Guide to Open Source Software for Australian Government Agencies
Introduction
This guide is a complementary document to A Guide to ICT Sourcing originally published by the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) in May 2004 and since updated in September 2007.
The purpose of this guide is to provide Australian Government agencies with background information and processes to better understand, analyse, plan for and deploy open source software (OSS) solutions in appropriate situations. It is not intended to direct government users and agencies towards specifying open source technologies as part of their procurement practices. Decisions on the adoption of open source software should be made using the standard Australian Government criteria of fitness for purpose and value for money. See ‘Preparing a procurement plan’, for more detail.
Sourcing open source software
Open source software has various attributes that differentiate it from the traditional software procured by Australian Government agencies. These differences can be easily identified and described to enable agencies to better understand what changes (if any) to sourcing procedures may be required to accommodate OSS solutions.
In many respects, sourcing OSS is little different to sourcing traditional proprietary software (otherwise known as commercial or off-the-shelf software). In general, the processes and strategies defined in A Guide to ICT Sourcing apply to decisions about OSS. Where there are additional processes or differences in strategy, these are covered within this guide.
As open source procurement is relatively new to government, this guide provides background and explanatory material to assist agencies in better understanding the risks and opportunities involved in sourcing OSS. In addition, the appendices offer detailed information about OSS, including a detailed comparison of ‘open source’, ‘open standards’ and ‘open systems’.
A definition of open source software
Open source software is a type of computer software defined by several specific attributes that relate to its licensing and legal framework. Often it also involves a distinctive development and distribution model.
At present, the primary arbiter of what constitutes open source software is the Open Source Initiative[1]. The Initiative sets out various rights and obligations for developers, distributors and users of OSS. These rules define the basic licence conditions under which software must be released to be considered ‘open source’. These licence conditions give the users of OSS the right to:
- Use the software for any purpose;
- Make copies of the software for any purpose;
- Access or modify the source code of the software for any purpose; and
- Without payment of a royalty or other fee, distribute copies of:
- the software (including distributing the software as part of an aggregate distribution containing software from several different sources); or
- a derived or modified form of the software (either in compiled form or as source code), under the same terms as the licence applying to the software.
Source: www.opensource.org/documents/definition.php [
]
What is source code?
All software is written in what is known as source code. This refers to the underlying, human-readable programming instructions produced by software developers. In most circumstances, these programming instructions are compiled into what is known as binary or machine-readable code; this is the code that actually ‘runs’ or ‘executes’ on a computer.
A significant difference between proprietary software and open source software is that OSS developers make the source code available to anyone who wants access to it. In contrast, proprietary software vendors normally only release their products in binary form. In many circumstances, agency users do not need access to this source code, nor should they need to modify it for their specific requirements. Access to source code is, however, valuable to agencies by virtue of the economic flow-on effects that accrue when multiple vendors offer competing products based on the same technology. Access to source code also reduces the risk of vendor lock-in.
Open source software and commercial software
Open source software is often considered to be ‘non-commercial’. This is not necessarily the case. Most OSS used by government and industry is available under commercial terms for commercial purposes. It just happens to be released under a licensing scheme that allows free redistribution.
Open source software is available from a wide variety of commercial suppliers. This includes many vendors that also supply software and solutions based on proprietary software. Open source licences do not preclude commercial exploitation of the software.
In most circumstances, users do not pay software licence fees for open source software. However, commercial OSS vendors deliver open source products through a model where fees are charged for services rather than licences. See Appendix B, page 52, for further discussion of these issues.
Most open source software is also copyrighted by its author(s). However, open source licensing requirements give users additional rights and obligations, including the right to reproduce and redistribute the software.
The general differences between OSS and proprietary software are set out in Figure 1.
History and development of OSS
For many years, there has been a general trend in the information and communications technology (ICT) industry towards increasing openness of platforms, communication protocols and data storage formats. This trend has encouraged the rise of open systems technologies based on open standards. Any vendor that wished to participate could develop solutions based on these open standards (although sometimes they needed to pay for access to the standards). See Appendix B, “More about open source software”, page 52, for further discussion of these issues.
Open source software has existed in some form for over 20 years. However, it was only during the last five years that OSS technologies were widely adopted by the ICT industry.
In recent years, open source software has attracted strong interest from government agencies, the private sector, the ICT industry and independent software developers. OSS products have a number of unique characteristics that appeal to each of these constituencies.
OSS usage within government
Major ICT users in both the private and public sectors have used OSS products and solutions in specific areas for many years – with or without the ‘open source’ label attached. The use of OSS is particularly widespread in areas such as network infrastructure, single-purpose computer servers, security, Internet and intranet applications and network communications. At present, OSS tools are less widely used on computer workstations, laptops and desktop personal computers (PCs).
Increasingly, open source is expanding into other areas of ICT, both niche and mainstream. Contexts where OSS solutions are emerging as a common choice include:
- Network infrastructure: including software for domain name service (DNS), IP address allocation (DHCP), web services, application services, proxy servers, directories (LDAP), packet shaping and communications optimisation;
- Database servers: prominent open source database servers include Firebird SQL (formerly Interbase), Ingres, MaxDB (formerly Adabas), MySQL and PostgreSQL. In addition, many proprietary database servers are now available on open source operating systems;
- Security systems: including firewalls, intrusion detection and analysis, honeypots, IPSEC and other virtual private network (VPN) systems, packet-sniffing and analysis, antivirus software and anti-spam filtering;
- Internet and intranet publishing: including web servers, content management system (CMS) platforms and workflow management tools;
- Document management: including automatic electronic document capture systems, revision management systems, data capture technologies and archiving systems;
- Email and communications: including numerous solutions for email, general groupware (group calendaring, shared address books, reminders, public folders) and instant messaging servers;
- Application servers: including widely used web application servers based on PHP, Perl, Python and ZOPE scripting tools, Java and Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) servers such as JBOSS and the Mono and dotGNU .NET open source application servers. In addition, many proprietary application servers now run on open source operating systems;
- File and print servers: tools covering most major file sharing protocols, such as Unix NFS, Microsoft SMB/CIFS and Novell Netware NCP;
- Storage: several network-attached storage appliances are built primarily on open source platforms;
- Limited-function workstations: fixed-use workstations that provide basic web, email, terminal access and office productivity functionality for call centres, kiosks and similar uses;
- High-performance computing: this includes single-image systems with multiple microprocessors (vertical scaling), clusters based on large numbers of low-cost systems (horizontal scaling) and other types of supercomputers; and
- High-performance technical workstations: including multi-processor, 64-bit and large-memory systems for computation-intensive applications such as scientific analysis, meteorology, modelling, 3D computer-generated imagery (CGI) and video-processing functions.
Each agency must determine where open source software may have a role to play according to its own context and priorities.
Overview of the OSS industry
As open source platforms have entered the mainstream, larger independent software vendor (ISV) organisations have begun producing versions of their enterprise applications or systems technology that run on these platforms. Major outsourcing solution providers have also extended their support services to cover common open source software and platforms. However, the market for OSS solutions and services still tends to be dominated by smaller vendors.
Figure 2 provides a basic overview of the most common components of the OSS industry.
Larger vendors
One group of solution providers in the OSS space includes large, well-established hardware and software vendors as well as the largest ‘pure-play’ open source companies. The Australian Government has a track record of dealing with these larger vendors because of their national capacity and stable trading histories.
Established SME vendors
A second group consists of the more mature small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) operating in the open source space. Many of these are Australian-based companies. In addition, numerous mid-sized hardware and software vendors now offer open source solutions. These vendors often have extensive experience in dealing with government requirements.
The smaller players in this group include service providers and product vendors. Many offer broad levels of expertise across a range of open source technologies. Many have added their own functionality to open source software to create enhanced products. These products are delivered in the form of either targeted bundles of software and services (for example, content management systems, business intelligence software, line-of-business applications) or more general hardware-software bundles (for example, departmental groupware servers, firewalls, hardened gateways for wireless authentication and other appliances).
Established SMEs generally have enough experience in dealing with public sector organisations (often at a state or local level) to make procurement of solutions reasonably straightforward.
Boutique consultancies and SME vendors
The last group of vendors in the open source industry are smaller, specialist players. These organisations are predominantly focused on specific market segments or utilise a cluster of related open source technologies. These vendors may offer superior expertise in a nominated open source product. If an agency is interested in adopting that product, perhaps through in-house acquisition, it may be advantageous to formulate a process to obtain technical support from a specialist vendor.
The Australian open source industry
Australia’s OSS industry is still in a formative phase. At present, there are an estimated 300 to 400 local small-to-medium solution providers that specialise in open source software[2].
The majority (over 90%) of these are smaller players with less than five staff. A handful are slightly larger (around 30 staff) while none have more than 100 staff at the time of publication. These vendors are also geographically localised, offering points of presence and support around specific state capitals or regional centres. Very few have national presence at this stage.
A majority of these firms have been in business for less than five years. Few have been in business for more than ten years.
[1] Open Source Initiative: www.opensource.org.
[2] Data in this section is drawn from analysis of firms who are members of the Open Source Industry Australia, a broadly based industry group. See OSIA website: www.osia.net.au.
Contact for information on this page: SourceIT@finance.gov.au