Building free software with

For students at UiO Nov 15'thproject manager Knut Yrvin Nov 2005. Foils are GPL'ed

Based on Debian GNU/Linux

● A complete ICT-solution for the schools – network architecture out of the box– operational concept– digital user profile– OpenOffice and 75 user programs

● Made on our mother tongue with the schools curriculum in mind

● Made for the school budget

Skolelinux-project as an example

2

The basic idea

● Pupils interested in technical, under-the-hood things – could learn by example – from source code written by expert programmers

● Using our own mother thong when travelling on the information highway

● Get more ICT-equipment and programs, and less time with maintenance. More for less

3

ICT at school is really about:

● Using the system to send drawings to school classes in other countries. Learning to express, sharing and learn.

● The system is used to make music, to read, gather information or decode words (in lower grades).

● It's not about office-administration with 3-4 office-products!

4

Some characteristics ● Started as an voluntary effort 2. July 2001● Contribution is over 64.000 man-hours from

~ 200 developers, translators and writers from July 2001 until May 2004

● More than 14 developer gatherings with 20 until 190 participants– 11 in Norway with local Skolelinux-development

– 3 Internationally in Norway, Germany and Brazil

● The version system “is our project”

5

Who is behind Skolelinux(aka Debian-edu)

SLX Debian Labs (a foundation)

● A part of the Debian project

● 3-4 man years

A member organisation

● It's own border● 120 active developers● 30 over active developers● > 20 translators

6

> 250 Skolelinux-schools

Hardware vendors: its many more7

Maintenance cost 5 municipalities 2008

Nittedal Skolelinux

Hurum Skolelinux

Kongsvinger Skolelinux

Oslo Skolelinux Oslo Windows0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

IKT-kontakt, tjenester, opplæringOperatørkostnad

Kro

ne

r

Service support and service delivery, cost/PC

practical and technical issues involved in the sharing of applications

technology, licensing issues, and the role of the development community

Development methods

excluding the true power of F/OSS development ...

10Jonathan Grudin: The development of interactive systems http://www.ics.uci.edu/~grudin/Papers/IEEE91/IEEE91.html

Users identified

Developers identified

Developers identified

Users identified

Users identified

Developers identified

COMPETITIVELY BIDCONTRACT DEVELOPMENT

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

IN-HOUSE ANDCUSTOM DEVELOPMENT

Time ProjectStart

SystemDelivered

The distance between developer and user

Where does user participation goes?

Software development

The early days

Developer

User

Developer

User

Mediator

Developer

User

Mediator

Mediator

Mediator

Today

Developer

User

Mediator

Mediator

Mediator

Mediator

Mediator

Mediator

Mediator

Bridging the gap between developer and user

It's a social organizational issue, and a licensing issue where traditional software-development and proprietary contracts don't support what's in the users interest.

You get a world of mediators

The users and developers interests are marginalized

The ownership to the code

The licence regulates the development process

development and tailoring from user requirement (what you are programming) ...

code with a user friendly license

FreeBSD can lead to loss of the right to reuse, and prohibits some possibilities to merge code

+

-

Made for reuse

LGPL allowes linking to proprietary code

Work and code can be sold

LGPL/GPL ensures reuse

Shared Source MS CE Licence 1.0

development and tailoring from user requirement (what you are programming) ...

Microsoft has sole right to sell your work

They can demand that you give them your work if they want it

You have to work for MS with no pay

-

Use and throw

Prohibits linking to source-code from other parties with other licences

You aren't allowed to sell your work or your code

What's in it for me?

Reuse

Purchasing proprietary software

Developmentwith use and

throw solutions

Reuse

Developmentwith reused software

Purchasing proprietary software

Increase the opportunities for makingsystems that the users ask for

Proprietary value chain The free value chain

Narrow the distance between developer and user

Reintroduce user participation

Software development

Developer

User

Today

Developer

User

Mediator

Mediator

Mediator

Mediator

Mediator

Mediator

Mediator

The future

Faster, Better, and Cheaper Free/Open Source Software Development (F/OSSD) often entails shorter development times that can produce higher quality systems, and incur lower costs than may be realized through developing systems according Software Engineering (SE) techniques. [...]

Internet time and F/OSSD projects also tend to produce incremental software releases at a much faster rate, even to the point of releasing unstable but operational daily system builds. This denotes not only a reduction in product release cycle times compared to SE practice, but also a significantly restructured life cycle process and process cycle time reduction.

Walt Scacchi from Institute for Software Research University of California, Irvine

http://www.ics.uci.edu/~wscacchi/Papers/New/Scacchi-BookChapter.pdf

18

When the negotiators focuses on shrink wrap licence discounts

● They ignored the rest of the software life-cycle, that cost at least 95% of the ICT-budget

● They do not shown any interest in the user requirements – that pretty obvious when excluding competitive bids, and costume development

● They really discriminate on business-models, and favourites shrink wrap products purchasing from proprietary companies as e.g Microsoft

The ICT-staff really says: yes, we pay more and get less

we don't involve in the users demands19

two disturbing observations

● The ICT-staffs that is not saddling up with competence to handle Open Source has to cut their staff with the cost of proprietary licences (about 10-15% cuts in staff in Akershus county council). Why didn't they do anything two years ago?

● The politician will take control and dismiss the Microsoft friendly advice from the ICT-staff. This will be done almost solely as a budget question. Often the the politicians is agreeing on this unanimously from the left to the right of the political scale - and then ICT-staff ask us what to do ...

20

We told EU this in Jun 2004, in Jun 2005 the politician took control

Real F/OSS effort is about● Using the F/OSS development methods and

tools – It costed us dearly when the County Councils did not

release the OpenOffice-translations

● Using Purchasing Requirements that don't discriminate: Universal Design Requirements– You can't just say: We want open source, and then by

it as you did from your proprietary vendor

● Using Reference Implementations with running and maintained code (FEIDE is on sourceforge)– Please don't reinvent Open Source development

methods. You are not that good ...21

Have to obey● All code, translations and documentation has to be

committed to the Concurrent Versions System on Internet

● Bugs has to be committed to the bug-tracking system

● Commit everything upstream. That means release often running code

● Follow the licence-terms

● The person who does something decides

● Help people to help them selves

Do-ocracy22

Our experiences● More easy to organize open source projects

because of the openness, but: ● The negotiators for 530 public sector offices

and municipalities: «Your effort is the best documented, way ahead of the competitors, almost scientific – and you have the best price»

● But we could not use your service-model for software. You have to use Microsoft's business-model – selling shrink wrap-packages

This makes financing difficult23

Q & A

24

The most expensive part when introducing F/OSS

«The larges cost was to use time on convincing the persons govern the money – and other administrative persons that gave them advice»

Frode Stiansen, ICT-responsible teacher at Birkenlund primary school in the city of Arendal

25

Some observations● The Ministry of Education and Science recommended us

to make a competence centre - and the municipalities and county councils uses our expertise. We have delivered as expected

● The negotiators and the administration don't pay for our effort - and almost all our effort is privately founded through voluntary work or through NUUG Foundation

● We are in negotiations with private service-providers to ensure that costumers pays for the maintains of the architecture, security patches, and important updates

26