John P. Mello Jr.
Contributing Writer
Earlier this month, the federal Office of Management and Budget sent a memo to agency heads ordering them to stop using brand names in procurement contracts. The move was hailed by many small vendors, especially in the high-tech sector, as a victory for them over the likes of Intel and Microsoft.
Seifert Systems Invests in Energy Efficiency to Strengthen Operations
For manufacturers, energy is more than just another operating expense. It plays a critical role…
Learn More
The policy was also cheered by members of the Open Source community, who see it as a chance to spread their gospel on a grand scale. As is often the case, however, that gospel has already acquired acceptance on the state level.
An organization was formed last year, the Government Open Code Collaborative (GOCC), to foster the development of Open Source software by public and nonprofit academic institutions. One of the driving forces behind the GOCC (www.gocc.gov) has been Rhode Island Secretary of State Matthew Brown’s office. Recently, Providence Business News spoke with the office’s lead software developer, Chris Fowler, about Open Source software and what’s attracting states to it.
PBN: What’s the distinction between free software and Open Source software?
Fowler: Open Source software includes the source code when it’s distributed. There’s a lot of free software available, but it doesn’t include the source. The idea is that if you give someone the source, they can make changes as they see fit, depending on the license that’s included with the Open Source software. They might be able to redistribute it. They might be able to include it in a larger product offering. Changes they make may eventually end up in the source tree and be released in later versions.
PBN: What is attracting governments to Open Source software?
Fowler: I think the most obvious reason is that the Open Source software licenses are less restrictive. For example, if you compare MySQL, which is a popular Open Source database server, to Microsoft’s MS SQL, they’re almost identical in their offerings. But for MySQL there’s no initial cost and there’s no limit to the number of database connections. With MS SQL, the cost grows incrementally, depending on the number of users and the number of machines you choose to load it on.
PBN: Isn’t it hairy to adopt Open Source solutions because there’s no one to point a finger at if something goes wrong?
Fowler: That’s one of the misconceptions behind Open Source, that there’s no company backing it. That’s usually not the case. There’s a very solid company behind MySQL, for instance, who offers support services that you can purchase. The software itself, though, is free. So if you want the support, you can purchase the support separately. Additionally, there’s a tremendous amount of user-backing in most of the popular Open Source software applications.
PBN: A big concern today is security. Since the inner workings of Open Source software can be viewed by anyone, is it less secure than proprietary software programs produced by vendors like Microsoft?
Fowler: Absolutely not. One of the nice things about Open Source software is, as a product becomes more popular, just by it getting into so many hands and so many eyeballs, it goes through extensive peer review. Because of that, any potential security risks are found, publicized and the fixes are sent out very quickly – in a matter of hours in some cases. You just don’t see that in a proprietary software system. The fact that something is proprietary, or closed, certainly doesn’t make it any more secure and quite often I think it makes it less secure.
PBN: The Government Open Code Collaborative has been formed to focus the Open Source efforts of governments. One of the criticisms to this approach is that it excludes members of the general Open Source community who could be very helpful to the group’s software development. What do you think of that criticism?
Fowler: Open Source doesn’t equate to unstructured. The GOCC isn’t meant to replace any of the existing Open Source repositories. However, the “closed gate” is really half open. The GOCC is closed to submissions, but anyone can view the site, view its blog, view its members and download software. If someone wants to contribute their own software or contribute to a project, then all they have to do is contact the member who’s responsible for that code or contact a member to sponsor their code. So it’s closed, but it’s certainly not an iron gate. This helps the GOCC stay on target with its central point which is to share code among state governments.
PBN: What do you think of Steve Balmer’s characterization of Open Source software as a “cancer” to intellectual property.
Fowler: The message boards and trade press love to present us vs. them, Open Source vs. Microsoft. The wonderful thing about Open Source software is that there’s no one company at the helm. As long as there’s code that people want to contribute and share, then Open Source will thrive. It used to be that large companies didn’t even talk about Open Source. Now you have companies that hold hundreds of thousands of IP (intellectual property) rights, such as IBM and Sun, contributing to Open Source as a means to better connect with their customers and broaden their bottom line.
John P. Mello Jr. is a freelance business and technology writer who works from his home in Woonsocket. He can be reached at jpmello@cox.net.
