Open Source3

Open Source Segev Levi – XlNet November 5th 2008

Agenda  Introduction  Glossary  Software  Licenses

 Benefits of Open Source  Disadvantages of Open Source  The trend  Summary

Intellectual Property Forms  Copyright  Legal Concept – “the right to copy”++  Term: life term + 50 or 70 years

 Trademark  Typically a name, word, phrase, logo, symbol, design, image  May be neglected, misused or commonly used  Google, Frigidaire, Lego, Kleenex

 Patent  Restricts making, using, selling, offering to sell or importing  Term – typically 20 years  Mostly used for defensive reasons

Software  Software is intellectual property!  Software License = contract between the software owner and licensee  Buying software typically means buying the right to use binaries – not becoming the owner of it  Freeware, Shareware, Public Domain, Open Source

Public Domain  The absence of any form of intellectual property  May be explicitly released to the public  Copyright term has expired  Trademark misused or otherwise neglected

Freeware  The licensee can use without paying a license fee  May be proprietary software  Source code may be provided (Linux)  Source code not provided (Adobe Acrobat)

 Not all Open Source software is free  Not all proprietary software is licensed for a fee

What Is Open Source?  Free access to the source code  Want to fix a bug? No problem.  Want to add a feature? No problem.  All under the license terms (may have to share or pay)

 What do we need the code for?  Someone can use it  Linus’s law  No security through obscurity

What Is Open Source?  Based on copyright under an open source license (not given away)  May or may not be used commercially (Big Brother, MySQL Backup Pro)  May be prohibited from charging royalties on derivative and larger work (more rare)  Provided AS-IS (no warranties)

Licenses - ???  http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/  http://opensource.org/docs/osd  http://opensource.org/licenses

OSS Advantages  Cost! – Generally no or low license fees  Source code availability with permission to make modifications  Access to a community (e.g. Apache  Reviewed by others  Bugs, security holes are found by others

 Better code (reviewed by others, remember?)  New features, ideas and innovation from others (notepad++, KeePass)  Open standards interoperability

OSS Disadvantages  No maintenance and support (unless purchased separately)  License term are not standard  No warranties Note: Purchasing OSS through a third party vendor will provide maintenance, support, some warranties etc. (e.g. Unisys)

The Trend  Gartner “The State of Open Source 2008 “ April 2008

 By 2012, more than 90 percent of enterprises will use open source in direct or embedded forms.  elements of open-source technology will be present in 80 percent of all commercial software by the year 2012  "Many open-source technologies are mature, stable and well supported"  "They provide significant opportunities for vendors and users to lower their total cost of ownership and increase returns on investment.  Ignoring this will put companies at a serious competitive disadvantage."  "Embedded open source strategies will become the minimal level of investment that most large software vendors will find necessary to maintain competitive advantages during the next five years."

The Trend cont’  Google, Facebook, Microsoft, plaxo join DataPortability.org  IBM, Sun, Yahoo, Mozilla, Comverse, Verint  Linux, Apache, JBOSS, MySQL, Firefox, Eclipse

Opensource Business Models  Dual Licensing (e.g. MySql)  GPL license for free. Pay money for more permissive license.

 Support Contracts  SLAs  Sell a warranty  All sorts of fixes

Conclusions  Understand the difference between proprietary, open source and freeware  Understand the legal, business and technical issues and create balance  Best value procurement  Understand and consider risks and benefits