Introduction to Open Source

From 2009, an indication of the benefits of understanding open source and the wizardry at play within these communities

Transcript

3. What is open source? Simple: you can read the code. You can see how it’s made.
4. Two main characteristics....first, it’s free as in beer
5. Second (much more important and interesting), it’s free as in freedom.
6. Richard M.Stallman Richard M.Stallman is the founder of the free software movement Four basic freedoms
7. Four freedoms • The freedom to run the program for any purpose • The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs • The freedom to redistribute copies • The freedom to improve the program
8. Why is this cool?
9. Potential. One of these is full of potential One of these is sterile
10. Anyone can do whatever they like with it. NEA: Nobody owns it, Everyone can use it, Anyone can improve it
11. Improved in terms of quality “With enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”
12. Improved in terms of quantity of code (functionality) People add layers on top of other people’s code
13. As the code base grows, the potential grows Improves chances of it being used for something not intended by the originator
14. All fine in theory, what about in practice Reputation for being ugly...maybe beautiful on the inside
15. Lots of companies quietly making a fortune Valued at $23 billion
16. Firefox, Thunderbird, smaller ones such as Fennec $60m a year
17. Shock, horror! FreeBSD 5. Bundles over a hundred of the most popular Open Source products. Safari. Based on Webkit. Open source.
18. BT make money from their hardware, which uses Linux.
19. Open source Proprietary Cost of licence £0.00 $$$! Cost of upgrade £0.00 $$$! Cost of change £0.00 / Time $$$ / Time / Impossible Ability to reconfigure Unlimited Variable Ability to innovate High Low Ability to extend High Low Ability to develop Varied Varied Look and Feel Poor Poor A cool, calm, totally unbiased comparison of the merits of both open source and proprietary software Why? Let’s look at benefits. NOT from agency view, but from business owners view. Ability to innovate - your business may depend on this. Software companies daren’t read feedback from customers Look and Feel - our Open Source Show And Tell event shows us they are investing in this.
20. Vendors ask customers what they want Ford: If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would’ve asked for faster horses Open source is the demand side supplying itself
21. Two types of licence: Permissive Copyleft Permissive licences = you can do whatever you want (example: BSD) Copyleft = Opposite of copyright, rather than adding restrictions you’re removing them (example: GPL). “Join the Family”. Derived works must keep this licence. Freedoms are preserved. IF you distribute improvements, you must re-publish on these terms.
22. Community is as important as the code Building, Supporting Hiring
23. Motivations Credibility in peer group, altruism, real passion for the product, fun, creativity ....and maybe even money
24. “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Evolution of open source: First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. Proprietary vendors have fought against open source (SCO case), now claiming their products work well with open source.
25. 9 Examples (many of these are arguably best of breed, and improving all the time): Firefox - 200 million users 2003: Internet Explorer had ~99% of the browser market Q4 2008 Browser Share; Internet Explorer 68.12%, Firefox 21.34%, Safari 7.93%
26. Webkit - Safari and Google Chrome
27. Drupal - Version 7 being released early next year
28. Wordpress has been downloaded 4,636,629 times Well over 4 million blogs on Wordpress.com too
29. Mediawiki 200 languages Wikipedia: staff of 25 people, 4th - 9th most popular site in the world
30. 80 languages Works with Microsoft office files 50 million downloads in 5 months - but one download can be shared
31. Ubuntu - over 10 million users popular on netbooks netbooks
32. Open BSD - at the heart of Mac OS X
33. Apache - runs 100 million web site servers. Most popular by far. 46% of all servers on the web.
34. What I believe in Educated choice.
35. In the spirit of giving credit where it’s due...
36. Creative Commons • mag3737 for “Open” • Orin Optiglot for “Choices” • ruSSeLL hiGGs for “FREEDOM IS A TOILET TISSUE” • Tambako the Jaguar for “Beer bubbles 1” • eecue for “RMS: Richard M.Stallman” • scragz for “Bored” • lombo311 for “Old School Smoker!” • ~Dezz~ for “Father of the Eye - HDR” • Skip The Budgie for “lego_relativity” • BluFlowr for “Trifle” • phoenixdailyphoto for “Boring” • Adactio for “Hackers” • David Laribee for “Geek Credibility Photo” • World of Oddy for “Happy Hippie, Blue Meanie” Thanks!
37. THANKS!