The European Dimension of FLOSS Emerging FLOSS Practices ... › archive › docs › hl ›...

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TitleIn this presentation ...

The FLOSS PhenomenonGlobal context: FLOSS myths and realities

The (European) FLOSS landscapeFLOSS in Education

European FLOSS projects

The European Dimension of FLOSSEmerging FLOSS Practices in Europe:

Implications for Business, Education, andResearch

Sulayman K. Sowe {[email protected]}UNU-MERIT. Maastricht, The Netherlands

Conference on Free Software in Education and EconomyDonau Universitt Krems, Austria

Tuesday 27th April, 2010

Conf. on FLOSS in Education and Economy. Donau Univ. Krems The European Dimension of FLOSS ([email protected])

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The European dimension of Free / Libre / Open SourceSoftware (FLOSS)...

1 The FLOSS phenomenon.2 Global context: FLOSS myths and realities.3 The (European) FLOSS landscape:

Some FLOSS Conjectures and RefutationsEurope’s strategic FLOSS positionFLOSS Impact (Direct & Indirect)FLOSS Adoption and Utilization trendsBusiness and Policy

4 FLOSS in Education:Bazaars of learningFormal vs informal education

5 European funded FLOSS projects.


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Internet and software development viewBusiness & Knowledge view

The FLOSS Phenomenon -1

1 Internet realitiesInfrastructure for global connectivityTools for communication and coordination of GlobalSoftware Development (GSD)


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1 Paradigm shift in software development practices (Sowe,et. al., 2007)

Software can be developed and maintained by a communityof volunteers (Cathedral vs Bazaar style of development).Time can be saved through software reusing,Why (”re-inventing the wheel”) develop a system/applicationfrom scratch?


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1 Business realities (models)Opportunities for ecology of distributors/vendors vs soleownership to alleviate vendor lock-in.Time is costs money. Technologies needs to be deployedfast, on time and within budgetSoftware as [is] a service (SaaS). Boon of CloudComputing Infrastructure?


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1 ”New” software knowledge viewSoftware knowledge should be ”free”?Knowledge hoarding vs knowledge sharing.Community/public domain increases the innovative base ofthe software.


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FLOSS MythsFLOSS Realities

[Justifiable] Believes or myths about FLOSS

1 Thousands of people with babbling agendas can’t makegood software (Is Brook’s law1 still valid?),

2 FLOSS is all about Linux and technically difficult (hackerand Savvy ethics),

3 FLOSS is not reliable and secure.

1Mythical Man-Month, 1975Conf. on FLOSS in Education and Economy. Donau Univ. Krems The European Dimension of FLOSS ([email protected])

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[Justifiable] Believes or myths about FLOSS

1 FLOSS is not for mission critical infrastructure (space,defense, banking and finance),

2 you can’t generate revenue from software which is ”free”(FLOSS),

3 you can’t educate generations with FOSS methodology.


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Global Realities

Distrowatch lists over 300 GNU/Linux distros, Ubuntuleading with 2671 HPD.


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The Gartner Inc. report (2008)85% of companies/enterprises in Asia/Pacific, Europe andNorth America (N=274) are using FLOSS15% expecting to in the next 12 months69% of companies surveyed had no formal policy forevaluating and cataloguing FLOSS usage

Through 2013, 90% of all cloud computing providers willrely on FLOSS to deliver products and services.


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Linux foundation survey (N=20,000)57.5% running Windows on their desktops/clients40.6% Linux as operating system of choice.53.3% use Linux on development platform, as server(39.2% departmental, 38.1% enterprise, 55.2% in webservers)


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FLOSS Conjectures and RefutationsEurope’s strategic FLOSS positionFLOSS ImpactFLOSS Adoption and Utilization trendsPolicy & Standards

Conjectures and refutations

Europe is early adopter + large FLOSS developer and userbaseFLOSS research institutions, projects, foundations, e.g.

Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) for advocacy andsupport.OBOOE.eu: Bringing companies and organisations usingFLOSS products closer together.The Open Source Observatory and Repository forEuropean public administrations (OSOR)


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Conjectures and refutations

Europe hosts more FLOSS conferences & workshops peryear (39 papers out of 64 for http://oss2010.org/ ; USA(11)).

Adopting FLOSS procurement police

Firms have positive FLOSS attitude and adoption trends

Universities employing FLOSS-based pedagogies


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Europe’s strategic FLOSS position


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European FLOSS Developers by country

1 Most of the FLOSS developers at SourceForge are fromEU countries (Source: Robles & Barahona, 2006)

2 12 EU countries in the top 20 worldwide

# Country Developers # Country Developers

1 USA 425620 11 India 221132 Germany 95800 12 Brazil 212913 UK 60768 13 Russian 190124 Canada 49109 14 Spain 189055 France 44587 15 Japan 150816 China 36517 16 Poland 146977 Australia 31812 17 Belgium 139838 Italy 30763 18 Switzerland 121339 Netherlands 29335 19 Austria 1002410 Sweden 23867 20 Denmark 9952n ... ... ... ... ...


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FLOSS Developers by Region

3 However, most of the FLOSS developers at SourceForgeare from North America followed by the EU (Source:Robles & Barahona, 2006)

Region # of developers

North America 485,679Europe 466,792Asia 127,275Oceania 46,422South America 36,330Africa 12,560


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Direct Impact

The UNU-MERIT FLOSS Impact Study shows...

Market share (OS and PCs) and penetration higher andcontinue to grow in Europe than in the US, followed byAsia.

FLOSS adoption is largely driven by SMEs.

FLOSS applications in use would cost firms almost Euro12 billion to reproduce.


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Direct Impact

FLOSS firms creates about 565 000 jobs and generateabout Euro 263 billion in annual revenue.

FLOSS related services could reach a 32% share of all ITservices by 2010

FLOSS related share of the economy could reach 4% ofEuropean GDP by 2010.


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FLOSS usage in Europe by Industry

Economic and sectoral impact


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Dominant FLOSS applications in Europe

Category killer applications (OS & Servers)


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Indirect Impact

FLOSS potentially saves industry over 36% in softwareR&D investment.

FLOSS increases the value and supports the ICTinfrastructure which has about 10% share of EuropeanGDP.


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Indirect Impact

Increasing investment on FLOSS from 20% to 40% wouldlead to a 0.1% increase in annual EU GDP growth (overEuro 10 billion annually).

Europe’s investment in FLOSS software today is Euro 22billion (36 billion in the US) representing 20.5% of totalsoftware investment (20% in the US).


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Some European FLOSS Cases -1

On average, 3-5 FLOSS adoption cases are reportedevery month.

Country/Institution Activity DriverEU The European Space

Agency (ESA) to hostrepository for FLOSS spacedomain

Technical capability

EU IDABC projects (osor.eu), fi-nance initiatives, support

Cost, freedom, innovation,interoperatibility

Austria (Weiz) desktop4eduation Freedom, educational, costand innovation

Sweden National police migrate toFLOSS

Cost


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Some European FLOSS Cases -2

Country/Institution Activity DriverSpain and Netherlands Univ. Oberta de Catalunya

+ OU of NL to start MScin FLOSS. The Extremaduracase

Education, sustainability &technology independence

Estonia Government publish FLOSStools for hackers

Transparency

Italy CCOS in Perugia Univ Academic, reusability tosupport public admins

Denmark OO adoption in Dovre mu-nicipality

Cost, alternative

Germany Munich adoption case Cost, alternative, innovationFrance DGFP adopts Mozilla thun-

derbirdCost, alternative, innovation

Turkey Government funds the Par-dus (Turkey-OS)

Freedom, localization


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FLOSS Federated Forge for EU public administrations


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Top 10 project in OSOR.eu (2199 projects) 20/04/2010

Project DownloadsSEXTANTE 72051gvSIG desktop 34353WollMux 31977Interfaage AgrGe 8102NavTable 2664lesoll 1947PortableSigner 1588KMKey 1548A-Select 1132ODFPY 1080


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FLOSS policies and standards

FLOSS (procurement) policies and standards arenecessary

to provide a level playing field and increase competition forFLOSS (ICT) vendors and service providersto support and improve interoperability and transparency


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FLOSS policies and standards

More EU countries have adopted Open Document Format(ODF) for their public sectors (ODF Alliance) than anyother region.

Netherlands public bodies to use FLOSS and OpenStandards from May 2008.Denmark public bodies to start using ODF from April 2011.

The European Interoperability Framework (EIF) whenimplemented will promote interoperability between publicbodies in Europe, with a view to delivering "pan-EuropeaneGovernment services"


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FLOSS opportunities for educationFLOSS Teaching and Learning ModelParadigm shift in SE teaching & learningLessons learnt from pilot studiesFormal vs Informal Education

Foreseen benefits for education

Low cost technology to support IT infrastructure. Mostlyback-ends: Apache server, MYSQL/PostgreSQLdatabases, mailservers (Mailman). Although MicrosoftSQL Servers still dominate the educational sector.

administrational duties in Wordprocessing, Browsers(Firefox), email clients (Thunderbird).


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Foreseen benefits for education

Methodology to improve pedagogy. From Capestoneprojects to students projects in the bazaar

Educational content and resources (OER) through the useof Learning Management Systems (Moodle, Dokeos,E-Class, etc)

Provide meaningful learning for students


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Model for involving students in FLOSS projects


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Pilot studies & Testing in the bazaar


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Summary of what students said

Nice to hear –”keeping the teacher in me happy”

Very interesting experience- Realistic conditions - Foundsomething new, projects, software, communities, etc. -Experiencing dual-boot (Linux-Windows), using differentOperating Systems - Self-esteem: Know the people behindtheir software and talk to them - Freedom, work when andwherever they want - Select their own choice of learning,project - Communicate and met some new people - See theircontribution appreciated and online in projects -Encouragement from people they don’t know.


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Summary of what students said

Not so nice to hear–”reflect, adjust, accommodate”

Finding project was hard, Software was not running asexpected

No interesting project or software

Community was not responsive, Community size Not equalto # of responses

Anxiety syndrome: will i pass/ get good grades?

Extra effort(reading, browsing, learning about project)needed before start

Teaching = perseverance + long hrs online. Lecturer=”Internet-Based Facilitator”.


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FLOSS in education

For Software Engineering & Computer Scienceeducation: give students ”significant real-world basisnecessary to enable effective learning of SE skills andconcepts” (IEEE/ACM, SE2004).

FLOSS projects are bazaars of learning that offer ameaningful learning context (Sowe, et. al., 2006-2010)


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FLOSS in education

For students:1 opportunity to work on what they consider interesting.2 have real-world experience in dealing with large software

projects in GSD environments.3 engage in GSD practices beyond prescribed semesters and

even after they graduateCapestone projects vs projects in the Bazaar.

For teachers:Fait accompli, keeping the ”teacher in me” happy !


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FLOSSMETRICSSQO-OSSFLOSSCOMOther European funded FLOSS projects

FLOSSMETRICS (http://flossmetrics.org/)

Where is the info about the process, productivity, andquality of FLOSS?FLOSSMetrics benchmarks over 2800 projects andprovides tools and methodologies for Industry, SMEs, etc.


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SQO-OSS (http://www.sqo-oss.eu/)

Software Quality Observatory for Open Source Software orSQO-OSS.An integrated and comprehensive suite of software qualityassessment tools (Alitheia Core) and benchmarking ofFLOSS.Aims to assist European software developers in improvingthe quality of their code.


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FLOSSCOM (http://www.flosscom.net/)

Identify best practices in informal learning (FLOSS)communities which can be applied to education.

Provide case studies, scenarios and guidelines forteachers and decision makers.


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FLOSSInclued (http://www.FLOSSinclude.org/): FLOSScollaboration between Europe, Asia, Latin America, andAfrica.

FLOSSWORLD (http://FLOSSworld.org/): FLOSSSurveys, News, Advocacy on the use, deployment anddevelopment of FLOSS outside Europe and NorthAmerica.

Qualoss (http://www.qualoss.org/): methodology forFLOSS certification, quality attributes.


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QualiPSo (http://www.qualipso.org/): Processes andpolicies implementation to facilitate the development anduse of FLOSS.

Mancoosi (http://www.mancoosi.org/): Develop tools forthe FLOSS system administrator (EDOS-packagemaintenance), implementation of novel algorithms andtools.

SELF (http://selfproject.eu/): Educational, open standardsand FLOSS knowledge creation and sharing.


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End of presentation

Thank you very much for your attention

Questions and comments welcome


The European Dimension of FLOSS Emerging FLOSS Practices ... › archive › docs › hl ›...

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