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SLEASE ESSAY
Open vs ClosedInvestigation into the benefits and
detriments of openness of software forpublic sector organisations
Murray Wilson
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Introduction
Open source software (OSS) is software that’s source code and other rights normally reserved
for the copyright holder meets the Open Source Definition of is in the public domain. This
means that anyone can use, change, modify and redistribute it in its modified or un-modified
form. [1]
This essay is going to investigate the benefits and detriments of OSS if used by public
sector organisations. These organisations include government, local government, public
healthcare organisations etc.
Information in these sectors can be, and is usually, confidential and sensitive. Such
information held can include the public’s health records, financial records, bank information,
religious and ethnic information among others. As a result the software that these
organisations use has to be secure and well protected. This report will also look into whether
OSS can provide a suitable level of protect based on these facts.
The question whether open or closed software is better has been a long foughtbattle. There are many different people and sectors that use software and whose’needs are totally different. The public sector holds vast quantities of sensitivedata that needs a high level of protection and security. So the question stands is
OSS the right thing for these organizations or should they remain with closedsource software. There’re many benefits for both open and closed as well asdetriments. Security for closed software is fairly tight and has a professionaldevelopment team working to find bugs but fights against a huge communitytrying to break their software, whereas on the other hand OSS has the sameamount of people trying to find bugs to break the software but has a hugebacking of people looking for bugs to fix. Other problems that the public sectorface is cost and the correct use of the tax payers money and OSS is very cheapcompared to closed, however the reliability issue still stands and with closedsoftware you are paying for a fixed level of quality.
The question whether open or closed software is better has been a long
fought battle. There are many different people and sectors that use
software and whose’ needs are totally different. The public sector holds
vast quantities of sensitive data that needs a high level of protectionand security. So the question stands is OSS the right thing for these
organizations or should they remain with closed source software.
There’re many benefits for both open and closed as well as detriments.
Security for closed software is fairly tight and has a professional
development team working to find bugs but fights against a huge
community trying to break their software, whereas on the other hand
OSS has the same amount of people trying to find bugs to break the
software but has a huge backing of people looking for bugs to fix. Other
problems that the public sector face is cost and the correct use of the
tax payers money and OSS is very cheap compared to closed, howeverthe reliability issue still stands and with closed software you are paying
for a fixed level of quality.
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The simplest way to discuss the pros and cons of open and closed software is to look
at what makes up both of these types of software and relate them to public sector
organisations. For this reason when evaluating the benefits and detriments of OSS the Open
Source Definition will be used (details of the Open Source Definition will follow in the next
section).
Introduction into Open Source Software
In order to determine whether a piece of software can be considered as open source, an
organisation call the Open Source Initiative (OSI) has compiled a list of ten criteria which the
piece of software must comply with. This list is called the Open Source Definition (OSD). [2]
The list of criteria is as follows;
• Free distribution
• Must include source code
• Derived works
• Integrity of the authors source code
• No discrimination against persons of groups
• No discrimination against fields of endeavour
• Distribution of licence
• Licence must not be specific to a product
• Licence must not restrict other software
• Licence must be technology-neutral
However it is a common myth that open source software is automatically freeware. OSS
can be sold on like normal but once a person has bought it they are free to do whatever they
wish with that software, including copying it and selling it on themselves. This is covered in
the GNU GPL (General Public Licence). [3]
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However most OSS is free to download making it quite popular with the general
public, or those who know about such software. Some businesses however remain rather
dubious about OSS as they may find it to be either damaging the market of commercial
software or dubious about the direction the software produces and their future, as the
software has no proper financial backing. These software developers do however tend to offer
training courses for their software which companies can send their staff to for a fee. This is
where OSS developers generally make their money.
Benefits and detriments of open source software
There are many things that organisations within the public sector look for when choosing
software. Is it reliable? Does it have ample security measures? What does it cost? Are the
software developers reliable? These organisations would normally look to proprietary
software as it is generally made by businesses that have substantial financial backing to
update and maintain the software packages.
However in February 2009 the British government published a policy that aimed at
promoting OSS in the public sector. [4] A ten point action plan was drafted to show the areas
that the government were going to concentrate on, which included “It will also work with
systems integrators and software suppliers to open up their solutions to meet open standards,
to include open source and facilitate re-use”, “The CIO Council will regularly assess open
source products for their maturity and recommend those that meet agreed criteria.” and
“Government purchasers will use a standard OGC approved OJEU clause to make clear that
solutions are purchased on the basis that they may be re-used elsewhere in the public sector.”.
The main reason for this move was to save the taxpayer’s money.
This is one of the top benefits of OSS. The software itself is usually free to download
and use, which is a very important factor. Budgeting for public sector organisations can be
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very tight and extremely large sums of money can be spent on purchasing licensed software.
This also means that multiple copies of a program and be distributed to many departments
around such organisations. The public can also see the software that their services are
utilising which can inspire more trust within the community, which is a positive boon for any
public organisation.
One of the main problems for organisations in the public sector is keeping any
information they hold secure. These organisations hold very sensitive personal information
such as bank details and health records; things that the public would not like to go missing or
fall into the hands of the wrong people. As such security is one of the top priorities for such
organisations when choosing software.
Among the list of criteria in the OSD is that the source code of the software must be
publically available and free for modification. This can be related to security and can be both
a positive and a negative. Software that is new will have comparatively the same number of
bug to another new piece of software, be it open or closed source. A piece of software that is
bought and that isn’t open source will have a small development team looking for bugs
compared to the masses of online users that will be looking for ways into the software and
find bugs that they can take advantage of and use maliciously, such is the nature of the online
world. In the case of open source although there would be the same number of people looking
for bugs to take advantage of, there is a much larger group of people looking for bugs and
reporting them and developing fixes. This whole area has been labelled as “No security
through obscurity” or “Security through transparency”. [5]
Of course the negative to this is that the group of people who are out looking for bugs
in OSS who will develop fixes are in essence volunteers so the their efforts could be seen as
lax compared to the efforts that software engineers of large software companies would
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generally put in. Of course this may not be true but it is something that public sector
organisations will pay close attention to.
One other area that will be of great importance to public sector organisations is the
reliability of both the software and its distributor. Software that is developed by software
firms, such as Oracle or Microsoft, will have regular updates and the companies have to keep
their software maintained in order to remain in the market. This is a great benefit of
proprietary software as well as the financial backing that such companies have to constantly
update their software to a high standard. The drawback is that such companies (even big ones
like Microsoft) will have a small number of people producing such updates.
OSS on the other hand has a totally different benefit. It has a vast number of people
producing updates and modifications to the software so problems can be found faster and so
therefore updates can, and generally do, happen at a more constant rate. However the
drawback to this is that the people producing such updates are, as previously described,
volunteers and so the quality of updates can be questionable.
Conclusion
This report has investigated the pros and cons of the use of OSS within organisations of the
public sector, such as government, local government, health services, educations etc. Such
benefits include its cheapness to procure, which is a major factor in the choosing of software
for such organisations, the reliability of the software and its developers and the security
aspects of the software. However drawbacks have also been discovered such as the lack of
financial backing of the producers of OSS and the image that OSS is developed by common
people and not businesses looking to produce quality software for the market place.
The pros and cons of closed or proprietary software has also been looked into and the
concept of “security through transparency” or “no security through obscurity” has been
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investigated. It has been show that although companies developing software for the market
that don’t share their code has a safe guard against people with malicious intent, they are still
a very small team looking for bugs fighting against a very large community. This is the
opposite in the case of OSS as the two communities (those looking for bugs to make fixes
and those looking for bugs to take advantage of them) are of a fairly similar size and so bugs
can be found and taken care of at a quicker pace.
A brief look into what OSS is has also been included, with information of the Open
Source Initiative (OSI) and the Open Source Definition (OSD). The OSD is the list of criteria
that software needs to comply too in order to be classified as open source. The difference
between OSS and freeware has also been briefly described.
What I have learnt
I have learnt a great deal about open source software during the course of this report. I have
always been one for using software that has been developed by well established firms as I
like the peace of mind that there is always support for the software I am using and don’t mind
having to spend money for this privilege. As research for this report progressed I was
surprised to discover that the laws involved with OSS are well established and that their
growing reliability has resulted in a gain in popularity.
I have also been one for not fully, if at all, trusting the general public and a piece of
software developed by them and updated by them is not something I would generally bring
myself to own. Yet again I was to find that even the government was starting to see OSS as
an alternative or addition to the software that they used.
In my ignorance I always thought that open source meant free. I was surprised to
discover that open source meant nothing of the sort and that such software could be sold and
the level of law that was established for this. The GNU GPL and the OSD are very well
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documented and structured pieces of legislation, and I never knew anything of the sort was
about for OSS.
References
[1] http://www.opensource.org/ Introduction to OSS (checked 01 Dec 2009)
[2] http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php Open Source Definition (checked 01 Dec
2009)
[3] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html General Public Licence (checked 01 Dec 2009)
[4] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/25/gov_open_source/ News article (checked 01 Dec
2009)
[5] John P. Loughlin, Security Through Transparency: An Open Source Approach to Physical
Security, Journal of Physical Security 3(1), 1‐5 (2009) found on
http://jps.anl.gov/Volume3/Paper1_Loughlin.pdf (checked on 01 Dec 2009)