open standards & open source for long-term project success lessons from 3d model management

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Don Brutzman

Naval Postgraduate School (NPS)Center for Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Research

Modeling, Virtual Environments & Simulation (MOVES) Institute

6 January 2005

Open Standards & Open Source

for Long-term Project Success

Lessons from 3D Model Management

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Topics

• Open Standards

• Open Standards Organizations

• Open Source

• Intellectual Property Rights

• Business Cases

• Summary

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Open Standards• Basis for stability amidst technical innovation• Basis for interoperability among systems• Open forums for discussion & development

Non-discriminatory participation by following forum rules

• Crucial for long-term success Numerous reasons for this, especially IPR Web trumps all: best business, technical case

• Most overlooked reason for standards success Fatal mistakes become nearly impossible, because

group scrutiny detects & rejects them

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Open Standards Organizations 1

• Results oriented, forums for progress

• Caretakers for stability & deliberate evolution

• Enough process to ensure stable rules for a working group to fully succeed

• Responsive to member needs

• Positive press and outreach

• Bigger than “just” industry, important for government agencies to support, participate

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Open Standards Organizations 2

• World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) http://www.w3.org

• Web3D Consortium http://www.web3D.org • Simulation Interoperability Standards

Organization (SISO) http://www.sisostds.org • Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)

http://www.ietf.org • International Standards Organization (ISO)

http://www.iso.org (often open, not always)

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Open Standards Organizations 3

• Object Management Group (OMG) http://www.omg.org

• Open GIS Consortium (OGC) http://www.opengeospatial.org

• Organization for Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) http://www.oasis-open.org

• Important to avoid: industry forums (cabals) that only have buy-in from a few big players

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W3C• “Leading the Web to its Full Potential”

http://www.w3.org

• Central authority for Web standards

• Many activities

• “W3C in Seven Points” http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Points Universal Access, Semantic Web, Trust,

Interoperability, Evolvability, Decentralization, Cooler Multimedia

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XML in 10 Points http://www.w3.org/XML/1999/XML-in-10-points

• XML is for structuring data• XML looks a bit like HTML• XML is text, but isn't meant to

be read• XML is verbose by design• XML is a family of

technologies

• XML is new, but not that new

• XML leads HTML to XHTML

• XML is modular• XML is basis for RDF and

the Semantic Web• XML is license-free,

platform-independent and well-supported

350+ member companies & institutions in World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)already understand the business case

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Web3D Consortium• “Open Standards for Real-time 3D

Communication”

• Extensible 3D (X3D) Graphics ISO standard for 3D on the Web

• 40 industry, 200 professional members

• Working groups, proven track record

• Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Policy

• http://www.web3D.org

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Extensible Modeling & Simulation Framework (XMSF)

• Web services for all manner of M&S• A composable set of standards, profiles, and

recommended practices for web-based M&S• Foundational precepts: Internet network technologies,

Extensible Markup Language (XML)-based languages, and service-oriented architectures for simple messaging

• Enable a new generation of distributed M&S applications to emerge, develop, interoperate with tactical systems

• Many easily repeatable exemplars using Web Services

http://www.MovesInstitute.org/xmsf

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Other XMSF projects• XML Tactical Chat (XTC)

• XML Overlay Multicast (XOM)

• IEEE Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) Protocol via XML, Web Services

• Under consideration: unlocking legacy Tactical Data Link (TDL) protocols

• C2IEDM/CBML semantic ontologies for battlespace descriptions, semantics

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Open Source

and Business Cases

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Open Source• Open for any use, without license fees• Free = freedom to innovate• Not necessarily free cost (unlike “free beer”)• Common shared example implementation(s)

Not a reference implementation – the specification/standard hopefully provides that

• Can provide a self-sustaining business model for continued activity, improvement

• Can break logjams when company participants can’t resolve technical issues

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Open source organizations, references

• Gnu Free Software Foundation (FSF) http://www.gnu.org Especially important for licenses

• Open Source Initiative (OSI) http://www.opensource.org

• Andrew M. St. Laurent, Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing, O'Reilly 2004. http://www.oreilly.com

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Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)

• W3C and Web3D have similar policies

• Any known patented technology must be declared by members prior to consideration by working groups

• Any patented technology contributions must be licensed on a royalty-free (RF) basis for inclusion in an openly used Web standard

• Caveat: any legal problem can be solved, but only in advance

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Open Source Licenses• Necessary to protect access and ownership

clearly so any other parties can use code Also prevents hostile patenting by third party

• Various similar licences available Gnu: GPL, LGPL, etc. http://www.gnu.org FreeBSD http://www.opensource.org Electronic Frontier Foundation http://www.eff.org

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Business models with Open Source 1

• Contributions can continue regardless

• Independent of access restrictions

• No lock-in to single product or vendor Not vulnerable to market ups & downs, which

might block everyone from product access Some vendors don’t like this… right up until

someone else wins the contract renewal! Protects sponsor from possibly fatal problems Specific products don’t scale with Web anyway

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Business models with Open Source 2

• Service oriented business approaches Can provide products or services, adding value Multiple complementary efforts possible

• Benefits individual programmers/teams Expert knowledge & skills not held hostage Availability of experts helps companies too

• Succinct synopsis: is the government buying or renting the code? Decide up front, or risk blocking completion

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Dealing with classified simulations 1

• Most classified information includes specific performance parameters, or place/time data Algorithms are typically not classified

• Parameter values often openly available Federation of American Scientists www.fas.org U.S. Naval Institute www.usni.org Janes’ Fighting Ships www.janes.com DoD news photos

http://www.defenselink.mil/photos Many other sources

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Dealing with classified simulations 2

• Must carefully include metadata giving precise credit to any unclassified resources used

• Best is to have an unclassified scenario Work is able to proceed most rapidly Separate source code from content

• Classified scenarios simply modify the parameter data files Code changes are reported back to the outside

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Tools enabling project-team success 1

• Email list with hypermail archives Newcomers welcome, also can backtrack topics

• CVS or similar concurrent versioning system Frequent updates maintaining working code See principles of Extreme Programming (XP) Easy, and (once set up) it works very well

• Bugtracking system such as Bugzilla Focused dialog on problems and improvements

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Tools enabling project-team success 2

• Join, participate in standards organizations

• May need a technical architecture group Meritocracy of core committers, experts Heavy hand not needed, good ideas rise to top

• Test cases, conformance suite Sometimes challenging, definitely essential

• Auto-installers, examples for regular users

• Daylight encourages good behavior!

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Summary• Open standards & open source for success

• Complements legacy approaches, traditional “hierarchical stovepipes,” provides stability

• Win-win approach for government, industry Both wins are needed for program success

• Standards organizations, IPR agreements provide a stable playing field for long term

• Questions and collaboration welcome

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Contact

Don Brutzman

brutzman@nps.edu http://web.nps.navy.mil/~brutzman

Code USW/Br, Naval Postgraduate SchoolMonterey California 93943-5000 USA

1.831.656.2149 voice1.831.656.7599 fax