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Cooperation in developmentCooperation in developmentof Open Source Softwareof Open Source SoftwareMSIS meeting in Oslo 18-20 May 2009

Rune GløersenIT DirectorStatistics Norway

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Background

• Software developed by NSIs under commercial licensing terms

– PC-Axis, Blaise etc

• Vulnerable to strategic changes in the NSIs

• Success becomes costly

• What should be considered when moving to OSS ?

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Cooperativedevelopment,

adoption of CBMs and reuse

of software

Well defined StatisticalBusiness Process Model

Harmonised InformationArchitecture

Service OrientedIT Architecture

Cooperation within some defined frames

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Open Source Community Development

and Maintenance

Well defined StatisticalBusiness Process Model

Harmonised InformationArchitecture

Service OrientedIT Architecture

Cooperation within some defined frames

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Open Source Community

• Decide upon software development strategy and cooperation

• Establish organisation

• Decide upon type of F/OSS Licence

• Involvement of commercial companies

• End user administration

• Marketing

• Funding

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Open Source Community - responsibility

• Establish ownership/ partnership, sufficiently anchored within the participating organisations

• Establish organisation– Development team (roles)– Maintenance team (roles)– Ownership and commitment– Repository (Eurostat OSOR…)

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OSS Community

FundingPartner(s)

Consortiumcommittee

DevelopmentTeam

OSS

Repository

Interestedparties

Endusers

Services

Contributions

MaintenanceTeam

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The 10 roles in OSS development teams

• Developers (Coders)

• Packagers (Install, integrate)

• Artists (Graphical interfaces)

• Documentation writers

• Testers (Beta,…)

• Translators

• Support technicians

• Marketing advocates

• Users….

• Infrastructure providers (repositories etc)

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Legal aspects

• Decide upon type of F/OSS Licence– GPL, EUPL,… (Copyleft)– BSD, MIT, (derive as you like)– Dual License (OSS and commercial)– Differentiated licensing (GPL, LGPL)

• NSIs position fits well with theobjectives for OSS

• Prepare for added value from commercial business

– Contributors– Integrators– Value-added services

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Other aspects

• End user administration• Marketing

• Should be self-financed

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Funding

• First time development must always get targeted funds

• You need a success to establish a commercial product

• A roaring success becomes increasingly costly

• If you succeed to gain momentum, OSS will start to pay off

– Contributions