Plaintext
Open Visions Issue Two
An open world:
Stories from the open
source community
A collection of essays and interviews from opensource.com
IN THIS BOOKLET
Life
3 “The day TuxPaint became contagious”
Phil Shapiro
5 “Introducing students to the world of open source: Day 1”
Asheesh Laroia
business
9 “The four capital mistakes of open source”
Nicolas Pujol
11 “Rethinking office design”
Rebecca Fernandez
law
16 “Total victory for open source software in a patent lawsuit”
Rob Tiller
18 “Interview: PJ on the beginning, ending, and future of Groklaw”
Ruth Suehle
education
23 “Student participation in open source projects (A professor’s perspective)”
Heidi Ellis
27 “Three unspoken blockers that prevent professors from teaching open source
community participation”
Mel Chua
health
31 ”Join the M revolution—Get your tools”
Luis Ibanez
36 “Open source cancer research”
Lori Mehen
government
40 “History of open source in government”
Gunnar Hellekson
46 “Document Freedom Day: Passion and politics”
Karsten Gerloff
Introduction 1
Introduction
Opensource.com launched January 25, 2010 Anywhere open source is making waves
as a platform for discussing the ways open and turning heads.
source is changing the world. Since then,
While bringing these stories to the world
we’ve helped our community share hundreds
is easy, selecting just twelve of them for
of stories about the power of open source
inclusion in this inaugural “best of” collection
principles to spark radical change. Each of
was not. Our opensource.com moderators
these stories is an inspiring testament to the
lobbied hard for their many favorites. The
wonderful—and often surprising—innova-
essays you’re about to read are among the
tions a commitment to open source values
very best we have to offer from our first year
can generate.
and half of publication—dazzling gems that
Every one has been a pleasure to tell. We’ve refract and intensify that light we shine on
explored some unanticipated topics over open source.
the years, but we’ve never wavered from
Read them, ponder them, and don’t forget
our original mission: to shine a light on
to share them.
the places where the open source way is
magnifying ideas and multiplying effort. And Then join the conversation at opensource.
we remain especially interested in topics com. We have many more stories to
beyond technology—developments in areas tell together.
like government, education, business, health, Perhaps one of them is yours.
law, and everyday life, where open source
continues to grow.
We’ve noticed that once you become attuned
to open source values—collaboration, shar-
ing, meritocracy, transparency, participation,
community, and rapid iteration—you start to
see them everywhere. Eventually you might
wonder—like we do—just how different our
world could be if everyone embraced them.
This collection offers some of our most
compelling stories—portraits of a world
fashioned with a passion for open source.
Here you’ll find tales only our commu-
nity members could tell. Stories from the
trenches. From the library. From the cubicle.
From the capitol. From the classroom and
the boardroom and the courtroom.
An open world:
Stories from the
open source community
life
The day TuxPaint became contagious 3
The day TuxPaint
became contagious
Phil Shapiro (originally published May 2012)
I work at a public library with 28 Linux sta- GIMP contagion did not spread beyond the
tions made publicly available in four separate students in the class.
rooms. The room in which I spend most of
Last week, I was really happy to see a
my time has 10 computers, and elementary
mother sitting at a computer with her
and middle school students stop by daily
3-year-old son, with TuxPaint up on the
after school to use them. About 90 percent
screen. The child was squealing with delight
of the children use the computers for games,
as he used the various drawing tools in
and about 10 percent use them for doing
TuxPaint. Listening to him speak, I noticed he
homework. Very few use the computer for
was highly verbal, too. “How old is your son?”
creative graphics applications. I’m bent on
I inquired politely.
changing that.
The mom smiled back and said, “He’s three.”
Our computers run three very interesting,
fun, and useful graphics programs. For I explained that TuxPaint was a free program
young children, we have TuxPaint1. We also and that the family could use it at home.
have the Inkscape2 vector drawing program Mom told me the family has a laptop, so
and the GNU Image Manipulation Program3 I offered to install TuxPaint the next time
—known as the GIMP. A few years ago our they visited the library. (TuxPaint runs on all
library offered a GIMP class for elementary computer platforms–Linux, Macintosh,
school students. It was a joy seeing the and Windows.)
students continue using GIMP after the I did not expect what happened next.
class came to an end. Unfortunately, the Somehow, the word about TuxPaint spread
4 An open world: Stories from the open source community
throughout our community. Older elementary TuxPaint, Inkscape, and GIMP are all free
school students started exploring it in our tools for creative exploration. It is possible to
computer center. A few days later, a middle see these programs making their way into
school boy asked how he could use TuxPaint your community. I can tell you first-hand,
on his computer. This is a boy who has it’s a truly beautiful sight.
spent hundreds of hours playing first-person
If you have ideas or tips for how to spur a
shooting games.
creative epidemic with these and other FOSS
This student went on to make a lovely draw- programs, comment below or—even
ing in TuxPaint. I commented, “You’ve got better—consider writing an article for open-
artistic talent.” source.com. This is the tip of the iceberg.
Reveal to us some of the rest of the iceberg,
He replied, “My teacher once asked me to
won’t you?
draw a bunny rabbit for Easter and I drew a
really excellent rabbit.”
I offered to print his drawing on our color
laser printer. That’s when I noticed that Tux-
Paint was on most of the computers in our
computer center. A TuxPaint epidemic was
full-blown. Students of all ages were explor-
ing different aspects of the program.
I showed the sixth-grade student’s
drawing to a fourth-grade girl who was
enjoying TuxPaint.
“I’m going to try and make the same drawing,”
the fourth-grade girl said.
“Can she borrow your drawing for a little
while?” I asked the sixth grade boy.
He said, “Fine!”
Within a span of 10 minutes, the computer
center had transformed itself from a games-
playing room to a room full of creative explo-
ration. I can’t explain how it happened, but I
give a lot of credit to the programmers who
created TuxPaint. For those of you who work
with youth in outside-of-school settings,
there is hope that students will voluntarily
move themselves off a games-playing path
and onto a creative exploration path.
1. www.tuxpaint.org/ 3. www.gimp.org/
2. www.inkscape.org/
Introducing students to the world of open source: Day 1 5
Introducing students
to the world of open
source: Day 1
Asheesh Laroia (originally published November 2010)
From Blake Ross to Linus Torvalds, students help new contributors find their way in
are credited with major achievements in the the community.
open source community. But that’s not the
“Give me a weekend instead,” I said.
picture Yuvi Masory painted as he sat across
the table from me at an OpenHatch meetup A weekend of immersion
in Philadelphia. We scheduled a planning session between
“My lab is hiring,” he explained. “We need Yuvi, myself, and Felice Ford, a Linux-loving
students with programming experience and classics major at Harvard who was visiting.
who can find answers to questions. But the We settled on two days of rich interaction.
students at Penn have never even heard Even though programming students can
of IRC. They’ve never contributed to write code, most never see a bug tracker,
open source.” and very few learn about version control.
Yuvi is a graduate student and staff This creates a cultural rift where plenty of
programmer. He implored me to come to people bounce off 2 open source projects
campus and give a one-hour talk to under- because of build problems or lack of com-
graduates about OpenHatch1, my project to munity leadership. We wanted to be there to
help students past problems like that.
6 An open world: Stories from the open source community
We put up a website explaining the event 3. from worrying about advertising to reading
For Saturday, we planned four one-hour the applications.
sessions. Each session focused on a different
What feels normal to us is apparently ex-
topic and offered students some hands-
tremely exciting to these students. Reading
on exercises. The second day was a more
the emails was like reading fan mail. Some
typical “hackathon,” a project day where we
wrote such gems as this:
helped students find their way in projects of
their choosing. • “My involvement with open source is
primarily composed of unabashed admi-
To create a sense of commitment from stu-
ration and adulation.”
dents, and to ensure a tight student-teacher
ratio, we limited Saturday to 20 students. To • “I’m most excited to learn how to initially
help us prioritize people who were particu- get involved with a project, I’ve poked
larly excited, and particularly new, we around before, but the initial learning
asked for: curve has been too intimidating for me to
take the plunge.”
• O ne sentence about how they discovered
the event website • “I have just read a lot about open source
software. I’m really interested in how
• One sentence about their current involve- such collaborations create innovative
ment in open source (e.g., “never heard
and effective products (Firefox!), as well
of it”, “run Ubuntu”, “wrote most of the
as the business perspective of how
Linux kernel”)
these collaborations are organised
• One sentence about something they were and run efficiently.”
excited about learning
• “I’d be excited about learning pretty much
Since our goal was to make more students anything that has to do with open source
aware of open source culture, we wanted software, the communities that create it,
to work directly with students to kickstart a and its social impact.”
local community. This strategy is unique, as
• “I hope I make it! This sounds terribly
far as we know. You may have read about
interesting!”
the Professors’ Open Source Summer Experi-
ence4 that teaches professors so that they I just sat at my computer, reading and re-
can run a semester-long class for students. reading, saying aloud: “This is so exciting!
These people are so excited!”
Will they come?
The students came from a wide variety of
To get the word out, we asked the University
ethnic and cultural backgrounds. More than
of Pennsylvania’s computer science program
a third of the applicants were women, a
to email all 250 of its students. We also
(slightly) more even ratio than the Penn CIS
reached out to students at Swarthmore and
program itself. Yuvi and I selected the thirty
other nearby colleges. Yuvi put up enigmatic
most excited students and told them to meet
index cards, and a friend of his put up flyers.
us on Saturday.
Within minutes of sending the announce-
Now we needed teachers. Felice had cre-
ment, the emails started rolling in. By the
ated #penn on Freenode as a chat room
end, we heard from fifty-one applicants.
for our burgeoning community. To our luck,
Immediately overwhelmed, we switched
Introducing students to the world of open source: Day 1 7
a GNOME hacker named Zach Goldberg5 twenty of our thirty students stuck through
appeared in the channel, and we convinced until the end.
him to take a bus from New York to his alma
Much feedback was positive. One student
mater. My friends Jonathan Simpson6 and
said about contributing to open source, “You
John Stumpo7 rounded out the teaching team.
made it feel a lot more doable.” He contin-
We spent Friday afternoon and evening nail- ued, “You don’t have to be a pro programmer
ing down logistics. Around 1 a.m., Yuvi and to help or contribute something.” Another
I decided to switch which topics we would enjoyed the variety of teachers and their
teach. Felice organized the students into “different personalities, the different take
groups based on their level of experience. on things.”
Finally, we could all go to sleep.
One student was particularly taken by the
One busy Saturday discussion of principles and ethics behind
the free software movement. “It puts ev-
The teachers all arrived by 10 a.m., and we
erything in a different perspective,” she said
set up wifi for the students to use. Teachers
definitively. However, she found our use of
taught the same topic four times in a row, so
the term “hacker” a jarring distraction.
we had the chance to improve our curricu-
lum. Students switched between teachers Toward the end of wrap-up, a student asked
and took a whirlwind tour of four areas us when we would be running another event.
within the open source community: At that moment, Yuvi and I looked at each
other in disbelief.
• Communication technologies, like IRC and
mailing lists Overall, students enjoyed the down-to-earth
nature of the event. One student enjoyed
• How to get, build, and modify open
our “conversational tone” and explained, “It
source code
was good to learn that open source people
• Project organization, including version aren’t cyborgs.” Another called upon us to
control, bug trackers, and individual roles “Continue to keep it free [of charge]!”
within a project
What’s next?
• Linux and command line skills
Read about day 2 and holding your
We broke once for lunch, and another time own event8.
to discuss free software ethics in general
Check out our photo gallery 9, snapped
and licensing specifically. Finally, after stu-
Saturday and Sunday.
dents had visited all four modules, we had an
open discussion to wrap up the day. About
1.
http://opensource.com/life/10/8/ready-be-open- 5. www.zachgoldberg.com/
source-contributor-dont-know-where-start 6. www.sogeekithurts.com/
2. http://jonoscript.wordpress.com/2010/09/ 7. www.jstump.com/
28/improving-the-discovery-path-for-new-
contributors/ 8. http://opensource.com/life/10/11/introducing-
students-world-open-source-day-2
3. www.penn.openhatch.org/old-index/
9. http://openhatch.org/blog/2010/photos-
4. www.opensource.com/education/10/9/ from-penn/
open-source-education-educators
An open world:
Stories from the
open source community
business
The four capital mistakes of open source 9
The four
capital mistakes
of open source
Nicolas Pujol (originally published February 2011)
How do you develop a successful open Open source can also be better understood
source business that lasts? Of the more than through negative advice. The latter can be
250,000 open source projects on Source- back-tested and endure the test of time.
Forge, few will be successful at that goal. But By following a positive framework (but
one way they might think about how to do without falling into platonicity), one can
it is by doing it in reverse: What should an slightly increase the chances of success. But
open source project or business not do? by ignoring a negative one, you will most
certainly fail.
The negative advice has existed since ancient
times, from one religion to another. The Ten First negative rule: Reflexivity
Commandments are for the most part writ-
Don’t try to sell the same product you are
ten as what not to do. We can go for a short
giving away for the same use case.
walk or drive around our neighborhood: road
signs give us, in very short messages we As a business, open source is built on
can read while driving, negative advice. Ask sequential sets of events. Free software
Warren Buffett about finance. He’ll tell you and openness create an economy based
“Rule #1 is ‘Don’t lose money,’ and Rule #2 is… on non-monetary transactions. Instead of
‘Don’t lose money.’” money, people trade their time and, gener-
ally, their mind share in exchange for value.
10 An open world: Stories from the open source community
It is the Mind Share Market. As this happens, nents gives open source an advantage not
another economy takes shape that follows readily available in many other business
the more common path of transactions using models. Hundreds of thousands of engi-
money: the commercial market. In order for neers (potentially one day, billions of people)
the model to work, what is free and paid working together and contributing value can
must necessarily be complementary, there- outcompete a large corporation with the
fore different. Differentiation is at the core of same number of engineers on its payroll. But
all open source businesses, and its opposite, for this to happen, collaboration must be
reflexivity, is where the business tries to extremely simple. Observe technologies like
sell the same good that it is giving away for Linux, Firefox, WordPress, MySQL, Android
free. Reflexivity is destructive, as it starves or Wikipedia: they make it easy for others to
the provider and prevents the business from extend their platforms from the periphery
developing financiallyi. to the core; almost invasively. Isolationism
blocks collaboration, partnerships, appli-
Second negative rule: Coercion
cation programming interfaces (APIs), and
Artificial fences are self-defeating. defeats the purpose of being open.
One of the key reasons customers choose Fourth negative rule: The salary addiction
open source is freedom. Coercion is the
Don’t do anything only for money—
opposite and relies on forcing third parties
especially open source.
to behave in a certain way. At its roots, open
source exists because customers do not The last capital mistake requires some con-
want to be forced. The practice is hence text. There are situations where a job and a
self-defeating, even if it can work on the salary must take absolute precedence over
commercial market in the short run. Coercion purpose. A job may be “just a job” to support
is viral: it can over time tarnish the broad a family.
perception of open source as a deceiving
In other situations people end up in roles
scheme and may invite others to do so if
they didn’t have to accept, but did so only
temporarily successful. Barriers to entry and
for financial reasons. Phoniness is the last
exit are necessary, but in a Peter Drucker
capital mistake of open source: it is not
style that seeks customer respect.
only immoral, but often counterproductive.
Let others deal with legally acceptable People with a sense of purpose would do
deception. what they do for free, regardless of incentive.
The latter exists, but cannot be the primary
Third negative rule: Isolationism
driver of action. Matt Mullenweg likes to say
What works in some contexts doesn’t work that code is poetry ii. Poetry is not created
in open source. on a mechanical assembly line. Passion does
Ecosystems thrive on extensibility and die not always translate into business momen-
of bureaucracy. The ability to access code, tum. Revenues do matter. But if you see
to re-distribute it in certain scenarios, and open source as only business you will never
to enable interactions with other compo- understand it.
i.
Even Wikipedia, a nonprofit with nothing for sale, ii.
T his applies to code and to any other value gener-
does not give everything away. It retains its ation and collaborative work; you are reading this
brand, infrastructure and ad space (used today article on opensource.com.
for donations).
Rethinking office design 11
Rethinking
office design
Rebecca Fernandez (originally published May 2010)
First, a confession. Despite the hip corporate VP and managers would work in the same area
persona of Red Hat, when I first joined the as everyone else; and the new space would
company everyone had typical cubicle farm include lots of nooks and rooms for impromptu
workspaces. Sure, there were hints that the collaboration and scheduled design-thinking
company aspired to Google-like coolness: a sessions. As the lone quiet, left-brained web
foosball table, a game room, lots of free junk developer among a host of creatives, I was cer-
food. But in our daily office-worker lives, we tain this sudden push for collaboration meant
were holed up in a standard maze of shared I’d never get any work done.
cubicles. Our idea of “open office design”
I was mistaken.
was to persuade our cubemates to leave the
sliding doors open. According to the 2001 office design study,
Offices That Work: Balancing Communica-
For six months, I labored happily in my gray
tion, Flexibility and Cost (pdf)1, “the major
box, content to talk only with my supervisor
reason for an office today is to bring people
and my cubemate. So when the department
together: to socialize and share information;
director announced that after the Christmas
to inspire and inform each other; to provide
holiday week, we’d be moving to a new “open”
guidance and feedback. Relatively little of the
space downstairs, I groaned inwardly. The cubi-
work of most office workers requires deep,
cle walls were being removed; the department
individual concentration for hours at a time.”
12 An open world: Stories from the open source community
As a computer programmer, I was not exempt: “interruptions” tend to be seen as contributing to
overall success.
As the literature on computer engineers shows,
this is true even for the prototypical job function 2. In an open office design, there would be
requiring deep concentration. There do need to nowhere to go when I needed to hold
be times and places for such work in the office, a private conversation or think intently
but whether such places need to be assigned to without interruption.
one person for his or her exclusive use, or requires
complete physical separation from others doing A well designed open layout includes places
the same work, has been challenged by many for these tasks. When Cisco redesigned
corporations over the past decade. their offices2 to be more collaboration-
friendly and reflect modern work habits, the
Within a month in the new workspace, I
company opted for a highly flexible design.
knew more about every colleague in my
Only administrative assistants were assigned
department than I’d learned over the prior
longterm office desks; no one else has own-
half-year. My own role deepened from being
ership over a particular workspace. Instead
a ticket-resolving web monkey to a full-
they choose the type of workspace they
fledged knowledge worker and vital part of
need for a few minutes, hours, or all day:
the team.
C isco employees are increasingly mobile—and
My fears about moving out of my cubicle less and less working at a particular desk ...
1. Without cubicle walls to hide behind, Throughout the day, employees [select] an ap-
interruptions would be endless. propriate environment to accomplish the task at
hand: meeting in a group, participating in a con-
In one sense, there are more interruptions. ference call, or working alone on a spreadsheet
Communication is abundant—and more or project plan.
frequent—when you can see your team
The Cisco plan includes a quiet area deemed
members. But the rapid flow of information
“the library” for work requiring intense con-
throughout the office actually reduces the
centration and quiet, as well as an etiquette
email, phone calls, and traditional scheduled
policy, developed by employees along the
meetings needed, according to the study
way, which frames the use of different areas:
linked earlier. Surprisingly, increased visual
non-private meetings with one other person
contact actually contributes to fewer un-
should take place in smaller, open seating
wanted interactions. When you can glance at
areas, not a closed conference room,
a coworker and see that they look engaged
for example.
in a problem or irritated by a phone call,
you’re more likely to ask your question later The decision to change the Cisco office de-
than if you had walked down the hall and sign was made after considerable thought:
already poked your head into their office. Like most companies, Cisco designed its office
The study also notes: space under the traditional assumption that em-
ployees would work in their own cubicles during
ur data suggest that individual performance or
O
regular work hours and would need assigned work
productivity may be reduced in a given unit of
spaces with their own desks, PCs, and phones.
time, while both individual performance and that
The result was that meeting rooms were often in
of their team benefit over the life of the project.
short supply, while offices and cubicles remained
In other words, this minute’s interruption can be
vacant 65 percent of the time on average.
annoying, but over the life of the project such
Rethinking office design 13
obody would consider building a manufacturing
N prospect of the removal of those (somewhat)
facility that they intended to use just one-third of protective barriers.
the time,” says Mark Golan, Cisco vice president
for WPR. “And yet that’s what we routinely do What’s interesting is that when people can
with workspace. We realized that assigning see their office neighbors, they are far more
resources based on utilization would significantly self-aware. But if your coworker sings in the
reduce Cisco real estate costs.” [emphasis added] conference room during team meetings, you
may want to lobby for a desk at the opposite
3. W
ith an open design, my superiors and
end of the room.
coworkers would be constantly scrutiniz-
ing my activity. I’d be self-conscious as I Unexpected problems
went about my work. While none of my fears materialized, other
When we moved to the open floor plan, I problems did surface in our space.
found that I actually had more privacy than 1. Moving day, again?
before—when I wanted it. Within cubicles,
there is a sense of “pseudo-privacy,” where Now that our department head and other
your neighbors pretend not to hear your managers could watch the interaction be-
phone conversations and feel awkward tween different coworkers, moving us from
speaking up if they have information that one desk to another became an irresistible
would benefit you. But in an open office space, urge. While my own desk only moved thrice
you know who is hearing your conversations, in two years, others seemed to be packing
and your coworkers feel free to provide input. up again just as soon as they’d settled in.
If you want privacy, you know to hold the Initially we benefited from the new chem-
conversation in a place designed for it. istry and collaboration. After several moves,
the cons of instability took over. Perhaps
In addition, I had not given ample consid- we should have opted for a fully flexible,
eration to the value of making eye-contact choose-your-workspace environment
with colleagues. When you notice someone like Cisco.
approaching your desk, you can gauge
whether they mean to speak with you or 2. Added mobility requires new technology
someone else. You have the opportunity to Cisco discovered that the needs of mobile
jot down a final thought or finish a line of knowledge workers are different from
code, because you have an extra moment’s stationary employees. Most, if not all work-
notice. And when you’re discussing a prob- places need power outlets to compensate
lem with a coworker, you can invite others for the short battery life of laptops. The
with a glance to join the conversation. company tried to provide uninterruptible
4. With an open office, my coworkers’ power supplies throughout the building, but
annoying habits would be magnified. as the units beeped after an hour to signal
low power, they were highly disruptive. Cisco
Anyone who has worked for a few years has is considering a pilot program allowing
shared cube walls with coworkers with not- employees to swap out dying batteries at
so-endearing habits. The one who checks exchange and recharge stations.
his voicemail on speakerphone. Or chatters
loudly and nonstop on her cell phone. Or In addition, Cisco used wireless and hard-
sings gospel songs. Or paints fingernails. wired phone technologies to give workers
So you can imagine my trepidation at the
14 An open world: Stories from the open source community
the ability to check voicemail and make everything from a video recording studio to a
phone calls from any workstation. library to a temporary office.
3. Limited number of collaboration areas Real-world examples
We didn’t anticipate the culture shift that So what does the open office look like? And
accompanied moving into a new space how does a business—without the budget
would require more spaces for collaboration. of a Google or an IDEO—build an equally
Smaller areas for non-private meetings and a collaborative environment?
second closed-door conference room would
The Cisco case study shows that open office
have made our space a bit more usable.
environments are actually more cost-effec-
4. Neighbor immigration tive than more traditional types. A building
with large, closed-door office rooms could
Our department, Brand Communications +
convert those private rooms into door-less,
Design, was the first to receive permission
team “bullpen” rooms, where several col-
and funds for an open office design. That
leagues work together. A department with
space included a large, open meeting area
cubicles could remove the walls and replace
with several whiteboards and comfy chairs.
them with interconnected desks and smaller
As employees from other departments were
meeting areas. The ideal open office project
invited to meet with us, they quickly noticed
would include its future inhabitants in the
what vibrant and collaborative meetings
design process.
sprung from the space. “Let’s meet over in
the Brand Comm space” became a common There is a lot of inspiration to be found at
refrain for anyone looking to hold an infor- www.officesnapshots.com3, with pictures
mal and insightful meeting. Unfortunately, of office spaces from Microsoft to Apple,
our space was not designed to host meet- Twitter to Facebook, and plenty of smaller
ings for multiple departments, and creating businesses as well.
similar spaces in those departments would
Articles like “Why Office Design Matters”4
have been a valued decision.
from Harvard Business Review, and BNet’s
5. Shifting requirements “Three New Designs for Optimizing Collabo-
ration”5 provide additional ideas and case
An open office design must be regarded as
studies.
a work-in-progress. As new needs emerge,
the space must be able to accommodate. At But more valuable may be talking to people
Cisco, this meant adding personal lockers for who work in open environments about their
purses or lunches, and larger filing cabinets experiences.
for employees whose jobs required them
to store forms or records. Within the Brand
Communications + Design space at Red Hat,
the function of several closed-door rooms
has changed over the years, serving as
1.
http://tinyurl.com/8tfn4es 3. www.officesnapshots.com/
2.
w ww.cisco.com/web/about/ciscoitatwork/collab- 4. www.hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/4991.html
oration/connected_workplace.html 5 www.bnet.com/2403-13056_23-190685.html
Introduction 15
An open world:
Stories from the
open source community
law
16 An open world: Stories from the open source community
Total victory
for open source
software in a
patent lawsuit
Rob Tiller (originally published May 2010)
The jury verdict last Friday in favor of Red Hat gies), along with Technology Licensing Cor-
and Novell in a case based on bad software poration that Red Hat and Novell infringed
patents owned by “non-practicing entities” four claims from U.S. Patents 5,072,412,
is an important victory for the open source 5,394,521, and 5,533,183. The patents share
community. Those in the business of acquir- a common disclosure and are all titled “User
ing bad software patents to coerce payments interface with multiple workspaces for
or bring lawsuits should be worried. Two sharing display system objects.” The patents
such businesses were plaintiffs in our case, relate to a computer-implemented system
and they did their best to confuse the jury in and method for providing a graphical user
one of their favorite locales, eastern Texas. interface with multiple workspaces.
But it didn’t work. The jury unanimously
Like most patent cases, this one involved
found that the patents were not infringed,
technical subject matter and terminology.
and, even worse for the plaintiffs, that the
However, the plaintiffs came forward with
patents were invalid.
minimal evidence to support their argument
The case was about allegations by IP Innova- of infringement. They also faced abundant
tion, L.L.C. (a subsidiary of Acacia Technolo- evidence showing that the patents were
Total victory for open source software in a patent lawsuit 17
invalid based on prior art. In other words, patent system in no way shows a proclivity
there was nothing new in these “inventions” to infringe patents or indifference to patent
sufficient for a patent. claims, and that Red Hat respects and abides
by the law.
In these circumstances, you might suppose
that a rational patent plaintiff would dismiss Our side took the opposite approach from
the case, perhaps in return for a token the plaintiffs, basing our case on facts and
payment. Instead, the plaintiffs decided evidence, rather than emotion and confusion.
to ask the jury for millions of dollars. Their Our experts carefully showed that our prod-
theory appeared to be that the jury might ucts were noninfringing and demonstrated
be confused by the technical terms and specific examples of prior art. In the end,
unsympathetic to out-of-state businesses the jury saw through and quickly rejected
with creative business models. plaintiffs’ FUD. The jurors took a bit more
than two hours to find every one of 23 issues
With that end apparently in view, the
in favor of Red Hat and Novell.
plaintiffs’ counsel launched an attack on the
theory and practice of open source software. We learned many things from this experi-
It was clear during jury selection that our ence, but I’ll note just three here. We now
jurors had no prior knowledge of, or experi- know for certain that those in the business
ence with, open source. Plaintiffs attempted of bringing software patent lawsuits are not
to exploit this inexperience by arguing that invincible, even in the supposedly patent-
open source software involved behavior that friendly jurisdiction of the Eastern District of
was, if not downright illegal, at least ethically Texas. We know that Texas juries are willing
dubious. They promoted the fallacy that to reject bogus infringement claims and
open source distributors unfairly take the invalidate bad software patents. And we
property of others and thereby unfairly profit. know that attacks on open source based on
They also suggested that Red Hat’s public FUD will not stand up when subjected to the
criticisms of the U.S. patent system as it light of truth.
relates to software and related calls for legal
reform were un-American and indicated a
secret fondness for the writings of Karl Marx.
I kid you not! As absurd as this argument
sounds, after many hours of sitting on a hard
courtroom bench, I briefly wondered whether
the jury might fall for this version of the
classic FUD strategy and be so fearful and
confused as to find for the plaintiffs.
It turned out that there was no cause for
concern. Michael Tiemann, Red Hat’s vice
president of open source affairs, explained
the fundamentals of open source so as to
make them clear, and even inspiring. He
explained that open source software is about
voluntary collaboration, not involuntary
expropriation. He also made plain that
Red Hat’s legitimate criticisms of the existing
18 An open world: Stories from the open source community
Interview: PJ on the
beginning, ending,
and future of
Groklaw
Ruth Suehle (originally published May 2011)
Over the last eight years, Pamela Jones, general counsel at Red Hat, law professor,
known as “PJ,” wrote volumes at Groklaw1— and board member at the Software Freedom
first as a blog about the holes in SCO’s Law Center, to create “Groklaw 2.0.”
claims, then increasingly as a place for wider
Here’s what she had to say about Groklaw’s
commentary on the legal issues facing Linux
past and her future.
and open source. To summarize the site’s
mission statement 2, Groklaw was a full legal What inspired you to start Groklaw?
news resource, “acknowledged and used Did you anticipate the audience it came
by all the parties, including SCO.” But it was to appreciate?
also a community—a place for open source When I started, I was literally just practic-
believers to gather, learn, and share. ing for a job interview. I had no knowledge
Last month PJ announced that because of the Internet, obviously, so I didn’t know
SCO as we knew it is no more, she would the whole world could see what I was doing.
stop publishing new articles today3, May 16, When people showed up, it was a shock, and
Groklaw’s anniversary. Now she’s handing the numbers—it was hundreds of people all
the reins over to Mark Webbink4, former of a sudden, then thousands, until we finally
Interview: PJ on the beginning, ending and future of Groklaw 19
had to move to larger quarters. After I got If you were starting Groklaw again today,
more used to it, it was exciting too. Because with the benefit of the experience you’ve
when I saw the level of technical knowledge had, would you do anything differently?
my readers had and how much they wanted
I was naive in the beginning. I didn’t know
to learn how the legal process works, I real-
people as venal as I was about to be writing
ized what it could mean, what we could do,
about. And I didn’t know anyone personally,
if I could learn to ride the wave.
except for one relative, who lied without any
Where do you think Groklaw has been most apparent pangs of conscience. So at first,
informative and influential? whoever showed up to help was accepted at
face value. Later, I realized that some were
It’s hard to praise oneself without feeling
operatives working to destroy from within.
idiotic. But as a group, what we showed is
It was a sad and creepy lesson to have to
that if the FOSS community gets behind an
learn. If I were starting it up now, I would
effort to do legal research, no single law firm
factor that knowledge into every part of
can beat them. The community we built lived
what I built.
computer history. The gray beards are still
among us, after all. So we have UNIX guys Why did you decide to discontinue working
and we have Linux guys, the very people on Groklaw?
whose code was being fought over by corpo-
I’ll still be working on it, just not doing ar-
rate interests.
ticles. I want to finish the Comes v. Microsoft
So we were a voice, a way for the community exhibit collection and fix some other loose
to point out what was not true, and they strings, so the work stands the test of time
could point to the evidence that it was not and is truly useful to historians and lawyers.
true. Law firms don’t have that, and you
I can’t do that and write articles every day.
could see the difference. They might have
And I have a number of personal and other
an expert, but that person can’t compete
work projects that I shoved to the back
with a community like Groklaw’s. They’d file
burner in order to do Groklaw, and now that
a document with the court and within hours
the emergency for Linux is handled, it’s time
the community would have taken it apart
to prioritize in a more normal way. We won,
and shredded it, and they were right, over
the emergency is over, and I get to relax a
and over and over.
bit now.
What I am most proud of is our trial cover-
So that is part of it. But the most important
age in SCO v. Novell, the jury trial. That and
consideration was this: I was born to write
being the ones to first publish the previously
Groklaw, about SCO and the Linux kernel and
sealed settlement agreement from the BSDi
copyright litigation. But the battlefield now
litigation. I’m proud of the fact that the com-
has shifted to mobiles and patents. I thought
munity we built is still strong, still ready to
seriously about that, and I recognized that I
do whatever needs doing. Building and main-
am not the right person to take the lead on
taining a community isn’t as easy as it looks.
that. I always hated patent law, and nothing
Over the years, some thought they could do
I’ve seen in the last 8 years has altered my
a better Groklaw, and they did try, but none
feelings. I hate software patents with a pas-
of them continued or ever really took off.
sion, I think they are destroying innovation
in the US, and that they particularly threaten
FOSS, the open development model being
20 An open world: Stories from the open source community
opposed to patents. I think software and doesn’t mean a free for all. With the Linux
patents need to get a divorce. kernel, Linus and his maintainers rule ulti-
mately. Everyone can contribute freely, but
I consider that a serious enough matter that
as you go up the chain, there is an edito-
I thought modesty needed to inform me to
rial process, so that the best get the most
stop, that others could fill the role and would
responsibility and the final say belongs to
if I did. Then when I announced I would stop,
Linus. Same with Groklaw.
I was flooded with requests to find someone
to continue, and I realized the community After there were threats and harassment,
was right. It was irresponsible if I didn’t try we had to be less open to the world about
to maintain the community, their skills, in certain things, to protect everyone. That’s
one place. And happily, we found someone. not something open source software
I think Groklaw will end up more impor- projects have to deal with, so the differences
tant than it’s been, actually, because Mark that sometimes people comment on are due
Webbink is lawyer, a FOSS lawyer, and a law to that distinguishing factor. For example,
professor. With him taking the lead, and his at first I’d ask people if they wanted public
law students —and we hope eventually credit for their work. Lots did. Later, nobody
others at other law schools—joining the did, but they still worked just as hard. So,
community, it can grow in the direction that internally we knew who deserved the credit
is needed now. They can explain the law, and and who should get more responsibility, but
the community at Groklaw can help them outside it was not apparent. Like a pool that
understand the tech. It’s what Groklaw is for, looks peaceful on the surface but below
what I dreamed it should be—a place where there are currents flowing in all kinds of
the two communities can teach each other, ways at once. Groklaw is like that. And it’s
so they can together hopefully help judges to proof to me that people don’t volunteer for
understand the tech so they can reach better such projects out of ambition or a desire for
decisions, ones based on technical realities. credit. The community continued to work
So this is organic, part of what Groklaw is just as hard as before, and for absolutely
supposed to be, just the next step. nothing in return, just to make a difference if
we could. Kind of like you see in communities
Part of Groklaw’s success was realizing that
threatened by a flood and they all go out and
we could contribute just as we are, without
fill bags with sand.
trying to be more than we were. But that
means also remaining modest and aware of I sometimes say that if the whole world was
what we were not qualified to do. I always like the FOSS community, everything would
said the only legal advice I ever give is, Ask be better. And I mean it.
your lawyer. Well, now Groklaw is going to
What do you think are the lessons that
follow that advice and get a lawyer. It’s a
Groklaw holds for open source and
natural progression. And it’s the right time,
collaborative communications efforts
given Microsoft’s rather obvious strategy of
in other areas?
using patents against GNU/Linux.
That it works just as well for legal research
How would you describe the relationship
as for software development, so long as you
between Groklaw and open source?
have an editorial process to decide what is
Groklaw is an application of Open Source accepted and what isn’t and as long as you
ideas to legal research. But Open Source approach your particular task in a pragmatic
Interview: PJ on the beginning, ending and future of Groklaw 21
way, recognizing that software develop- satisfied. I never wanted to be “somebody”
ment isn’t like many other types of projects. and fame repels me, frankly, and I’ve avoided
But what is key is the ability to put together it. Now, I have an opportunity to go back
thousands of people all over the world and to my previous personal life, happy in the
get them to work unitedly toward a common knowledge that we did what we set out to
goal. It’s a remarkable thing. I wouldn’t have do. I’ll be around in the sense that I’ll be in
missed it for anything in the world, and I’ll the background until I finish the transition,
never forget it. When Groklaw would win training the new people, and finishing up the
awards, I’d always credit the group, and polishing of Groklaw’s records. Then, it’ll be
sometimes people would act like that was me on my porch, waving at cars as they go
just pro forma. It was not. I certainly and by, and just living a relaxed and normal life
absolutely could never have done Groklaw again. I’ve never worked so hard in my life as
alone. There is a kind of dynamic to a large I did on Groklaw, and I need, really need, to
group that is as powerful as a tornado but in rest up a bit.
a positive way—when you let people show
initiative and they send you their ideas and
materials and evidence and personal experi-
ence and let them try things. All you have to
do is provide a little direction. Sometimes it
works, and sometimes it doesn’t, but when
it works, you can change a little bit of the
world. Groklaw indubitably did.
Do you have any future projects,
particularly relating to open source or
technology, in the works?
My fervent desire is to leave the limelight
behind and live a private life again. I always
wanted that. Since I never planned for
Groklaw to become Groklaw, it was a mixed
blessing when it happened. It was fun, it
was creatively exciting, and ultimately it was
fulfilling in a way that I can’t even put into
words. Maybe this: I know something I did
in this world actually mattered. It’s quite a
feeling. But as I said, it wasn’t a plan, and I
certainly have never been ambitious, and I
didn’t want anything from Groklaw except
to be effective. Now that it is, I’m happy and
1. www.groklaw.net/ 3. www.groklaw.net/article.php?sto-
2. www.groklaw.net/staticpages/indexph- ry=20110409161444432
p?page=20040923045054130 4. www.groklaw.net/article.php?sto-
ry=20110515173831922
An open world:
Stories from the
open source community
education
Student participation in open source projects (a professor’s perspective) 23
Student participation
in open source projects
(A professor’s perspective)
Heidi Ellis (originally published December 2010)
I must start by thanking Mel Chua1 for visiting current of open source involvement trickier
us in Connecticut and for prompting/prod- than it first seemed.
ding me to think more deeply about how
When two groups collaborate, they typically
open source and academia work together to
do so to accomplish common goals or to
accomplish education. I believe I now have
work together towards goals for both groups.
a better picture of student and academic
In this case, the goals of the two environ-
participation in open source projects.
ments differ. The open source environment
At first look, student participation in open seeks to create a product that meets user
source projects seems like it should be needs. The academic environment seeks to
relatively easy to accomplish. Sure, from a produce students with a certain knowledge
teaching perspective there are issues related and skill set. These differences need to be
to selecting a project, learning curve for the understood in order for academic and open
project, finding a mentor, identifying ways source project collaboration to be successful.
that students can participate, figuring out
Open source communities would like to see
how to grade things, and more. But these
larger numbers of developers contributing
things are surmountable.
to their projects (as would I). And some in
But in recent years, some rocks in the river the open source community view students
have appeared that make navigating the as a possible source of future development
24 An open world: Stories from the open source community
(I happen to agree). Academia sees open limitations, such as semester schedules and
source as an opportunity for students to gain class hours. They are bound—obligated—to
real-world experience, learn professional- syllabi, learning outcomes, and grading.
ism, and have some evidence of software These things cannot typically be changed
proficiency that they can demonstrate to within a three-to-four-month timeframe,
potential employers. Making a contribution is and sometimes not within a year. This limits
helpful, but not essential. the ability of academia to take advantage of
the opportunities that arise spontaneously
Can open source and academic collabora-
from open source.
tions accomplish the goals of both groups?
I think so, but there are some differences The pace of the two environments is also dif-
in the environments which present... well, ferent. The open source environment tends
we’ll call them “learning opportunities.” In to be fast-paced and less predictable with an
order for a particular collaboration to be intermittent pattern of effort as people have
successful, it helps if both groups under- more or less available time to contribute.
stand these differences. Academia has a much slower pace (some
might say glacial) with higher predictability.
While talking with Mel, it became clear how
much the two environments differ with The academic schedule is certainly predict-
respect to pace, planning, and constraints. able. Class schedules are often created six
The open source way is very opportunistic to eight months before the term starts. In
and flexible, while academia is very planned addition, curricula plans encompass all four
and structured. The open source way years of a student’s stay at an institution.
emphasizes short-term optimization and Therefore, classes must be supplied to meet
taking immediate advantage of resources the curricula that was in place at the time
(for example, developer expertise, time, or that a student entered the institution. In
funding). Resources can appear and disap- addition, changes in curricula are typically
pear relatively quickly in the open source phased-in over a four-year period.
environment. With the fluid nature of both
Clearly, there are also large differences
resources and participants, it is difficult to
in culture. But I think that collaboration
estimate long-range (one or more years)
between open source and academic realms
results. This is not to say that open source
can work, as there are also some strong
projects do not do long-term planning, but
commonalities between the groups. The
that the development process is sufficiently
open source and academic environments
flexible to allow projects to change paths or
both share the desire to create something,
goals as new opportunities open up.
to produce a product that people will use.
Academia is built around concepts of long- Both groups have a love of learning and both
term optimization and resources allocated groups are based on the idea that something
over time. Academics have a fairly fixed set (whether it is knowledge or software) should
of resources (for instance: time, instructors, be accessible to everyone. Both groups have
students) which vary little over the long term a desire to belong to a professional group, to
(several to many years). In addition, academ- be interacting as professionals and partici-
ics operate under a series of constraints. pating in ongoing professional activity. And
Academic resources are bound by time interestingly, I think both groups share the
Student participation in open source projects (a professor’s perspective) 25
desire to be self-directed and to have control Could I have gotten a larger attendance?
over what they do. Sure! But not in my window of opportunity.
With little time to plan, the Hack Share
So what else have I learned, as a professor
reached only a small number of people. But
trying to get more students involved in open
if I refused to try because of the immediacy
source? Lots!
of the opportunity, the event might not have
Participation in open source definitely occurred at all. The trade-off is to reach
benefits students. I have watched students fewer people in smaller ways, but with a
gain invaluable professional knowledge larger number of experiences. The conversa-
and experience, growing skills and forming tions I’ve had with Mel—and the success we
professional networks through participation had with this quickly formed event—encour-
in open source. Many students are motivated age me to take advantage of opportunities
by participation in open source projects in that arise.
a way they aren’t in a traditional classroom.
Academia needs to be sure to give back
They have a better understanding of how the
to the open source community. One very
seemingly esoteric things they’ve learned in
real danger of student participation in
their courses matter.
open source software development is that
Setting expectations is important. Expecta- students will learn from the community,
tions are important—for both the student gain from the community, and then not
and for the open source community. The provide anything back to that community.
differences in cultures identified above must This violates the open source way and could
be understood by both groups in order to easily break up open source/academic col-
support a successful collaboration. The ac- laborations. In my opinion, the onus is on
tual methods and manners of participation in professors to find a way to provide some
the project may look very different from the return value to the open source community.
academic and open source perspectives. This value does not necessarily need to be in
I can be more opportunistic. My preferred the form of code, and could easily take the
approach is to plan things out well in ad- form of documentation, wiki gardening, or
vance. Talking to Mel made me realize that other needed tasks.
there were lots of opportunities that occur I believe that our efforts involving students
spontaneously. With little effort, I could take in open source projects will pay off for the
advantage of these opportunities if I’m will- open source community—in the long run .
ing to alter—or abandon—my plan. It may be many years before these benefits
For instance, with two days notice, Mel and will be reaped. I say this for several reasons.
I set up a Hack Share2 where we invited First, most students are focused primarily
Sebastian Dziallas3 to come hack (live and on their degree and then on getting a job.
in-person) and teach students how to These are folks who are (rightly so) spending
package an application. I would not have most of their energy on establishing careers.
attempted this on my own, assuming that This means that for at least a year (perhaps
I would need lead time to advertise, get longer) after graduation, these folks may not
resources, secure a location—all the details. have time to contribute to open source projects.
However, Sebastian’s talk was very well at-
tended and a huge success on a small scale.
26 An open world: Stories from the open source community
Second, I believe that students will carry of open source within the computing student
the banner for open source, but that it will population and beyond. Students are excited
take time for the idea to spread. Remember by participating in open source, no matter
that students are not professionals and how it’s introduced. Hopefully this excite-
they are learning how to participate openly, ment will catch fire in academia—in the
in addition to the material in all their other classrooms and beyond.
classes. They typically have a much longer
entry timeframe into open source than an
experienced developer.
Lastly, academia moves at a snail’s pace
compared to the open source world. It will
take time for professors to understand the
opportunities offered—and the social obli-
gations necessitated—by involving students
in open source. And it will take them even
longer to change their own classes to include
open source; longer still to have open source
integrated across a curriculum.
These observations have both positive and
negative repercussions for the open source
community. The bad news is that there is not
likely to be a huge influx of new open source
developers—graduating college students
familiar with the open source way—in the
near future. This is compounded by the fact
that the number of computing students has
not yet recovered from the steep decline in
numbers that occurred in the 2000s.
The good news is that there is likely to be
a trickle of these university-taught devel-
opers and that this small stream is likely to
continue for many years. It is my hope that
the stream will grow as word spreads and as
more professors adopt approaches involving
students in open source projects.
One significant advantage in our efforts to
make open source more prevalent on college
campuses? The already-growing awareness
1. www.opensource.com/users/mchua 3. www.opensource.com/users/sdziallas
2. http://opensource.com/education/10/11/open-
source-and-student-engagement-explained-
5-minutes
Three unspoken blockers that prevent professors from teaching open source community... 27
Three unspoken
blockers that
prevent professors
from teaching open
source community
participation
Mel Chua (originally published November 2010)
One of the hardest things about trying to professors from the Teaching Open Source
bridge two worlds—for instance, open community3. “What are the biggest blockers
source communities and academic institu- that you’re facing in doing this,” we asked,
tions—is all the stuff you don’t hear on a “that people in the open source world just
daily basis when you’re working remotely. don’t know about or understand?” Here are
Sometimes it takes several rounds of garlic their answers.
bread and pasta for people to begin articu-
Blocker #1: Intellectual property policies,
lating what’s blocking them from teaching
aka “No, you can’t release that under an
their students how to participate in FOSS
open license.”
communities. Sebastian Dziallas1 and I sat
down last weekend at the 2010 Frontiers At some schools, if you make it on campus,
in Education conference2 with a group of for campus, or with resources from campus,
28 An open world: Stories from the open source community
guess who owns it? Yep: campus. One way want to work with (for instance, if your class
colleges and universities make money is is a requirement, and students aren’t there
“technology transfer,” a form of intellectual voluntarily)?
serfhood—if you’re a professor, a student,
Different institutions have different policies,
or a lab, you get resources (students, classes,
and some professors may not have the time,
space, equipment) from the school, but all
the legal expertise, the political capital, or
the IP you produce is owned by the school,
the ability to take the risk and step forth for
so the school takes care of licensing that IP
the advocacy this might take at their particu-
out to companies that want to use it... and
lar school. When you’re at a school to teach
keeps the cash.
students, you want to spend time teaching
If you’re a school, this arrangement works them, not responding to letters from admin-
out in your favor, so you put policies in place istrators concerned about families complain-
specifically preventing students and profes- ing that you’re broadcasting their children’s
sors from giving away their “schoolwork” for private data.
free, because... well, that’s how you make
Blocker #3: IT support, or the lack thereof.
money. The concept of open licensing as a
benefit (free marketing!) to the university People from the open source world are used
instead of a drain (giving away precious IP to the following workflow when they want
we’d otherwise sell at a profit!) is new to to show others a new piece of (open source)
many places, and when you’re trying to get software:
a project started for a ten-week class, you 1. Go to the computer sitting on your desk.
can’t afford to spend all ten weeks patiently
educating university administration about 2. Download and install the software.
the benefits of licensing (while you simulta- 3. Email your friend the link to your web server.
neously try to learn data structures in Java).
Professors can do the same thing, but once
So that’s one bug. they want to make that resource available to
Blocker #2: Student privacy, aka “We’re the students in their classes, they may have
going to make your students fill out forms to first:
now before they can release their work 1. Ask IT for an internally hosted box.
for class.”
2. Wait a while.
Even if professors (and students) think it
would be beneficial for student work and 3. Try asking, “When can my TA and I have
professor feedback on that work to be out an account on a server? Any server! Any
in the open where more people can see and server at all!”
comment on and benefit from it, clearance 4. Offer, “Yes, yes, I’ll administer it myself (in
has to be specifically sought because of fed- my nonexistent free time).”
eral regulations like the United States’ Family
Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). 5. Fill out more forms.
These are designed to keep sensitive data 6. W
orry that half the semester is
about students (read: grades) under their already over.
own control. But it’s a fine line to walk—
7. W
onder how much longer this is going
can you require people to upload graded
to take.
classwork to a public server? Can you do your
comments and evaluations there? Can you 8. ...and so on.
require them to list their names? To work
and interact with a community they may not
Three unspoken blockers that prevent professors from teaching open source community... 29
Even if you get IT’s permission to try out
something, or persuade your students to
try out some open source applications on
their own, the question then becomes one
of support. If your students install Linux and
tinker around and crash their computers, IT
isn’t going to fix it. Students know this and
often don’t want to take the risk. If they do,
and things break, they’ll come to you—and
so in addition to being a professor, you now
get to provide technical support for your
entire class for applications you are probably
not familiar with debugging.
How can we help?
Remember, these comments came from
professors who have already fought through
whatever they needed to figure out in order
to start getting their students involved.
These are the people who are already
clearing out these blockers—often working
for several years to even be able to start
to teach their students about FOSS. These
professors are still few in number, and the
first of their kind, oftentimes standing as
the only faculty member in their institution
who doesn’t think the idea of teaching FOSS
is crazy. These people are our allies. How
can we help them get past the “community
participation bugs” that are stumping them?
Thanks to Heidi Ellis (Western New England
College), Matthew Burke (George Washing-
ton University), Clif Kussmaul (Muhlenberg
College), Greg Hislop (Drexel University),
Mihaela Sabin (University of New Hampshire),
and Steve Jacobs (Rochester Institute of
Technology)—for the discussion that led to
these notes, and to Sebastian Dziallas (Olin
College) for helping me write them up into
this article.
1. www.opensource.com/users/sdziallas 3. www.teachingopensource.org/
2. www.fie-conference.org/fie2010/
An open world:
Stories from the
open source community
health
Join The M Revolution—Get your tools 31
Join the M revolution—
Get your tools
Luis Ibanez (originally published March 2012)
The M programming language is also known The M language has a well defined set of
as MUMPS. Which stands for Massachusetts standards:
General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming
• ISO/IEC 11756:19995
System. Read my earlier post1 introducing
the multi-user, strongly imperative language • ISO/IEC 15851:19996
designed to manipulate and control massive We will stick to the M-standard in the ex-
databases. Then get started using it with ercises of this tutorial, therefore the source
this tutorial. code examples should work in both GT.M
Two main software environments are and Caché environments.
available today for programming in M: Let’s focus now on installing GT.M and
• Intersystems Caché2 getting it to work in your favorite Linux
installation.
• FIS GT.M3
“Every tool is a weapon—if you hold it right.”
You can download an evaluation version of —Ani DiFranco
Intersystems Caché4, but because FIS GT.M
is free and open source, we will use it here
as the reference system for this tutorial.
32 An open world: Stories from the open source community
Step 1: Download and install GT.M
for Global Directory
Download and install GT.M:
/home/ibanez/.fis-gtm/V5.5-000_
$ wget http://download.source x86_64/g/gtm.gld
forge.net/project/fis-gtm/GT.M%20
Installer/v0.11/gtminstall7 GDE>
$ chmod +x gtminstall %GDE-I-EXECOM, Executing
command file /usr/lib/fis-gtm/
$ sudo ./gtminstall —utf8 default V5.5-000_x86_64/gdedefaults
GDE>
Work is in progress to create Debian
packages for GT.M (debian-med fis-gtm)8,
%GDE-I-VERIFY, Verification OK
and they should be available soon. In the
meantime, the instructions above are the
%GDE-I-GDCREATE, Creating Global
most straightforward way to install GT.M
Directory file
in your Linux environment. Note that this
installation will use easy defaults. Such an
/home/ibanez/.fis-gtm/V5.5-000_
environment will be good for trying out GT.M
x86_64/g/gtm.gld
and for running through the exercises of this
tutorial, but it may not be good enough for a
Created file /home/ibanez/.fis-gtm/
production system. Consider this installation
V5.5-000_x86_64/g/gtm.dat
a safe sandbox for learning M.
The executables of the installation will, by %GTM-I-JNLCREATE, Journal file /
default, go to one of the following direc- home/ibanez/.fis-gtm/V5.5-000_
tories (depending on whether you are in a x86_64/g/gtm.mjl created for
32-bit or 64-bit architecture): region DEFAULT with
BEFORE_IMAGES
/usr/lib/fis-gtm/V5.5-000_x86/
/usr/lib/fis-gtm/V5.5-000_x86_64/ %GTM-I-JNLSTATE, Journaling state
for region DEFAULT is now ON
Now we set up the environment variables for
GT.M by sourcing the gtmprofile file. For the long term, it is convenient to do this
from the initialization file of your favorite
From your shell, do the following:
shell. For example, in bash, add the follow-
ing lines to your $HOME/.bashrc file:
$ source /usr/lib/fis-gtm/
V5.5-000_x86/gtmprofile
# Set up GT.M environment.
You will see output similar to:
source /usr/lib/fis-gtm/
V5.5-000_x86/gtmprofile
%GDE-I-GDUSEDEFS, Using defaults
Join The M Revolution—Get your tools 33
This adds a set of GT.M-related variables with the subdirectories:
to your environment, and also adds the
GT.M executables to your PATH. If you are $HOME/.fis-gtm/r
curious, you may want to take a look at
those changes by doing the following in the $HOME/.fis-gtm/V5.5-000_x86
prompt of your bash shell: (if in a 32bits architecture)
$ env | grep gtm $HOME/.fis-gtm/V5.5-000_x86_64
(if in a 64bits architecture)
Now you can run GT.M for the first time by
simply typing gtm at the shell prompt. As we write code examples, these are the
directories where the code will go.
$ gtm This is a good point to note that M/MUMPS
is a combination of a programming language
and a database (as was kindly pointed out
This should open the GT.M prompt:
by one of the first commenters to our pre-
vious post)11. We will try to be more explicit
GTM> going forwards when we are referring to the
language versus when we are referring to
the database.
At this point you can type a couple of verifi-
cation commands. For example: Step 2: Testing the installation
We can now write a “hello world” program.
GTM>write $zversion First, set the path to your favorite editor in
the “EDITOR” environment variable of your
GT.M V5.5-000 Linux x86 shell. For example in bash:
GTM>halt EDITOR=/usr/bin/emacs
or
The “intrinsic special variable” $zversion9
EDITOR=/usr/bin/gvim
returns the version of the installed M
environment. The halt10 command stops the
gtm interpreter and returns control to the Then from the same shell, invoke gtm, and at
operating system, so you will be back at the prompt, request to edit the “Hello.m” file:
your shell’s prompt.
The initialization process creates a local GTM>ZEDIT “Hello.m”
installation in your home directory under:
This should open the editor program that
$HOME/.fis-gtm
you just set up in the EDITOR environment
34 An open world: Stories from the open source community
variable, and now you can type in it the Then save the file and link it again with
following M code: the command:
MYLABEL ; This is a comment
GTM>ZLINK “Hello”
WRITE !,”Hello World”
It is important to call ZLINK12 every time that
QUIT
your modify the source code, since it will
recompile it and will replace the previous
Note that the second two lines leave one code in the current environment. Now you
blank space in the first column, while the can execute the new version with:
first line (containing a label) starts in the
first column.
GTM>DO MYLABEL^Hello
Then save the file and quit the editor. Once
back at the gtm prompt, type: Hello World
GTM>ZLINK “Hello” 62520,56765
and execute the program by using the The $HOROLOG13 special variable returns
DO 12 command: the date and time as a string value speci-
fying the number of days since December
31, 1840 and the number of seconds since
GTM>DO MYLABEL^Hello
midnight of the current day. (Read why that
date was chosen.)14
Hello World
Step 3: Looking under the hood
Let’s now edit the program again by typing: You may find it interesting to see where the
source code and compiled versions of your
routines are going. Take a look at
GTM>ZEDIT “Hello.m” the directories:
$HOME/.fis-gtm/
and once in the editor, let’s insert
V5.5-000_x86_64/r/
another line:
$HOME/.fis-gtm/
MYLABEL ; This is a comment V5.5-000_x86_64/o/
WRITE !,”Hello World” where you will find the files:
WRITE !,$HOROLOG $HOME/.fis-gtm/
V5.5-000_x86_64/r/Hello.m
QUIT
$HOME/.fis-gtm/
V5.5-000_x86_64/o/Hello.o
Join The M Revolution—Get your tools 35
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to K.S. Bhaskar (Development
Director at Fidelity National Information
Services, Inc.) for his guidance on fis-gtm
and for providing the large majority of the
materials presented in this tutorial. All errors
that may have slipped above, of course, are
mine alone.
References
The complete reference to the M language is
available at:
www.tinco.pair.com/bhaskar/gtm/doc/
books/pg/UNIX_manual/index.html15
The pocket guide to MUMPS is available at:
www.vistaexpertise.net/docs/pocket_
guide.pdf 16
1.
w ww.opensource.com/health/12/2/join- 10 www.tinco.pair.com/bhaskar/gtm/doc/books/pg/
m-revolution UNIX_manual/ch06s07.html
2. www.intersystems.com/cache/index.html 11 www.opensource.com/health/12/2/join-m-revo-
3. www.fis-gtm.com/ lution#comment-9013
4. www.intersystems.com/cache/downloads/index. 12 www.tinco.pair.com/bhaskar/gtm/doc/books/pg/
html%20 UNIX_manual/ch06s38.html
5 www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/ 13 www.tinco.pair.com/bhaskar/gtm/doc/books/pg/
catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=29268 UNIX_manual/ch08s05.html
6 www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/ 14 www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS#
catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=29269 Epoch_choice
7 download.sourceforge.net/project/fis-gtm/ 15 www.tinco.pair.com/bhaskar/gtm/doc/books/pg/
GT.M%20Installer/v0.11/gtminstall UNIX_manual/index.html
8 www.debian-med.debian.net/tasks/his.fr.html 16 www.vistaexpertise.net/docs/pocket_guide.pdf
9 www.tinco.pair.com/bhaskar/gtm/doc/books/pg/
UNIX_manual/ch08s49.html
36 An open world: Stories from the open source community
Open source
cancer research
Lori Mehen (originally published December 2011)
When it comes to treating, curing, and pre- This mode of thinking is a bitter pill to
venting cancer, modern medicine has largely swallow for the quarter of our population
failed. You could argue that cancer is far too that will die of cancer. According to the
complicated to unravel in the few millenia World Health Organization1, one in every four
we have been documenting it. Or that the deaths is attributable to cancer.
billions we spend annually on research is far
What would happen if cancer researchers
too little. Established incentives and policies
were able to adopt an open and collabora-
that perpetuate research silos certainly
tive approach like the one that has—for the
seem to slow success.
last two decades—revolutionized software
Medical researchers have been trained in a development? What if cancer research could
professional culture where secrecy reigns, be open source?
where they must protect their own interests.
Linux has been successful because a large
The dominant culture discourages sharing
group of people recognized a need and
research findings and collaborating on
agreed on a process for meeting that need.
projects. It has become more important to
The brilliance of the open source approach is
protect vested interests than to take advan-
in the sheer amount of participating brain-
tage of the huge collaborative network that
power. The open source community shows
is available in academia.
that the collective intelligence of a network
is greater than any single contributor.
Open source cancer research 37
While the term is attributed to software They mailed samples to 40 labs in the US
development, the idea is not. In fact, some and 30 more in Europe, encouraging these
medical research does use this method- labs to use it, build upon it, and share
ology in the same way that Linus Torvalds their findings in return. As a result of this
and others develop open source operating open source approach, Dr Bradner’s team
systems. The Human Genome Project 2, has learned—in less than a year—that
for example, very successfully distributed JQ1 small-molecule inhibitor prevents
gene-mapping in efforts to speed up the the growth of leukemia, making affected
sequencing of the genome. The HGP teams cells behave like normal white blood cells.
published their data openly, on the Internet. Another group reported back that multiple
myeloma cells respond dramatically to
More recently, a team of Harvard3 research-
JQ1. Still another found that the inhibitor
ers discovered the power of distributed
prevents adipose cells from storing fat, thus
research. A team led by Jay Bradner4 at the
preventing fatty liver disease.
Dana Farber Cancer Institute5 discovered a
small-molecule inhibitor that showed prom- Bradner has published his findings. He
ise in its ability to interrupt the aggressive has released the chemical identity of the
growth of cancer cells. The small-molecule compound, told researchers how to make it,
inhibitor, called JQ1—after Jun Qi, the and even offered to provide free samples to
chemist who made the discovery—works anyone in the medical research community.
by suppressing a protein (bromo- (If you’re a researcher who’d like a sample
domain-containing 4, or Brd4) necessary of the JQ1 molecule, you can even contact
for the expression of the Myc regulator Bradner’s Lab via twitter @jaybradner6.)
gene. It is a mutated Myc gene that is
Bradner feels his early successes are due not
believed to be at the root of many can-
only to the science, but also to the strategy.
cers. Without Brd4, Myc remains inactive.
Using an open source approach, sharing
Inhibiting Myc could be part of the key to
the information about this molecule, and
successful cancer treatments.
crowd-sourcing the research and the testing
With the cells from an affected patient, illustrates the opportunities that an open
Bradner’s group successfully grew the methodology can bring to the difficult chal-
cancer in mice and discovered that the lenges of medical research and prototype
mice with the cancer who received the drug discovery.
compound lived, while the mice with the
In his recently released TED talk video,
cancer who didn’t receive the compound
Dr. Bradner explains that he firmly believes
rapidly perished.
that making a drug prototype freely available
Instead of operating in secrecy and guarding among researchers will help accelerate the
their work, Bradner’s group shared it. They delivery of effective cancer drugs to
simply started mailing it to friends. They affected patients.
sent it to Oxford crystallographers, who sent
With more practice—and more familiarity
back an informative picture that helped Dr.
with each other and this kind of collabora-
Bradners team to understand better how the
tive research—scientists can break large,
small-molecule inhibitor works so potently
complex, time-expensive projects into
against Brd4.
smaller, achievable portions. By spreading
38 An open world: Stories from the open source community
out those small tasks among many groups,
much more work can be accomplished in a
vastly reduced amount of time.
Using the old research models, Bradner’s
team might have learned that JQ1 affects
AML cells in the first year. But it might have
been next year before they got to leukemia,
and years after that before they realized it
also could affect fatty liver. How many years
do you think the old approach adds to the
development of drugs we need today?
It is time to seriously consider a different
model for scientific research–one that di-
rectly engages and benefits society, encour-
ages open access and the free exchange of
scientific information. The benefit to patients
would be enormous.
1.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releas- 3.
w ww.hms.harvard.edu/hms/home.asp
es/2003/pr27/en/ 4. www.bradner.dfci.harvard.edu/
2.
w ww.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Ge- 5. www.dana-farber.org/
nome/project/about.shtml
6. https://twitter.com/jaybradner
History of open source in government 39
An open world:
Stories from the
open source community
Government
40 An open world: Stories from the open source community
History of
open source in
government
Gunnar Hellekson (originally published May 2012)
It is difficult to imagine the Federal govern- this in mind, the history of open source in
ment moving in one well-coordinated direc- the US government is best understood as a
tion on any matter, and so it has been with series of individual stories that have collec-
the adoption of open source software. Some tively led to the pervasive adoption of open
agencies were early adopters, especially the source we see today.
academic and research communities. As it
It was in 1997 that open source as an enter-
did in universities, open source adoption in
prise computing trend emerged, and the US
the US government originated in research
government was there. While Eric Raymond
settings, where sharing and collaboration
was writing his seminal treatise on open
were already part of the culture of pedagogy.
source, “The Cathedral and the Bazaar1,” a
In this way, the government had been using
Major in the US Air Force named Justin
and creating open source software even
Seiferth published “Intranet Hallways Sys-
before it was called “open source.” Other
tems Based on Linux 2” in the Linux Gazette.
agencies and departments have been more
This article described a simple web-based
conservative, for a variety of reasons, and
explorer for Windows file servers built on
are only just now bringing open source
the Linux operating system. This may be
software into their operations. With
the first public acknowledgment of the US
History of open source in government 41
Government’s use of open source software Seiferth, like Stoltz, makes a number of
as we know it today. familiar arguments for open source, but his
greatest insight is that open source is “Com-
For the next several years, advocates in the
mercial Off-the-Shelf” (COTS) software. This
private sector and cautious staff in govern-
is significant, because it means that open
ment began to engage the questions that
source would be able to use the existing
still confront open source today: Is it ready?
policy and regulations that had already been
Is it secure? How do we use it? In 1999,
created for software more generally, rather
Mitch Stoltz of NetAction wrote the first
than being treated as a special case and
persuasive essay on the topic, “The Case
thus hampering its adoption. This will later
for Government Promotion of Open Source
become the explicit policy of the Office of
Software3.” Stoltz invokes many arguments
Management and Budget, as well as the
that are still being used today: lower cost,
Department of Defense.
increased flexibility, and better security.
That same year, the President’s National The very next year brings an explosion of
Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure open source activity in government. In the
Protection, and Counter-Terrorism convened private sector, IBM announced that they are
a multi-agency working group to produce investing one billion dollars5 in the Linux
“Open Source Code and the Security of project. The Open Source Software Institute6
Federal Systems.” That report is the first was founded to aid the adoption of open
official study of open source by the federal source in the Federal government.
government.
Meanwhile, government adoption continues
While at the Air Command and Staff College, apace. We begin to see the procurement ap-
Major Seiferth returns to our history again, paratus wrestle with open source licensing
this time publishing a research report on the in procurements. The US Air Force Scien-
potential benefits of open source specifically tific Advisory Board’s “Ensuring Successful
in the DOD. Seiferth notes ironically that the Implementation of Commercial Items in Air
US Government is at once reluctant to use Force Systems7” is the first procurement
open source, and a great creator of open guidance to explicitly mention open source.
source projects 4:
Some agencies aren’t waiting, though. The
“Within the Department of Defense, the National National Security Agency — to the aston-
Laboratories and Defense Advanced Research ishment of its peers and the open source
Agency have been the most visible users and community – releases SELinux8, which
producers of open licensed systems. They’ve provided a set of strong security controls to
released such advances as the original firewall
the Linux operating system. In doing so, the
and network security toolkits. As a more recent
NSA was taking technology that had been
example, within the last year the National Air and
Space Agency has debuted several inexpen- useful to a very small set of customers, and
sive supercomputers. Open licensed operating was therefore very expensive, and made
systems and applications allowed the scaling of it freely available to the general public. In-
inexpensive pentium-based machines into an in- novation quickened, the software improved,
tegrated hardware/software system. In addition and SELinux is still used in Linux today. Most
to being inexpensive, these machines are among recently, SELinux was ported to the Android
the most powerful available.” system9, where it provides mobile phone us-
42 An open world: Stories from the open source community
ers protections against hostile applications. the first Government Open Source Confer-
This wasn’t the first time the US government ence (GOSCON)15 is held in Portland, Oregon.
has released software, but it made head-
In 2006, Sue Peyton, the Air Force Assistant
lines because it was an implicit endorsement
Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, com-
of the open source process by arguably the
missioned the “Open Technology Devel-
most security-conscious intelligence agency.
opment Roadmap16,” which goes beyond
This flurry of activity continues into 2001, the simple benefits of open source, and
with MITRE releasing “Making the Busi- describes how it can be put to productive
ness Case for Open Source Software10.” use in the context of the DOD’s Net-Centric
This document, the most comprehensive doctrine, which was in fashion at the time.
treatment of open source to that point, was This is the first effort to align the principles
published as part of the larger “Open Source of open source with an overall agency
Software in Military Systems” study which strategy, demonstrating how savvy open
the US Army had commissioned from MITRE. source advocates inside the government
The report concludes: “Open source will ben- have become.
efit the government by improving interoper-
In 2007, the US Navy commissioned Ray-
ability, long term access to data, and the
theon, IBM, and Red Hat to add “real-time”
ability to incorporate new technology.” Here,
features to the Linux kernel17, which it
we see the US Army, who is later to become
required for the new destroyer it was build-
one of the largest open source users in the
ing. Significantly, the Navy ensured that the
world, taking its first exploratory steps.
software is released into the open source
The next major milestone is in 2003, with community. Shortly thereafter, the US Navy
the release of the “Stenbit Memo11.” On May CIO Robert Carey releases the Navy Open
28, the DOD CIO John Stenbit released the Source Memo18, which explicitly classifies
first DOD-wide guidance on open source open source as COTS software. This is a
software, which implicitly permits its acqui- significant change in tone from the Stenbit
sition, development, and use. Meanwhile, memo and OMB memos of 2004, which only
the Army begins to deploy the “Blue Force implicitly provide this same guidance.
Tracker,” running on open source software,
Open source use subsequently explodes. By
to over 80,000 tactical vehicles. Famously,
September of 2008, the Microsoft-funded
General Nicholas Justice proclaims, “When
Open Source Census19 was reporting that
we rolled into Baghdad, we did it using
open source use in government was higher
open source.” Nine months later, in July of
than any other industry. The Federal Open
2004, the OMB issues a memo similar to
Source Alliance’s Federal Open Source Refer-
the Stenbit Memo that covers the govern-
endum20 study reported that, 71% of agency
ment as a whole. At approximately the
executives believed they could benefit from
same time, NASA releases the very popular
open source and 58% said they were likely
World Wind12 geospatial visualization project
to consider open source.
under the newly-minted “NASA Open Source
Agreement13.” Six months later, Red Hat, the The Obama Administration’s first act on tak-
world’s largest open source company at the ing office was to issue the Open Government
time, creates a US Government division14 and Memo21, which articulated a general policy of
History of open source in government 43
“transparency, collaboration, and participa- months later, for the first time since 2004,
tion.” Subsequent agency initiatives prom- OMB refreshes its open source guidance
inently featured open source software as a with the “Technology Neutrality27” memo,
means to achieve those goals. Open source reminding agencies that competition in
policies began to pour out of governments software is important, and that they are for-
at the federal, state and local level. NASA, bidden from discriminating against software
in particular, made open source software based on its development method. Once this
and the open source development process a memo was published, most of the barriers
cornerstone of their open government plan22. to open source adoption had been dimin-
In the private sector, Open Source for Amer- ished or eliminated in the US government.
ica23 was founded. This coalition of industry,
Unburdened, open source continued its
advocates, and individuals is meant to be
growth in 2011. Sue Peyton’s Open Technol-
a central resource for advocates of open
ogy Development Roadmap from 2006 re-
source software in government. That August,
ceives a “Lessons Learned28” sequel, which
Macon Phillips, the White House New Media
makes recommendations to DOD programs
Director who would later release portions
interested in releasing their own software.
of the software for whitehouse.gov, called
Eben Moglen, one of the most prominent
open source “…the most concrete form of
open source lawyers in the country, and
civic participation24.” Clearly, open source
head of the Software Freedom Law Center29,
and open government became inextricably
releases “Government Computer Software
related.
Acquisition and the GNU General Public
In October of 2009, the “DOD Open Source License30,” which explains the provisions
Memo25” is released by David Wennergren, of that very popular open source license
the DOD CIO. This memo got headlines in the context of government procure-
around the world, and remains the single ment regulations. Clearly, the government’s
most influential government policy docu- understanding of open source had grown
ment on open source today. The memo itself more sophisticated since its first tentative
is simple, and following the Navy’s declara- forays a decade before. A survey conducted
tion two years earlier, reminds procurement by Lockheed Martin31 at this time found that
officials that open source software is COTS. 69% of government contractors and 40%
The appendices to the memo, however, go of federal agency respondents were already
into much more detail about the poten- using open source. The survey also found
tial advantages and risks of open source that 66% of all respondents said that they
software. The memo specifically encourages would be using more open source in the
the DOD to take advantage of its ability to next 12-18 months.
modify software to suit a mission’s need.
With this increased comfort, 2011 also saw
Later in 2009, CENDI, an organization of the release of more open source software
government managers, issues a FAQ26 on from the government than ever before.
copyright and open source to help agency The White House released portions of the
lawyers understand open source licensing code for whitehouse.gov, the code for the
and the sometimes confusing intellectual Federal CIO’s IT Dashboard, and the data.
property questions that they pose. A few gov platform. At the end of 2011, the Federal
44 An open world: Stories from the open source community
CIO announced a draft “Shared First” policy, Did I miss a major event? A major code re-
which mandates re-use and sharing of IT lease? Let me know in the comments.
resources amongst civilian agencies, and [This is a writeup I did as a companion to
specifically mentions that agencies should the History of Open Source in Government
collaborate on software development 32. Also, Timeline34. Karl Fogel35 and I will be presenting
NASA releases code.nasa.gov, a landmark more findings 36 from the timeline at OSCON37
project to centralize all the source code this year.]
released by NASA in one citizen-friendly
web site33.
So we see the adoption of open source in
the Federal government as an evolution: the
first furtive steps in the late 1990s and early
2000s, manifested in persuasive essays and
studies. From there, certain organizations
like NASA and the Army take leadership
roles in open source adoptions. From 2003
to 2009, a series of policies institutionalize
its use throughout the government. By the
close of the first decade, the White House,
NASA, the Office of Management and
Budget, and other agencies are not just us-
ing open source, but creating and releasing
open source software of their own.
1.
w ww.catb.org/%7Eesr/writings/homesteading/ 11. www.terrybollinger.com/stenbitmemo/stenbitme-
cathedral-bazaar/ mo_png/index.html
2. www.linuxgazette.net/issue19/hallways.html 12. www.worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/
3. www.netaction.org/opensrc/oss-report.html 13. www.opensource.gsfc.nasa.gov/nosa.php
4. www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Loca- 14. www.gcn.com/articles/2005/01/21/red-hat-
tion=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA398898 pushes-for-linux-in-federal-market.aspx
5. www.news.cnet.com/2100-1001-249750.html 15. www.goscon.org/
6. www.oss-institute.org/ 16. www.acq.osd.mil/jctd/articles/OTDRoad
7. www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Loca- mapFinal.pdf
tion=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA411926 17. www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressre-
8. www.selinuxproject.org/ lease/21033.wss
9. www.selinuxproject.org/page/SEAndroid 18. www.doncio.navy.mil/ContentView.aspx?ID=312
10. www.mitre.org/work/tech_papers/tech_ 19. www.lmaugustin.typepad.com/lma/2008/09/
papers_01/kenwood_software/kenwood_ open-source-census-more-numbers-on-open-
software.pdf source-adoption.html
20. www.blogs.the451group.com/open-
History of open source in government 45
source/2008/10/22/goscon-gives-government- OTD-lessons-learned-military-signed.pdf
good-open-source-ideas/ 29. www.softwarefreedom.org/
21. www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Transpar- 30. w ww.acc.dau.mil/adl/en-US/475584/file/60698/
encyandOpenGovernment OSS%20White%20Paper%2010-11.pdf
22. www.nasa.gov/open/plan/ 31. www.marketconnectionsinc.com/Reports/inter-
23. www.opensourceforamerica.org/ section-of-open-source-and-the-cloud.html
24. www.dailymotion.com/video/xgh1i3_obama-s- 32. www.cio.gov/documents/Shared_Services_
new-media-director-backs-open-source-govern- Strategy.pdf
ment_news 33. www.code.nasa.gov/
25. dodcio.defense.gov/Portals/0/Documents/FOS- 34. www.atechnologyjobisnoexcuse.com/2011/12/
S/2009OSS.pdf building-a-timeline-of-open-source-in-the-us-
26. www.cendi.gov/publications/09-1FAQ_Open- government/
SourceSoftware_FINAL_110109.pdf 35. www.red-bean.com/kfogel/
27. www.cio.gov/documents/Technology- 36. www.atechnologyjobisnoexcuse.com/event/
Neutrality.pdf oscon-2012/
28. dodcio.defense.gov/Portals/0/Documents/FOSS/ 37. www.oscon.com/
46 An open world: Stories from the open source community
Document
Freedom Day:
Passion and politics
Karsten Gerloff (originally published March 2010)
The battle for open standards in Europe topic that most people outside the technol-
ogy world hardly ever think about.
Today, people and groups around the world
are celebrating Document Freedom Day1. This The campaign is coordinated by the Free
is an international day to raise awareness of Software Foundation Europe4, but the
Open Standards and free document formats. passion and effort in cities around the world
As the event takes place for the third time, are local. In Romania’s capital, Bucharest, a
the previous focus on the OpenDocument group of activists visited5 a number of gov-
Format 2 (ODF) is broadening to include other ernment buildings, each time telling the au-
free formats such as Ogg Vorbis, and Open thorities that “I can’t read your documents”.
Standards3 in general. In South Africa, the Department of Arts and
Culture is holding a celebratory hour. In
Standards have the reputation of being a dry
Buenos Aires, Argentina, eight organizations
topic. But Document Freedom Day is inspir-
are organizing6 an evening of information
ing lots of passion and creativity around
and discussion about Open Standards. In
the world. Volunteer groups from the Free
many countries, as in Vietnam, local groups
Software scene are using this international
are setting up information campaigns in
day to draw their communities’ attention to a
universities and elsewhere.
Document Freedom Day: Passion and politics 47
Cakes appear to be a particular favourite. the text contained a relatively strong defini-
FSFE groups are awarding two of them to tion of what an Open Standard is.
German and Austrian radio stations that
The European Commission complemented
offer their streams in Ogg Vorbis. A third
the EIF recommendation with the OSOR 11
one goes to the Slovenian Supreme Court,
project. The not-so-snappily titled “Open
which has adopted ODF as its default
Source Observatory and Repository” quickly
document format.
became a central platform for public bodies
Spreading, but not without a fight across Europe to learn from each other about
their experiences with Free Software and
Over the past years, numerous countries
Open Standards. The portal also allows public
[pdf] 7 have adopted policies on Open
bodies to upload and share Free Software
Standards. The Netherlands8 lead the way,
which they have developed themselves.
by mandating that public bodies use Free
Software and Open Standards from May [Disclosure: From late 2006 to mid-2009, I
2008. Many others have followed, such as worked for a contractor of the OSOR project,
South Africa, Japan, Brazil and a number of UNU-MERIT 12. One of my tasks with OSOR
European countries. was to write case studies about the use of
Free Software and Open Standards in the
Denmark 9 is the latest nation to join the
European public sector.]
group, requiring its public bodies to start
using ODF for its documents from April 2011. Diverging views in the European
There are differences between all these pol- Commission
icies, and they are being implemented with
Beyond the OSOR project, different parts of
varying degrees of success. But the direction
the European Commission have very different
is clear: The public sector is moving to Open
views on Open Standards. The Informatics
Standards. Not without a fight, though.
department, responsible for the Commis-
Europe in the lead sion’s internal IT systems, has long relied on
framework contracts with Microsoft. In an
It is striking that out of 11 out of 18 countries
ironic twist, the unit running the OSOR proj-
that have adopted ODF for their public sector
ect is currently a part of this department.
(according to the ODF Alliance) are in Europe.
While multiple factors are involved here, On the other hand, the (now former) compe-
such as relatively high market shares for Free tition Commissioner Neelie Kroes went out of
Software, one element is crucial. her way to highlight the importance of Open
Standards. During an event on June 10, 2008
In 2004, the European Commission issued
she remarked13:
a recommendation known as the European
Interoperability Framework10 (EIF). The docu- As purchasers, we need to be smart when we buy
ment’s stated goal is to promote interopera- technology. We need to be aware of the long term
bility between public bodies in Europe, with a costs of lock-in: you are often locked-in to subse-
view to delivering “pan-European eGovern- quent generations of that technology. There can
also be spill-over effects where you get locked in
ment services”.The EIF’s means of choice are
to other products and services provided by that
Open Standards and Free Software. Crucially,
vendor. That is just bad purchasing.
48 An open world: Stories from the open source community
She added: and the lack of transparency of the process
But there is more to this than ensuring our in which it was created. Confronted with the
commercial decisions are taken in full knowledge latest draft, we are now asking19 the Com-
of their long term effects. There is a democratic mission to go back to the drawing board, and
issue as well. start over based on the consultation draft
from Summer 2008. In its present form, the
[…]
text would only cement the status quo.
I know a smart business decision when I see
one—choosing open standards is a very smart The Digital Agenda: Standardization
business decision indeed. power struggle
Right ahead of Document Freedom Day14, The second document at the center of
those tensions are coming to a head15. The current debates is the “Digital Agenda.” This
Commission is developing two very different is a relatively short text, setting out the
draft documents that will have a profound Commission’s policy on all things digital
effect on the use and spread of Open for the coming five years. It is prepared by
Standards and Free Software in Europe, and the Information Society department, which
possibly elsewhere. Neelie Kroes is now heading. Though the
document hasn’t been published officially,
The European Interoperability Framework:
the parts concerning Open Standards are
Revised into oblivion
available here20.
The European Interoperability Framework
According to this Digital Agenda, the Europe-
(EIF) is currently being revised. The process
an Commission would “issue a recommenda-
to update this key document started in
tion to streamline the use of Open Standards
2006, with a public consultation held in the
in public services and public procurement”. It
summer of 2008. The document which the
would also “[u]pdate the European Interop-
EC presented for comments still contained
erability Framework to promote an open
a strong definition of Open Standards, and
approach to technology and interoperability”.
gave Free Software a crucial role in providing
interoperability in the public sector. Both things would be very good for
European citizens and their public authori-
After the public consultation, EIF version
ties, since they would increase the use of
2 disappeared into the dark interior of the
Open Standards and, as a consequence,
EC. Since then, two drafts have leaked: One
Free Software. So it is no surprise that there
in November 2009, and one in mid-March
is now a fierce lobbying battle raging around
2010. Astonishingly, these drafts no longer
the text, since it would make life a bit more
contain a definition of Open Standards. Free
difficult for the companies that currently
Software as an enabler of interoperability
dominate the software market with their
has virtually disappeared. This reflects the
proprietary applications.
comments made by the Business Software
Alliance16, a Microsoft-backed lobby group. Yet the Digital Agenda is under attack from
FSFE maintains a comparison page17, show- another angle as well. It calls for a reform of
ing how key parts of the text have evolved the European standardization system, so that
since the consultation process. standards coming out of ICT fora and consor-
tia such as OASIS would be recognized. This
FSFE and other groups have highlighted18
sits very badly with those departments of
both the substantial problems of the text,
the EC that are currently in charge of stan-
Document Freedom Day: Passion and politics 49
dardization: Enterprise and Internal Market. a requirement refers to a characteristic of
To them, this agenda threatens to take away the software, rather than to a specific prod-
part of their portfolio and power. Incidentally, uct or technology.
those two departments also don’t think that
This should give a further boost to public
recognizing standards prepared in ICT fora
bodies that want to use Free Software and
and consortia is a good idea.
Open Standards. It should also remove an
These issues are moving quickly, with new obstacle for those that are interested, but
developments and rumors coming out of haven’t yet made the jump.
the European Commission almost every day.
In this context, Document Freedom Day21 is a
Together with other groups, FSFE is working
day of hope. It shows that people around the
hard to preserve the Digital Agenda’s push
world are passionate about Open Standards,
for Open Standards.
Free Software, and the freedom to use tech-
DFD worldwide—you’re not alone nology as they wish. Governments in Europe
and elsewhere should take note.
All this shows that the gains that Open
Standards have made can’t be taken for
granted. Lobbyists for proprietary software
companies are chipping away at them every
day, exploiting internal differences within the
European Commission as they go.
Incidentally, an Italian court ruled yesterday
that public authorities in Italy’s Piedmont
region can legally maintain a preference for
Free Software in their purchasing decisions.
The court considered that such
1. www.documentfreedom.org/ 11. www.osor.eu/
2. www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odf 12. www.merit.unu.edu/
3. www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.en.html 13. www.europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.
4. www.fsfe.org/ do?reference=SPEECH/08/317&format=HTM-
L&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en
5. www.nicubunu.ro/documentfreedomday-2010/
14. www.documentfreedom.org/
6. www..vialibre.org.ar/2010/03/28/dia-mundi-
al-de-los-documentos-libres/#more-5246 15. www.h-online.com/open/features/Water-
ing-down-European-standards-966955.html
7. www.odfalliance.org/resources/Adoptions-ODF-
2010-Feb.pdf 16 www.bsa.org/
8 www.computerworlduk.com/toolbox/open- 17. www.fsfe.org/projects/os/eifv2.en.html
source/open-source-business/news/index. 18. www.fsfe.org/news/2009/news-20091127-
cfm?newsId=6677 01.en.html
9. www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Den- 19. http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/?p=324
mark-to-implement-ODF-document-stan- 20. www.davidhammerstein.over-blog.com/arti-
dard-918962.html cle-digital-commissioner-kroes-proposes-eu-poli-
10. www.ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/docu- cy-of-open-standard-46997444.html
ment/3473/5585#finalEIF 21 www.documentfreedom.org/
50 An open world: Stories from the open source community
Image credits
All imagery in this booklet is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0
Unported license (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Cover image
www.flickr.com/photos/ashleighb77/3708369320/
The day TuxPaint became contagious
www.opensource.com
Introducing students to the world of open source: Day 1
Asheesh Laroia
The four capital mistakes of open source
www.flickr.com/photos/dahlstroms/3861945279
www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/4812267249/
Rethinking office design
www. opensource.com
Total victory for open source software in a patent lawsuit
www.opensource.com
Interview: PJ on the beginning, ending, and future of Groklaw
www.cafepress.com/groklaw.154236618
Image Credits 51
Student participation in open source projects
(A professor’s perspective)
www.flickr.com/photos/11755880@N00/3856681802/
Three unspoken blockers that prevent professors from
teaching open source community participation
http://www.flickr.com/photos/montypython/4074525329/
Join the M revolution—Get your tools
www.opensource.com
Open source cancer research
www.flickr.com/photos/cmrf_crumlin/4838073754/
in/photostream/
History of open source in government
www.opensource.com
Document Freedom Day: Passion and politics
www.documentfreedom.org/Artwork2010
Written content is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Download an electronic copy of this book at www.opensource.com/best