Promoting Open Source/Meeting Notes for 2016-10-17

Promoting Open Source

Date

Monday, 17 October 2016

Event Announcement

https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/233388573/

Many of us use Free and Open Source software (FLOSS) in our daily lives. But promoting the use of FLOSS within our organizations can be a challenge. What FLOSS does your organization use? How did this come to pass? What kinds of FLOSS is amenable to adoption by non-profit organizations? What is more challenging? What are some of the advantages/selling points you have found successful in promoting FLOSS in your organization? What have been been some of the disadvantages/challenges you have faced in promoting FLOSS?

As always, bring your experiences and questions. Let's use this group to support each other!

P.S. Did you know we post our meeting minutes? You can find them on the Meetup site here: https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/messages/boards/

• Promoting Open Source/Meeting Notes for 2016-10-17

FLOSS: Free/Liberated Open Source Software

Questions

• What FLOSS does your organization use? How did it get approved? Implemented?
• What kinds of FLOSS is amenable to use by nonprofit organizations? Why?
• What kinds of FLOSS are less amenable? Why?
• What are some of the selling points you use?
• What have been some of the advantages?
• What have been some of the challenges and disadvantages?

Announcements

• Tue Oct 18, 7pm: Ruby FLOSS Contributions, Sweet Tooth
  • Boltmade was bought by Shopify!
  • Bring a laptop and a Ruby install
  • Goal: encourage FLOSS contributions and bring visibility to FLOSS projects in the area
• Sat Oct 22, 4-8pm: Laptop Rescue Mission, Computer Recycling

Meeting Notes

How do you sell it?

• End users don't care much about open source
  • They think you need to contribute code
  • Contributing might mean contributing financially or reporting bugs

• Lots of people using the code might make it better
  • But this did not work so well for OpenSSL
  • How do you make people aware of the code that they use?
  • How do you pick the projects to support?
• Apache
• Linux Foundation (they have a Core Infrastructure initiative)
• SPI: Software in the Public Interest

• Do endorsements from famous people matter?
  • Can you get the word out?
  • http://trustmeimlying...
  • Getting grassroots word of mouth matters a lot
  • Ask for reviews from reviewers

• Maybe it makes sense to throw money at infrastructure projects?
  • Pay somebody to maintain/develop the stuff instead of paying a propreitary software company
  • Again, SaaS has changed this landscape
• Would it even be feasible for SaaS providers to release their software as FLOSS?
• Maybe this is their "community editions"?
• Most community editions take out features

Arguments for Open Source

• Cheap to acquire the software (and nonprofits are cheapskates)
• FLOSS tends to be easier to debug and troubleshoot
  • eg looking through the source of Samba to troubleshoot a problem
  • You can get consultants to fix your software for you
• eg Zikula CMS has 2600 weblinks
• They did an upgrade and he paid somebody $50 to fix it
• eg OSCAR medical records system: we paid somebody to set it up and customize it for us (OSCAR/CAISI)
• Data migration can be easier: the code is the template for migration
• It is possible for people to develop code coverage and test suites after the fact
• What would the advantage be if our rollback software was open source?
  • You could debug the software easier
  • You could see what it is trying to do

Arguments Against Open Source

• Software might be unfamiliar from what people are used to/what they use in school.
• Privacy is important sometimes and you need to trust the code
  • Sometimes privacy is a concern
• Other providers need to use the same application, which is not in use across the board
  • What about federation? This may not be the issue.

• Software as a Service has taken over the industry
  • Conceptually it is possible to make it FLOSS
  • In practice it usually is not
  • Failure to make SaaS FLOSSy is a failure of sales
• "If you can download the code then what are you selling?"
• Really you are paying people to take care of infrastructure for you

Considerations

• How quickly can people pick up the software?
• Are we using it to contribute back or just to use it?

• What is the code quality?
  • In proprietary software the code quality may be bad, but hidden
• Are there developers? Is the project being supported.
• How good are the development leads? This is important for stability.
  • eg LibreOffice has good quality according to Coverity

• Who gets paid to develop the code and how?
  • Consultants?
  • Sometimes big companies sponsor developers?

• How friendly is the community?

• People are used to paying for proprietary software but not FLOSS?
  • But people are also used to not paying for online software unless it is SaaS
  • Open source does not tend to nag people to pay for it
  • Patreon models are becoming more popular
  • Is it enough to fund only a few projects?
  • How do you crowdsource projects? How do you sell the software?
  • We pay for a pfSense gold membership for no reason
• But it is a kind of insurance so that pfSense continues to exist
• Maybe it is a sliding scale fee

• Trust is a huge factor
  • Can our organizations trust the product?
  • Does the website look nice?

• How much support can you get?
• What are your fellow companies using?

• Sometimes interoperability matters
  • TWC cannot use LibreOffice for resumes (but how does Google Docs play into this?)

Other things

• Libreoffice Online is being developed and is running
  • Done with OwnCloud and Collabora
  • The goal is to sell to government and make sure that all the government templates are available
  • Canadian requirements for accessibility are more stringent than elsewhere
• And there are not that many developers working on it

• Is there any antivirus that is FLOSS?
  • There is Clam, which is good for email servers and terrible for desktops

• Is there antiviruses for other operating systems?
  • It exists for Mac and Linux but is not widely used
  • Android is the new Windows and has lots of viruses
  • You don't want to run everything as root
  • Software stores make this a little better
  • Android updates do not go out as quickly
  • Why is Android such a disaster?
• Too many users?
• Not enough quality control?
• Too many apps?
• Too much fragmentation?
  • Android good practices?
• Be careful about clicking links
• Look at how many people use the app
• There is antivirus software available for Android
  • If you root your phone do you run everything as root?
• No?

• How well has Drupal worked as a CMS?
  • We have been able to modify it.
  • The community is open and friendly
  • Developing core functionality has been hard
  • Major upgrades are difficult
  • Rails makes upgrades easier
• A bunch of modules were backported from Rails 4 to Rails 3

• Can you get university and college students to develop code as part of their coursework?
  • It is real code, not toy projects
  • Contributions that are accepted look good on resumes
  • If the project is organized properly this can still be valuable
  • A lot of student work looks rough
  • LibreOffice has a mentorship project for students

• In digital media programs they used FLOSS so the students could continue using the software on their own afterwards
  • In the marketplace this software is less popular
  • But the skills are transferable

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