oss benefits

F/OSS Benefits

Jean-Bernard Stefani

INRIA Grenoble-Rhône-Alpes

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

Outline

1 General Benefits of Free/Open Source Software

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

3 Free/Open Source Software Infrastructure

4 F/OSS and Academia

5 Parting thoughts


Outline





5 Parting thoughts


Benefits of F/OSS (IT consultancy)

Flexibility and Freedomability to evolve solutions as business changes (esp. for infrastructurecomponents)freedom from vendor lock-in, single vendor syndrome

Supportfreedom to choose support supplier

ReliabilityLinus’Law: “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”

Stabilitymitigating “vendor-push”, freedom to stay

AuditabilityCost

often free as in “free beer”a function of other benefits

[source: http://open-source.gbdirect.co.uk]


Benefits of F/OSS (Soft. engineer)

No penalty on software qualityreliability, scalability, performance, security

No penalty on economic frontTCO, market share, support, innovation

Difficult-to-quantify benefitsFreedom from control by another (single source vendor)Protection from licensing litigation and management costsFlexibility to tailor productsInnovation through collective involvement and externalities of a sharedcommons

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


Benefits of F/OSS (US DoD)

Improved reliability and security“identification and elimination of defects through continuous and broadpeer-review”

Flexibility“enables rapid response to changing situations, missions and futurethreats through modifiable source code”

Freedom“reduces barriers to entry and exit”

Cost“rapid provisioning of known and unanticipated users throughnet-centric licensing model”“cost advantage when many copies of the software are required”“reduces TCO through shared manitenance costs”“particularly suitable for rapid prototyping and experimentation,through ability to test drive the software with minimal costs andadministrative delays”

[source: OSS memo 20091014 - Clarifying Guidance Rearding Open Source Software(OSS)]


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

Freedom, Flexibility and ControlConfiguration managementRevision Management and Product EvolutionProduct EnhancementsDebugging & Testing3rd party ToolingLicensing

Software qualityDebugging & TestingEvaluation & BenchmarkingSecurity

CostLicensing & UpgradingNo lock-in costs

[source: http://www.theaceorb.com/product/benefit.html]


Benefits of F/OSS

F/OSS benefits accrue from building a software commonsintrinsic value as “inputs to a wide range of productive processes”“positive infrastructure externalities benefiting society as a whole”

F/OSS benefits accrue from its economic incentivesFor individual contributors: signaling incentives, acquiring expertiseFor commercial firms: complementary symbiosis, disruptive positioning

F/OSS provides a foundation for transparent and accountableregulation

“open code is open control”

[sources:

B.M. Frischmann: An Economic Theory of Infrastructure and CommonsManagement

J. Lerner, J. Tirole: The Economics of Technology Sharing: Open Source andBeyond

L. Lessig: Code 2.0 ]


Outline





5 Parting thoughts


Generative devices

Paradigmatic example: natural languageFeatures of generative devices:

Leverage: ability to facilitate difficult endeavorsAdaptability: ability to be built on or modified to cope with changesEase of mastery: ability to be mastered for adoption and adaptationAccessibility: ability to be accessed for use and adaptationTransferability: ability to transfer changes to others

[source: J. Zittrain: The Future of the Internet]


Benefits of generative devices

Output benefit: innovationorganic change and innovationlow barriers to entry foster disruptive innovationenables user innovation

Input benefit: participationindividual expression and craftmanshipdecentralized and cooperative production


F/OSS as a generative device

Richard Stallman’s freedoms as the hallmarks of a generative deviceThe freedom to run the program, for any purpose

leverage, accessibilityThe freedom to study how the program works

accessibility, ease of masteryThe freedom to change the program

leverage, ease of mastery, accessibilityThe freedom to redistribute the program and its changes

accessibility, transferability


F/OSS benefits as generativity benefits

Innovationdisruptive F/OSS: e.g. Linux, MySQL, JBoss, JOnASuser innovation: e.g. Apacheorganic change and innovation: e.g. GCC, Linux

Participationuser-producer innovationbeyond signaling incentivesuser-producer ecosystems


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5 Parting thoughts


Code as Law

Sources of regulation and control

Finally, there are the constraints created by the technology of cigarettes, orby the technologies affecting their supply.7 Nicotine-treated cigarettes areaddictive and therefore create a greater constraint on smoking than untreatedcigarettes. Smokeless cigarettes present less of a constraint because they can besmoked in more places. Cigarettes with a strong odor present more of a con-straint because they can be smoked in fewer places. How the cigarette is, howit is designed, how it is built—in a word, its architecture—affects the con-straints faced by a smoker.

Thus, four constraints regulate this pathetic dot—the law, social norms,the market, and architecture—and the “regulation” of this dot is the sum ofthese four constraints. Changes in any one will affect the regulation of thewhole. Some constraints will support others; some may undermine others.Thus, “changes in technology [may] usher in changes in . . . norms,”8 and theother way around. A complete view, therefore, must consider these fourmodalities together.

So think of the four together like this:

In this drawing, each oval represents one kind of constraint operatingon our pathetic dot in the center. Each constraint imposes a different kind ofcost on the dot for engaging in the relevant behavior—in this case, smoking.The cost from norms is different from the market cost, which is differentfrom the cost from law and the cost from the (cancerous) architecture of cig-arettes.

what things regulate 123

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[source: L. Lessig: Code 2.0 ]Jean-Bernard Stefani (INRIA Grenoble) F/OSS Benefits 11/2009 15 / 23

Infrastructure software as intellectual commons

Freedom and transparencygovernment and market regulations in check“the best code is modular and open” (societal values)

Generativityinnovation and participation“the best code is modular and open” (production values)adaptability, accessibility, ease of mastery, leverage“the best code is modular and open” (soft. eng. values)


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5 Parting thoughts


F/OSS roles

Knowledgegenerative, cumulative, collectiveembodiments: design (architecture, patterns, etc), languages, tools,algorithmsobject of study and experiment

Standard“the code is the standard”embodiment and benchmark

Transfer vehicle


F/OSS as transfer vehicle

Seed softwareresearch product, innovative design or solutionbootstrap technical contributione.g. Fractal specification & Julia reference implementation

Federating research effortscommon frameworkorganic researche.g. Fractal toolset

Fostering development ecosystemsuser-producer collectivecommunity bootstrap & developmente.g. SOA developments in OW2


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


F/OSS as transfer vehicle

Promoting visibilityEasing disseminationFacilitating experiments & benchmarksSupporting maturation & strengtheningMinimizing costs (transactions), delaysEasing transitions from seed to productFacilitating R&D collective


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5 Parting thoughts


Parting thoughts

From J. Boyle “The Public Domain”

Larry Lessig and Yochai Benkler [...] point us to the dramatic rolethat openness — whether in network architecture, software, orcontent — has had in the success of the Internet. What is goingon here is actually a remarkable corrective to the simplistic notionof the tragedy of the commons, a corrective to the InternetThreat storyline and to the dynamics of the second enclosuremovement. This commons creates and sustains value, and allowsfirms and individuals to benefit from it, without depleting thevalue already created.


oss benefits

Technology

benets of foss foss

benets source

benets freedom

benets of foss soft

nature of foss

wholefoss benets

costs source

freedom ability