Regulatory Compliance/Meeting Notes for 2016-11-14
October 2016: Promoting Open Source
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FLOSS: Free/Liberated Open Source Software
- 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
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