when architecture and open source collide

WHEN ARCHITECTURE AND OPEN SOURCE COLLIDE

!AGENDA

Religious debate

Bashing of proprietary software company

Deep dive in to a particular open source project

Open source hardware

AGENDA Definition, Licensing & players

Open source based architecture examples

Best practices

ROI, TCO and other TLA

Open source tools for architecture

Want to be an open source developer?

Future FOSS trends

You get to pick the agenda!

WHAT IS OPEN SOURCE

The freedom to run the program, for any purpose

The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs

The freedom to redistribute copies

The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public.

FREE SPEECH NOT FREE BEER

OPEN SOURCE LICENCES

Copyleft – anyone can reproduce, adapt or distribute the work as long as any resulting copies are also bound by the same copyleft licensing scheme.

Non-copylefted -copies or modified versions may not be free at all. Anyone can distribute the software as a proprietary software product or under another FOSS license.

Public domain – no copyright is imposed, anyone can do anything with the work.

KEY PLAYERS

Open source community

SourceForge + 1,000,000,000 other sites

Open source companies

Jboss/Red Hat

SugerCRM

Proprietary software vendors (with an open source angle)

Microsoft

Sun

IBM

WHERE TO NOW?


Best practices




Future FOSS trends

EXAMPLE OPEN SOURCE ARCH

PHP

Apache

MySQL

Linux

EXAMPLE OPEN SOURCE ARCH

Java

JBoss / Glassfish

PostgreSQL

Linux

Mule / ServiceMix

OPEN SOURCE ARCHITECTURAL

COMPONENTS Microsoft enterprise libraries and application

blocks – by patterns and practices group

Moonlight / MONO - open source implementation of .NET and RIA

Client side software – like Firefox and Open Office and OS

Mobile software – Android, J2ME

IDE – NetBeans, Eclipse

WHERE TO NOW?


Best practices




Future FOSS trends

BEST PRACTICES – CHOOSING

Projects with strong community support

Company backed-up projects

Supporting standards

Low learning curve

Easy integration

Documentation

Same licence stack & Non copyleft (IMHO)

See ROI, TCO and other TLA for more information

BEST PRACTICES – DEVELOPING

Latest is greatest Vs. stable is greatest

Use API rather then hack the code

Patch back to the community

Keep a backup of source of the project in house

WHERE TO NOW?


Best practices




Future FOSS trends

RETURN ON INVESTMENT

ROI – Return On Investment

Gain from investment can be measured in a post-implementation process – fit for purpose, easy to use, business value, adoption.

Cost of licences can be marginal in cost of investment .

TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP

TCO – Total Cost of Ownership


example 1: Custom application

Web

DB

integration

Low percentage of licensing cost

High cost of development and testing

High risk averse project

No single open source project that is fit for purpose

Current investment in non-FOSS

Proprietary software has lower TCO


TCO – example 2: Simple CMS project

CMS

Low percentage of development cost

Long lifespan drives licence and support cost

A single open source project that fits the purpose

‘no’ to ‘simple’ integration with current investment

Open source has lower TCO

OTHER THINGS TO CONSIDER RE COST

Current infrastructure/software investment

Learning curve and expertise of the dev team

Organisational politics

The desktop angle

ROI, TCO AND OTHER TLA

Other acronyms to think about:

SLA – Service Level Agreement

SEP – Someone Else’s Problem

TTM– Time To Market

WHERE TO NOW?


Best practices




Future FOSS trends

OPEN SOURCE TOOLS FOR ARCHITECTURE

Protégé - a free, open source ontology editor and knowledge-base framework.


BOUML is a free UML 2 tool box allowing you to specify and generate code in C++, Java, Idl, Php and Python.


Eclipse MDT - Model Development Tools

WHERE TO NOW?


Best practices




Future FOSS trends

SO YOU WANNA BE A FOSS DEVELOPER?

Use SourceForge or Codeplex to host your project

Use freshmeat or /. to publicizes your project

Focus of fast delivery and transparency

Be mindful of code contributions

Integrate with other projects and get them to link to you

OPEN SOURCE REVENUE MODELS

Dual license model

Release the product under a restrictive open-source license and provide an alternative proprietary license.

Motivation: The client really likes the open-source product and needs it for commercial use. He does not want to breach the open-source license and is willing to pay for a proprietary license.

Open-source license: GPL is the only suitable license to this strategy because of its restrictive constraints and its viral behavior (you need to be GPL to use GPL).

Example: MySQL


Dual product model

Penetrate the market by releasing an open-source product, sell a different product (extended version, plug-ins or an application that is based on the open-source product).

Motivation: The user gets to be a part of an open-source community process, contributes to the source and improves it. Users purchase other related products from the project professionals.

Open-source license: MIT, BSD, Apache or any other non-copyleft license.

Example: eclipse and its non open source plug-ins.


Professional services model

Sell support/customization and other Professional services.

Motivation: We are the experts in this open-source project because we wrote it, therefore clients would like to purchase support and other services from us.

Open-source license: Any

Example: JBoss

WHERE TO NOW?


Best practices




Future FOSS trends

FUTURE TRENDS

A good open source productivity suite is still not there yet (more a wish list then a trend)

Market condition is pushing open source to the client and enterprise

Software as a service is taking the free beer out of open source – checkout AGPL

WHERE TO NOW?


Best practices




Future FOSS trends

THANKS

Amir Shevat

Email: [email protected]

Blog: http://spacebug.com

when architecture and open source collide

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