Open Source Session Proceedings
28 people participated
Carl Bunje introduced.
Bruce Perens has been retained by The Open Group to develop an open source strategy for The Open Group.
Quote from BP from Cannes:
Questions to the participants --- of around 30 attendees:
Graham Bird
The Open Group management had endorsed an intitiative to see what The Open Group could do in the open source space.
Business confidence was key.
Foundations:
Possible activities:
Walter:
(Continuity from Cannes.) Walter replayed a slide from the Cannes meeting and summarized the output form there.
Open Source is different from COTS from recognized vendors. Making Open Source ready for consumption in enterprise is non-trivial.
Objectives for this session:
Open Source in the enterprise today
Tomorrow?
Many areas are not worth differentiating over. These "common" areas can stay alive with Open Source.
Today's Agenda
Open Source in Enterprise Arch
Open Discussion
Each attendee was asked to write down in respect of Open Source:
Elaine Babcock on behalf of the Open Group User Council would synthesize and present the results at the BOF that evening.
Terry Blevins
BP: For TCO, surveys in both directions. Chad Robertson of Chad Robertson group.
?: Security could be opened up to Open Source.
CarlB: Critical there that some kind of certification and criteria
?1: Clarification - personal interests.
?2: Also need a trusted distribution source.
?3: First experience with The Open Group. Would like t understand that The Open Group can make progress with these issues. Business issues are critical. Top down id the bus imperatives and which can Open Source solve - and what then is the bus message for the CIOs and CEOs.
?4: company - moving to Open Source because over the years found a brain drain, Open Source can attract skills. Concerned about licensing costs, but all part of TCO. Also looking foe heterogeneous solutions, reduce our vulnerability to viruses etc. Our mgt very nervous about being cutting edge for email server, etc. - that should be commodity - they want to see others who have done it. One thing The Open Group could do is to collect and publicise Open Source. Make it seem mainstream rather than novel.
Jim Bell: Education can achieve a lot. Open source is used a lot today. Apache gives a lot of success stories.
?6: Open Source needs better media exposure - lot of success stories out there. Media that covers it is oriented to Open Source community. Need more exposure in Wall Street Journal etc.
CG: How can you in an arch context where you id arch BBs and then Solution BS, how can you reliably say these BBs can fit into our enterprise arch the same way as prop BBs. Need discipline in the way BBs are identified, change controlled etc. When you have create an architecture, can we get people to create Open Source components that fit in with needs?
What do we need to do to TOGAF? Nothing. TOGAF helps you select the components you need. You shouldn't need to change the structure of the arch tool.
WS: I was not thinking of any change tot the method - just the wider TOGAF documentation set. I agree with you.
Hitachi: Licensing is unclear - what happens when they embed business rules into Open Source. Are they obliged to release those rules into the public domain? Authorization - neutral profiles of open sources.
DJ: Personal - based on freedom of choice. IBM has made major contributions to Open Source movement. No hopes and expectations. How to combine Open Source and prop - we see our Eclipse framework - Open Source development environment - we differentiate by adding value - they remain prop.
CG: For several years wanted a BBIB - std format to store and access BBs. Not there yet. When we do, could be recorded in there.
?7: My first Open Group. Personally interested in Open Source methods and process. I have people who support legacy systems, COTS solutions, also STRUTS and JBOS - oil and water currently. Different processes. I am interested in - another wave coming forward.
CB: Definitely an opportunity for The Open Group - we have TOGAF method, top down view. Then the Open Source method is bottom up incremental improvement of some core piece, with some control over how that evolves and comes The Open Groupether. The opportunity is in the middle - how to do arch to id the needs and opportunities - from the Open Source side the opportunities.
Elaine's List:
WS: Show of hands for each of the main themes I see:
GB: How about an app platform that delivers apps the the enterprise? (~8)
CB: Any projects you might be interested in? E.g. Karl Schopmeyer could speak to Open Pegasus.
KS: Common mgt structure around manageability. Came to Open Source because we felt there was a solution in the standards but being implemented in closed source. Pegasus is now Version 2 - Open Source with heavy commitment from major suppliers.
?8: In some domains we need surety as to what the sw is doing - missile launches, nuclear reactors etc. Can someone supply tools that will give surety as to the behavior of these complex solutions.
WS:
Where from here? Can ask for leaders. Too early?
BP: Need more exploring. There are some important roles for The Open Group not elaborated yet. Will elaborate over next few weeks as I write a strategy paper for your review. Standards and standards policy. Govt - COE elements, more concrete. Continue hashing ideas, set up a mailing list.
CG: In the arch forum we have started to work with other consortia. Are there any other bodies sointeh worksl with whom we should establish relationships to do things in common way?
BP: Standards policy. E.g., 2 year association with W3C which presents challenges for Open Source.
WS: I would like to ask CG as chair of Arch Forum to write up guidelines?
CG: Anyone else in the forum want to comment?
?9: You need to be clear whether you mean the development process or finished Open Source components.
CG: More the former.
CarlB: In the sec forum there was talk of Open Source. Anyone from there here? We have
The Open Group published a GSS-API and Dascom did an implementation. Discussions of The Open Group implementing an Open Source implementation of GSS-API. Cancelled because Bob Blakely saw no bus case.
WS: Not ready yet to go ahead with something. Should take the time until the BOF and see if we can see there what comes forward.
?: Support that proposal. Would it include marketing by The Open Group of the initiative? Otherwise just an internal initiative.
It was clear the main consensus was on the business case. That one issue would break up into several related areas.
BP: Stormy and I have been involved in helping HP make its decision regarding its use of HP. This is the point of our company. Can work through The Open Group.
JJ: Don't know much about Open Source. I don't understand its long term bus value. From arch need to understand the value to bus, from a vision point of view. Might lead down the track of open architectures. TOGAF is a method for developing an architecture, but organizations build their own. If Open Source vision can give an architected approach that would be valuable. If we could have secure open architectures, that might capture the imagination of businesses.
WS: When you say open architectures, there is an open process, do you mean open source populated arch?
JJ: E.g. an org can say, our arch is open. Does the Open Source concept lead there?
? I have some slides about the bus case for deploying Open Source profitably.
BP: I get asked often where is Open Source going? Answer is everywhere. A massively parallel drunkard's walk, filtered by a Darwinian process.
BP: Business viability of Open Source is to reduce the cost of a sw profit centre. Open Source implementations are by their natures open architectures.
CB: Is that appropriate, when you have fixed objectives and timeframes driving you?
BREAK
HP's open source manager. Ensure that when Open Source is included in a product, the product managers concerned understand the legal issues etc.
Open source licenses are two kinds - reciprocal and non-reciprocal. The latter is what is generally meant these days.
Definition of Open Source:
Types of licenses
copyleft sw - comes with restrictions. E.g., GPL says you must ship your source code must be exposed ???
TB: Who interested in buy side? (5) Commercial side? (5)
?: How are you linking Open Source and standard?
BP: Open Source implementations tend to become de facto standards. Some are non-paper but nonetheless pervasive. E.g., bind's file format.
JimB: Overstatement that Open Source tend to because standard. Many 1000's don't. Blurring of the interfaces and the implementations. Building an Open Source platform - should be around the interfaces rather than just the products that are endorsed.
BP: E.g. many major Unix desktops are looking to get certified to the LSB....
DJ: Focus on value add - we had a lot code on an HTTP server. We picked up the Apache code, threw out our own, added value to it, and freed up resource to do other added value things. So in our experience that had been really value to us.
?: You need to define your community - may not be the Open Source development community. May be ISVs, partners.
CB: Also governance of the project once Open Source. What goes into the build?
What Are you Really Buying?
WS: There was talk of MS suing Open Source companies. What is happening?
Stormy: There would have to be a purpose.
BP: Does MS have a reason to sue? Yes, with intent to restrain - does not have to be to recover money. Whom? Well, HP and IBM are cross-licensed. But HP is MS' largest customer. And IBM has more patents than MS! What they can also do is FUD. Claim a big patent portfolio, threaten proceedings.
?: I think what Bruce is saying sums it up. I dot believe we will be going after any customers. You are pointing out there is a risk - and there with any software.
Stormy: Different than pharmaceuticals - can always rewrite the code.
HP's Open Source Process
Questions
Hitachi: Two kinds of users - 1 is source code licenser. What kind is HP?
S: If you make a kernel patch you have to ship it upstream - to developers - so we are always using the standard forming of Linux. If a product that we dot plan to maintain, get from so else, we want our patches to be accepted upstream.
BP: Apache a good case here - an X-like license. Companies would send all the changes to apache. Now IBM is a prop product on top of apache. Have not stopped sending back fixes on non-prop part. A Canadian firm built their KDE product on top of Linux, but retained until finished the product. KDE had progressed so far it was never possible to merge back. Generated ill-will.
KS: Push back for using multiple licenses?
BP: HP set up the Gilatto Consortium - donates money to universities to support Open Source development. Ther eare several paper s and books on opens source licensing, and most recommend the type of license I am talking about. There was a project some years ago to develop a single unified license and it failed.
CG: This discussion was very useful - more practical and useful than the evangelical material at Cannes.
WS: Will now analyze the conclusions for the BOF.
CB: Here were our prepared next steps.
CB: Perhaps we could set up a threaded discussion list - that would be one way forward.