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Open Source
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The Institution of Engineering and Technology acts as a voice Introduction�������������������������������������������������������������������������� 3

for the engineering and technology professions by providing
independent, reliable and factual information to the public A brief chronology of open systems��������������������������������������� 3
and policy makers. This Factfile aims to provide an accessible
guide to current technologies and scientific facts of interest to From closed to open systems: a spectrum����������������������������� 3
the public.
Virtualisation: from open systems to cloud computing������������ 3
For more Factfiles and Position Statements on engineering
and technology topics please visit http://www.theiet.org/ Advantages of Open Systems in information processing��������� 4
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Lessons from the transition from closed to open systems������� 6
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Introduction public telecommunications operators using a different protocol
stack (the “X” series) to achieve similar aims. The reality of
The shift to Open Source multiple competing solutions led to the creation of a single
Software is one of the most open systems interconnection (OSI) reference model5.
important current trends in Once open solutions were available for networking, attention
technology, yet it is surprisingly turned to the attached computer systems. Could the software,
little discussed compared with both operating system and applications, be made more
other developments - including independent of the particular hardware platform or vendor
those that, ironically, have only used? The most widely recognised precursor of today’s open
been made possible by the operating systems came again from the telecommunications
adoption of open systems. world. AT&T had first developed “Unix”6 in 1969 at its Bell
Laboratories subsidiary. In 1973 Unix was very largely re-
Open Source can offer huge benefits, enabling faster written in the high level programming language “C” making it
innovation and reduced total cost of ownership. Whilst much easier to transfer between multiple hardware platforms.
transitioning from closed to open systems is no trivial task, In its later incarnations in the 1980s, Unix embodied
unless this step is taken, businesses risk being left behind as standardised programming interfaces and management of
their competitors capitalise on the new possibilities this offers. attached devices.

A brief chronology of open systems Unix was the inspiration for the development of Linux7 the
basis for the vast community of open software and applications
Open systems in computing and informatics refers to a class in use today. The first Linux Kernel8 was released by Linus
of systems which are built using Open Source Software Torvalds in 1991. Some 20 years of development and
(OSS) standards and that offer a good level of portability and operating experience, sourced from around the globe, have
independence from the hardware platforms on which they now gone into the Linux based open operating systems.
operate. They usually include a right to edit and redistribute
and have particular characteristics including1: From closed to open systems: a spectrum
„„ no intentional secrets: the standard must not withhold any
detail necessary for interoperable implementation. It would be wrong to regard
„„ availability: the standard must be freely and publicly the question of whether
available under royalty-free terms at reasonable and non- an operating system is
discriminatory cost. open or closed as simply a
„„ patents: all patents essential to implementation of the binary choice. The reality
standard must be: is that most practical
„„ licensed under royalty-free terms for unrestricted use, implementations lie
or somewhere on the spectrum
„„ covered by a promise of non-assertion when practiced between these two extremes.
by Open Source Software. Many current systems draw
on the Unix/Linux legacy
There are three key types of licence under which OSS may be whilst arguably now being closed. Examples include the Apple
released2: operating systems OSX and iOS, Oracle Solaris and Blackberry
„„ the GNU3 General Public License (GPL) requires that BBX. Others build in their own proprietary additions for
altered or extra code added to GPL software be also example IBM’s AIX and HP’s HPUX. Still others remain very
licensed under the GPL. This ensures the propagation largely open such as Google’s Android.
of OSS but can cause licensing conflicts if GPL and
proprietary software are combined. Even where a core Linux system is used, there will often
„„ the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) licence gives be a need to purchase maintenance and support services.
anyone the freedom to release updates or modifications of The major vendors, such as Red Hat and SUSE, have every
the software under any licence they wish. incentive to build in some competitive differentiation by
„„ the Lesser GPL (LGPL) is a compromise between the customising their various services and tools, particularly in the
restrictive GPL and the permissive BSD. Altered LGPL area of system management.
software must continue under LGPL, but extra code can
be added under almost any licence the author wishes. Virtualisation: from open systems to cloud computing

The concept of open systems dates back to the late Virtualisation is again a development first introduced in the
1960s and early 1970s, as the first steps were taken to 1970s. A single mainframe computer could run many separate
link heterogeneous computer systems together across instances of the same operating system at the same time
communications networks. Networking developments took under the control of a “hypervisor”; in effect each instance
place principally in two communities, the defence/academic of the operating system simulated a stand-alone machine.
world, leading to the development of ARPANET and ultimately All were hosted simultaneously, but separately, on the same
to today’s internet, based on the TCP/IP4 protocols, and by the hardware. The use of such virtualisation techniques with Linux

Open Source Software

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style open systems has generated major benefits with single Quicker response to changing requirements: The pace of
machines supporting multiple virtual servers. For applications change in many markets, especially those with a consumer
that have relatively low load factors the advantages are focus, is now relentless. The focus on customer engagement
substantial, lower capital costs through better utilisation, plus and involvement and the influence of burgeoning social
ease of management and provisioning. networks place further demands on immediacy of response.
Access to a wide range of cost-effective development tools,
The final step to create cloud ability to scale rapidly and access to global community of
computing9 was the development shared knowledge all favour the use of the open approach.
of the technique known as
“orchestration”. This allows many Open Source’s responsiveness12. Alex McLachlan of
virtual machines to be managed Indigoblue Consulting shared in his blog that: “One of Open
across a range of physical hardware. Source’s unique selling points (if I can use that phrase) is its
As load increases for a particular responsiveness. We’ve had a really good example of this on our
application, further virtual machines website recently, which demonstrates how issues with Open
can be started automatically and, if Source Software can get fixed really quickly and efficiently.
necessary further physical systems We use the Drupal open source website content management
assigned to support of these in-demand virtual machines and system and wanted to add in the Amazon module that lets
applications. you link directly to Amazon contents. We had an issue with
how the links to Amazon were appearing… The guy doing the
Almost all of the successful web businesses launched in the development posted the problem on the Drupal website and
last 10 years have drawn on this base of virtualised open resolved the cause of the problem with the module maintainer
systems: familiar names such as Google, Amazon, YouTube, within a few days. This experience contrasts with experiences
Facebook and Twitter all operate in this way. I’ve had with companies supporting products, where it can
be difficult to get fixes made between product releases, so
“The meaning of open”10. In a post to the official Google any significant issue can mean waiting until the next product
Blog on 21st December 2009, Google Senior Vice President release.”
for Product Management Jonathan Rosenberg wrote: “…
At Google we believe that open systems win. They lead to
more innovation, value, and freedom of choice for consumers, Enhanced ability to support a plethora of systems: The world is
and a vibrant, profitable, and competitive ecosystem for a highly heterogeneous environment. Business organisations
businesses...” and “…Complacency is the hallmark of any use a wide variety of current and legacy systems all at different
closed system. If you don’t have to work that hard to keep your stages of their lifecycle. Some are widely supported, some
customers, you won’t…” less so. The ability, through open systems, to draw on a very
extensive range of standards and interfaces shared and
developed over 20 years can be a key differentiator.
The combination of virtualised open systems plus
sophisticated orchestration leads to the concept of purchasing Access to skilled, motivated
computing capability as a utility - so-called cloud computing. and innovative staff: A
generation has now grown up
Advantages of Open Systems in information with the internet and Open
processing Source. They want to work
with these systems and tools
Access to greater innovation: The combination of Open Source rather than the closed and
Software, open systems interoperability and open standards proprietary approaches that
has created a self-reinforcing community of shared research are frequently seen as more
and development and a pooling of creative ideas. This leads to limiting. Open systems developments (such as below) are seen
a stream of innovative applications for test and development. as particularly desirable. :
Those that show promise are implemented and adopted more „„ Drupal13 (an open source content management platform
quickly. powering millions of websites and applications. It’s built,
used, and supported by an active and diverse community
Open Source is driving innovation11. In a speech at the of people around the world);
Linux leaders annual summit in June 2012, Red Hat CEO „„ Hadoop14 (The Apache Hadoop software library is a
Jim Whitehurst commented that the information age is framework that allows for the distributed processing of
finally evolving into the information economy because of the large data sets across clusters of computers using a simple
standardisation enabled by Linux and Open Source. He said programming model. It is designed to scale up from single
that: “…Open source has gone mainstream ... open source is servers to thousands of machines, each offering local
the default choice of the next generation IT architecture…” computation and storage. Rather than rely on hardware
and “…More innovation will happen first in open source and to deliver high-availability, the library itself is designed
that’s a radical change from even five years ago...” to detect and handle failures at the application layer, so
delivering a highly-available service on top of a cluster of

Open Source Software

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 LONDON, February 14, 2011.19 Novell today announced SUSE®
Linux Enterprise Server will be used to support the London
Stock Exchange’s new trading platform. The Linux* system
will help the Exchange to effectively manage the high volume
of traffic passing through its systems in record-breaking time.
The deployment, which went live today, will help improve the
computers, each of which may be prone to failures); and performance of the Exchange’s UK cash markets.
„„ jQuery15 (a fast and concise JavaScript Library that The new Millennium Exchange system will provide the
simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, Exchange with a high performance, secure, green and
animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web interoperable platform, capable of making intelligent use of
development); virtual and physical environments.

Rapid exploitation of new technology developments: Under the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server will help to increase the
continuing impetus of “Moore’s Law”16 new developments in Millennium Exchange system’s capacity to cope with high-
hardware (such as ultra high resolution displays, enhanced volume trading. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is a highly
wireless networking and network based storage) continue reliable, scalable and secure server operating system built
apace. New developments in software and systems, for to power both physical and virtual mission-critical workloads.
example in Business Analytics (the so-called “big data”) are With this foundation, enterprises can efficiently deliver
also a regular occurrence. It is important to have timely access business services, enable secure networks and manage
to these. The Open Source community once again offers rapid heterogeneous IT resources. Millennium Exchange is also
access. being backed by Novell’s world-class support and services.

Drawing on a global community for knowledge tools and

problem solving: Developed over the last 20 years, the Open Lower total cost of ownership: Open Source Software is
Source community now numbers in the millions of software generally free to obtain rather than being subject to the licence
architects, analysts, designers and programmers. The fee normally charged for access to proprietary software.
community also extends to key universities and facilitates However this is not the correct basis on which to compare
access to leading edge research. There are extensive facilities costs. It is more appropriate to consider the total cost of
for collaboration… ownership (TCO) over the lifetime of use of the software. The
London School of Economics (LSE) published a report on TCO
GitHub17 is a social network for open source programmers. It is for the United Kingdom Cabinet Office in 201120. This report
based around the “Git” the extremely fast, efficient, distributed found that: “The highest score for strategic drivers was for
version control system for the collaborative development reduced vendor lock in. A close second was value for money.”
of software created by Linus Torvalds. It supports code The report (based on a survey of 32 organisations) found that
repositories, issue tracking, collaboration management, code TCO was often lower
reviews and so on. More than two million software developers overall with Open Source
are linked through GitHub. Software. However,
based on a model of
five life cycle phases
openstack™18 is a global community of technologists, (Search for a solution,
developers, researchers, corporations and cloud computing Acquisition, Integration,
experts originally set up under the aegis of the US National Use and Retirement)
Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA). It currently structured into 14
involves more than 3000 people from more than 180 separate areas of cost,
organisations. It is based around a massively scalable “cloud” analysis should really be
operating system. carried out on a case-by-
case basis. In so far as
generalisation is possible,
Limiting restricted dependencies: The Open Source community industry lore is that a
avoids dependency on single sources and sharply limits the TCO saving of around
potential of pricing power. For example, in terms of support for 20% is achievable.
the Linux operating system, competition is based on quality
of customer service and additional management facilities Full visibility of (and confidence in) the source code: There
rather than on access to the individual system releases. The remains no broad agreement in computer security circles as
purchaser has more freedom regarding when to upgrade to a to whether open visibility of source code contributes to, or
new release… detracts from, system security. Access to the code is clearly
helpful to an attacker, but in the same way extensive public
review and correction of the code can minimise the avenues
for attack and offer more rapid identification and blocking of

Open Source Software

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© The IET 2014
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successful attacks. These issues are discussed in some depth related tasks as well. Emotions rise as workloads increase and
in the 2002 paper Security in Open versus Closed Systems - people are inexorably sucked into the imperatives of day-to-
The Dance of Boltzmann, Coase and Moore21 by Ross Anderson, day business rather than fully addressing the change.
Professor of Computer Security at Cambridge University. In
so far as a consensus exists it is that in pure security terms Recognising that it is more than replicating existing functions: a
there is little difference between open and proprietary code. A careful analysis is required to:
report22 by the Communications and Electronic Security Group „„ weed out requirements that are simply no longer relevant.
(CESG) of the UK Government Communications Headquarters „„ carry out needed rationalisation and simplification of
(GCHQ) published in December 2011 concluded that: “Open requirements changes that have accumulated in the old
Source, as a category, is no more or less secure than closed system over years; and
proprietary software”. Trust in “security by obscurity” though „„ include new features and capabilities to support
does seem misplaced in the proprietary world, as the code anticipated customer requirements.
is not obscure to insiders. Furthermore, full visibility of code
helps to ensure that no “backdoors” or surprises are hidden Despite the best of intentions to minimise change, it may
away… simply not be possible to freeze all new development
requirements for the duration of the change programme. Some
“The differences between OSS and proprietary software are not degree of revision during the development process may be
a major factor in either improving or degrading the vulnerability inevitable.
of a nation’s IT infrastructure”. Report “Analysis of the impact
of Open Source Software”23 - QinetiQ October 2001. Significant changes in operational procedures will need to be
planned and tested including:
„„ Ensuring data integrity during rollback/recovery: Where
Lessons from the transition from closed to open elements required as part of a specific transaction are
systems distributed across
multiple databases,
As the path away from dependency on proprietary systems whether on specified
becomes evermore well worn, it is helpful to document the servers or within a cloud,
“lessons learnt” by those who have already made, or are special measures are
deeply engaged, in that transition. There is no value in re- required to ensure data
visiting pitfalls already explored. integrity is maintained
if the transaction is
Maintaining a common development/support team across aborted or some element
existing and replacement systems: the key reasons for is subject to failure.
maintaining common teams are: This can represent a
„„ allowing the staff that have been responsible for significant challenge for
supporting the old systems to be trained in the new example in rolling back such a system to a known prior
programming languages, methodologies and toolsets, thus state. The traditional database properties of “atomicity”,
demonstrating commitment to avoiding them becoming “consistency”, “isolation” and “durability” (ACID) all need
a “stranded asset” as the old systems are progressively careful attention in the context of maintaining integrity in
retired. the presence of aborted or failed transactions.
„„ maintaining the “institutional memory” of why particular „„ “Seeing the wood for the trees” in fault management: In
design and implementation choices were made, these distributed or cloud based systems a single initial failure
may still be relevant to the new developments. can lead to a rapidly branching tree of subsequent errors
„„ giving development teams a role in support as well, thus and alarms. Expert system techniques may be required to
ensuring that they are fully aware of, and live with, the isolate rapidly the root cause otherwise hidden in the noise
consequences of implementation defects. of cascading failures.

Acknowledgement

Material contained in this factfile draws on the author’s White

Paper “Open for Business: The value of Open Source Software
in transaction processing” published by Amadeus IT Group.
Accepting the challenge of the task and being realistic
about the costs, manpower and timescale required: this is The permission of Amadeus to reference this material is
a major undertaking. Often this represents a significant gratefully acknowledged.
business change, not simply an IT change. New systems
must be developed whilst maintaining high levels of service
to customers through the existing systems. In the words of
Henry Kissinger: “…the urgent often forces out the important”.
Everyone was busy before, now there are lots of extra change

Open Source Software

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References
1
See Open Source Initiative at http://opensource.org/osr

2
Source: UK Houses of Parliament Postnote 414. See: http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/briefing-papers/POST-PN-414

3
GNU is an open source operating system

4
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol

5
OSI Reference Model - The ISO Model of Architecture for Open Systems Interconnection, Hubert Zimmermann, IEEE Transactions on Communications,
Vol. Com-28, No. 4, April 1980.

6
For a history of Unix, see: http://www.levenez.com/unix/

7
For a description of Linux, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux

8
Operating system core

9
See separate series of IET Cloud Computing FactFiles, see: http://www.theiet.org/factfiles/it/index.cfm

10
For the full text from the Google blog, see: http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/meaning-of-open.html

11
See: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/red-hat-open-source-is-driving-innovation-and-the-information-economy-but-battle-is-not-over/11342

12
See: http://indigoblue.co.uk/strategic-consulting/blog/open-sources-responsiveness

13
See: http://drupal.org/

14
See: http://hadoop.apache.org/

15
See: http://jquery.com/

16
Moore’s Law, named after Intel co-founder Gordon E Moore, comes from a 1965 statement by Moore that the number of transistors contained in a state of
the art integrated circuit would double every two years. This corresponds roughly to a doubling of processing performance every 18 months.

17
See: https://github.com/features/community

18
See: http://www.openstack.org/

19
See: https://www.suse.com/

20
Shaikh, Maha and Cornford, Tony (2011) Total cost of ownership of open source software: a report for the UK Cabinet Office supported by OpenForum
Europe. UK Cabinet Office, London, UK. See: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/39826/

21
Anderson, R. J. (2002). Security in open versus closed systems - the Dance of Boltzmann, Coase and Moore. Presented at Open Source Software
Economics. See: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/toulouse.pdf

22
UK Cabinet Office - Open Source Software Security December 2011.

23
Peeling, Nic and Satchell, Julian (2001) Analysis of the Impact of Open Source Software. See: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/cabinet-office

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