participation
“the best code is modular and open” (production values)
adaptability, accessibility, ease of mastery, leverage
“the best code is modular and open” (soft. eng. values)


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5 Parting thoughts


F/OSS roles

Knowledge
generative, cumulative, collective
embodiments: design (architecture, patterns, etc), languages, tools,
algorithms
object of study and experiment
Standard
“the code is the standard”
embodiment and benchmark
Transfer vehicle


F/OSS as transfer vehicle

Seed software
research product, innovative design or solution
bootstrap technical contribution
e.g. Fractal speciﬁcation & Julia reference implementation
Federating research eﬀorts
common framework
organic research
e.g. Fractal toolset
Fostering development ecosystems
user-producer collective
community bootstrap & development
e.g. SOA developments in OW2


Organic research: Fractal Tools at http://fractal.ow2.org


F/OSS as transfer vehicle

Promoting visibility
Easing dissemination
Facilitating experiments & benchmarks
Supporting maturation & strengthening
Minimizing costs (transactions), delays
Easing transitions from seed to product
Facilitating R&D collective


Outline





5 Parting thoughts


Parting thoughts

From J. Boyle “The Public Domain”
Larry Lessig and Yochai Benkler [...] point us to the dramatic role
that openness — whether in network architecture, software, or
content — has had in the success of the Internet. What is going
on here is actually a remarkable corrective to the simplistic notion
of the tragedy of the commons, a corrective to the Internet
Threat storyline and to the dynamics of the second enclosure
movement. This commons creates and sustains value, and allows
ﬁrms and individuals to beneﬁt from it, without depleting the
value already created.


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