Archive for 'opensource'
Downing Street behind open source push
Computer Weekly's public sector IT blog reports from Monday's 'Open Source Integrator Forum', described bluntly as:
a dressing down in which the big 12 systems integrators, who supply 80 per cent of all government IT, were told firmly that they were preventing the government from carrying out its policy and had better change their ways.
The Home Office's Tariq Rashid, described as 'helping the Cabinet Office unearth the reasons why systems integrators have ignored the government's open source policy', told CW 'there had been more pressure from Number 10 over open source than there had been from the Cabinet Office'. (A statement backed up by Sirius IT, who were also in attendance.)
Slides from the event name Qamar Yunus (ex Identity & Passport Service) as the 'Government Open Source Lead', and refer to a Government Open Source Advisory Panel - although I've seen no membership list for the latter.
CW has also published the government's draft Assessment Model for open source, and list of 'approved' open-source software - although the latter in particular is very draft indeed. Take this entry on 'web' as an example:
To be honest, it's slightly depressing that the best example they could quote for Drupal or Joomla or WordPress (note: small 'p') was the White House - with a question mark, for some reason - since our own head of government blazed the trail for use of open source well before; and indeed, Cabinet Office themselves recently shifted over to Drupal. That's before we get on to the countless examples of each one elsewhere in HMG and on its fringes. You'd almost think they never read my blog.
But thankfully, there's a direct quote from Tariq Rashid:
If the Cabinet Office starts producing an assessment model to separate good software from bad software, looking at things like support, how established is it, is there good governance around development, these sorts of things. That would enable customers to say, 'We want to use WordPress and according to this model it's not going to fail'.
When Chris Chant spoke at UKGovCamp, my question to him was: we'd heard various commitments to make greater use of open source over 3-4 years; what was going to be different this time? Well, to his team's great credit, this is something we haven't had before - in effect, an 'app store' of recommended open source applications. To anyone who knows the territory, it's embarrassingly basic - but what matters is the Cabinet Office logo which will go on the front cover.
To be completely frank, though, there's a major concern for me in all this: the prospect of big ugly consultancies deciding to sell open source into government, in precisely the same way they've sold proprietary-based solutions beforehand. If we're seeing open source as a way of not paying expensive software licenses - then yes, on one level, it is. But there's so much more to it than that.
Open source, fundamentally, is about the people. And it's not just geeks in their back bedrooms these days: it's about serious, commercial, profitable businesses - but businesses with a very different mindset to the conventional IT consultancy. Agile, innovative, collaborative, JFDI, call it what you will: I don't often see examples of this approach among the major SIs.
Have a look, for example, at the speaker lists at the BCS Open Source Specialist Group's two meetings on the subject: one earlier this week, one next week. Atos Origin, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Fujitsu. Can we expect behemoths like these to offer the kind of response - and frankly, the total price tag - that you'd get from a small operation (yes, like Puffbox, but other suppliers are available) with roots already deep in open source? I'm afraid my own recent experience says not.
This is the right thing to be doing. I'm afraid I remain to be convinced that these are the right people to be doing it.
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White House contributing back to open source projects
Just over a year ago, I noted how the French government had contributed code back to the open source community, enhancing the Thunderbird email client for military purposes. I failed to not(ic)e that a few months later, the White House had done likewise - contributing a number of new modules for Drupal, based on development work done for its own Drupal-based site. And this week, they've announced the release of a few more modules:
Today’s code release constitutes a few modules we developed for ourselves, as well as a recognition of our sponsoring the development of modules widely used in the Drupal community, which improve the administration of our site in a variety of ways... We also recognize that there are really good projects already embedded in the Drupal community and reached out to help support their development.
In other words: not only are they recognising that off-the-shelf open source code is good enough for deployment at the highest conceivable levels... not only are they recognising the opportunity to build on top of it, to suit their own requirements... but they're also getting actively involved with existing projects, in this case Open Atrium:
Prior to launching its internal site on Open Atrium, the White House helped strengthen the platform's core by investing in key modules ... Investment like this increases efficiencies gained by government agencies utilizing a common platform like Open Atrium ... It's really exciting that the White House team is so committed to giving back to open source communities with code contributions and smart investments like this.
It's amusing to see the deliberate, repeated use of the word 'investment' in the piece: clearly, it's in the interests of the product's backers to do so, but I don't think it's an unfair choice of words. It's public money being spent for greater long-term benefit.
I don't have a problem with open source being initially 'sold' into government on the £0.00 pricetag: and in the case of WordPress at least, and probably also Drupal, that argument was won some time ago. We're now entering the second phase, as departments realise that it can be customised to suit their specific needs: we're moving from 'can it do this?' to 'can it be made to do this?'. But the campaign won't be complete until we're going full-circle, contributing back to the projects we're using.
DWP’s Harley takes on CIO role
Confirmation today of a promotion (of sorts) that's been rumoured for the last couple of weeks at least: Joe Harley CBE, DWP's corporate IT director since 2004, on a salary just short of a quarter of a million a year, is to take on the CIO role vacated by John Suffolk.
As with many of the recent CIO changes, it's what you might call a reverse job-share: he keeps his DWP job, in which he's been credited with 'carv[ing] £1.5 billion from operational costs'. Tony Collins at Computer World UK suggests he won't be taking any extra salary for the added responsibility.
But then again, and to put the two roles in some kind of context, Suffolk's salary was around £210k, as opposed to Harley's £250k. So it's debatable as to whether it's even a step up the ladder.
The Cabinet Office press release doesn't say anything to increase my excitement at the news:
Joe Harley will be able to call upon a dedicated team in the Cabinet Office to implement the Government’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) agenda for data centre, network, software and asset consolidation and the shift towards cloud computing. This will realise financial savings, increase flexibility and reduce development timescales and risk. He will work closely with Chris Chant, the Government’s digital director, and also be able to call upon the commercial, procurement and programme management capabilities in the Cabinet Office to improve the delivery and cost effectiveness of government ICT projects.
Zzzz. Oops, sorry. Where we we? Ah, yes. You can easily see how he might be perceived, to quote Tony Collins's piece, as 'a cut-price part-timer', and it's hard to imagine how much spare time he has to devote to these extra responsibilities. But those who know him say he's an amiable straight talker, as you might expect given his Glasgow roots - Celtic fan, by the way - and he's certainly done a lot to cut DWP's IT spending in his time there.
More interesting, though, is the press release's reference to the recruitment of a 'Director of ICT Futures':
This role will be responsible for implementing new ways of designing and developing systems using agile methods and skunkworks environments; increasing the drive towards open standards and open source software; change the terrain for SMEs to enter the government marketplace; and maintain a horizon scan of future technologies and methods.
On the face of it, that's quite a bold job description. Note the plural skunkworks environments, and the explicit commitment to a 'drive towards open standards and open source software'. DCMS and DCLG CIO Mark O'Neill has been tasked with driving things forward in those areas up to now, and he spoke at Word Up Whitehall about some of the initiatives he was trying to kick off in that space: this new role should provide some very welcome high-level backup.
Always keep hosting, domains and email separate
A quick technical tip for my loyal and esteemed readership: when setting up a modest website, don't buy your domains from your web host. And ideally, get your email from somewhere else too.
One of the second-order selling points for an open-source solution like WordPress is disaster recovery. In a worst-case scenario, you can simply export your content from one installation, import it into another, and change the DNS. I've had to help people do this twice in the last couple of months, when relations with hosting companies have soured - once due to repeated security problems, once because of a billing disagreement. The sites were live from their new homes within a couple of hours.
When things go wrong, you'll probably want to turn tail and leave in a huff; and to be honest, for the amount you're paying, most hosts won't consider it worthwhile persuading you to stay. Transferring your DNS records to a different registrar is going to be a lengthy process, probably a few days at best. But if you're already using a third party registrar, separate from your hosting supplier, they don't ultimately care where your 'www' record is pointing. The change can be made in mere seconds.
The same goes for email. To be honest, with Google offering its standard-level Apps For Your Domain free of charge, there's really no reason (excuse?) to tie yourself to your hosting provider's bundled email service... which is probably inferior anyway.
Many hosting companies include a free domain as part of their package. Whether or not they do this deliberately, it's a form of lock-in... and you're probably only saving the price of a pint of beer (London prices) per year. The freedom to take your business elsewhere, at the drop of a hat, is worth a lot more.
Open source policy: back where we started
It's good to see the coordinated publication of departments' responses to the Programme For Government exercise - including the Cabinet Office's reponse on government transparency, which also covered the use of open source software:
We are committed to the use of open standards and recognise that open source software offers government the opportunity of lower procurement prices, increased interoperability and easier integration. The use of open standards can also provide freedom from vendor lock in. In September 2010, we will publish Guidance for Procurers. This guidance will ensure that new IT procurements conducted by Government, evaluate both open source and proprietary software solutions, and select the option offering best value for money.
Nothing much to get excited about, to be honest. I suppose it's nice to see an acknowledgement of 'the opportunity' of achieving benefits. But it's a little disappointing that it should close with a flat statement about evaluating both proprietary and open-source on 'best value for money' grounds alone - which leaves us right back where we started. I note there's no reference the Maude statement, back in June, about departmental websites using open source 'whenever possible'.
Remember to say thank-you
A bit of a tricky moment this morning. As you might have spotted, Downing Street has launched an initiative asking 'public sector workers' to help the government find ways to implement the massive spending cuts proposed in Tuesday's budget 'in a way that is fair and responsible'. And as has become the norm for such initiatives, there's a comment-enabled website dedicated to it, built on WordPress. A 'hooray' is obligatory at this point, although to be honest, that's getting a little predictable.
In fact, it's a return to an initiative launched by Nick Clegg last summer:
The people who are best placed to tell us where money is not being well spent are the teachers, nurses, social workers and other public servants who work so hard day and night on our behalf. Politicians should stop talking over the heads of public servants. We need to listen to the people in the know on how we can better run public services, making sure that every penny of taxpayers’ money is well spent. That’s what ‘Asking People In The Know’ is all about.
... but since it's all happening again, and since the 2009 website is now giving 404 errors, one must assume it wasn't especially fruitful.
Anyway... If you have a look at the new website, you'll note a startling resemblance to the Programme For Government site which I built a few weeks back. It's very obviously a derivative work, based on my code. I didn't build it, and I didn't get paid for it. My contract gives the Crown the right to reuse my work; and in fact, I'm very glad they did. It's entirely in keeping with the open-source spirit... not to mention the need to find cost savings.
But as anyone following me on Twitter may have spotted, there was one slight hiccup. By convention, WordPress themes include details of their author. The original PFG theme notes me as its originator - obviously. But the derivative theme didn't. My name had been deleted, and replaced with the names of two people I've never met or spoken to: at least one of whom appears to be a direct commercial competitor.
I was not best pleased. I sent out a tweet to that effect: and to the credit of one of the individuals concerned, he subsequently added a line of acknowledgement. My name is duly checked, and I'm happy again.
I am absolutely not suggesting there was any attempt to infringe my intellectual property rights, or deprive me of a deserved payment. I'm perfectly prepared to accept that it was a simple oversight. But I needed to make the point.
Acknowledgement is the currency of the open source movement. There are communities of developers spending their free time building these tools, not to mention businesses freely handing over the fruits of their labours, resulting in you getting phenomenally powerful tools for £0.00. Saying 'thank you' is really the least you can do; and it's often the only 'payment' that the open-source contributor receives. Don't forget.
Not for the first time, Steph Gray lays down a good model to follow. On every page in his Commentariat theme is an explicit credit for the Whitespace theme by Brian Gardner; and there's a note of thanks to my regular collaborator Simon Wheatley in its style.css file.
And in case anyone's interested: yes, I do plan to write something for the consultation - it's also open to 'private sector partners working within public sector'. Now, I wonder what I might propose?
Gov websites to use open source ‘whenever possible’
In the response to a pretty innocuous parliamentary question from Tom Watson, new Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude makes a statement which could, on the face of it, be of monumental significance for UK e-government.
The Government believe that departmental websites should be hubs for debate as well as information-where people come together to discuss issues and address challenges - and that this should be achieved efficiently and, whenever possible using open source software. Any future development of websites run by the Cabinet Office will be assessed and reviewed against these criteria.
We've heard the 'hubs for debate' line before, in the Conservative tech manifesto, but the other part is quite startling. Open source software 'wherever possible'. An unqualified statement of policy. No caveats at all; not even financial. That takes us far, far beyond the 'level playing field'.
The PC/Mac battle has ended – in a draw
Last week, Puffbox Ltd invested in a Mac. Somehow I never quite saw myself as a Mac owner: a combination of the cost, the vendor lock-in, the slightly smug grins on Mac owners' faces - even when the kit failed, as it seems to do with unexpected frequency, judging by my Twitter stream. But my long-serving XP desktop machine is starting to show its age, and much of my work these days is in collaboration with a Mac owner, so it seemed to make sense.
I went for a Mac Mini: at its £510 list price, it's roughly half the price of an entry-level iMac, as long as you're prepared to bring your own monitor, keyboard and mouse. But I managed to find it for £477, at Dixons.co.uk; and after a bit of googling, I found a voucher code to knock a further £15 off it. Very pleased with myself.
I've spent the past few days loading it up with software. First Firefox, then a few must-have extensions, giving me access to my Google-powered email and Delicious bookmarks. A suite of browsers for testing purposes: Chrome, Safari, Opera. Dropbox, to enable easy file-sharing between machines. Twhirl, my Adobe Air-powered Twitter client of choice. And so on.
What's been striking is that, with only a couple of exceptions, these are exactly the same apps I use most often on my XP box. (And for that matter, my Ubuntu laptop and netbook.) I needed a good code-friendly text editor, and TextWrangler got quite a few recommendations. Adium seems to be the must-have Instant Messaging client. But that was about it.
So it's a very unexpected experience, powering up the Mac and hearing that same startup chime, which used to herald a venture into Unfamiliar Territory. A land where right-clicking was alien. A land with strange symbols dotted around otherwise familiar keyboards. Yet nowadays, there's no immediately distinguishable difference. You press a button at the bottom of the screen to open up a menu of programs; you click on Firefox, and you're up, up and away.
Is the Mac going to become my main machine, or will it remain a secondary box for fileserving and browser testing? At this point, I honestly don't know.
Except, of course, that it isn't a fair choice. If you build stuff for the web, you need to test it against all browsers. And that means Microsoft Internet Explorer. And that means Windows. So like it or not, you're stuck with Windows at some point - be it as a virtual machine, or a secondary box. Sure, there are third-party services like Litmus or IE Netrender, which send back screengrabs of your code rendered in browsers you don't have - but I don't believe you've really tested something until you've clicked around in it.
Things are set to get even more complicated with the next release of Ubuntu, due in a fortnight. Like the Mac's OS X, Ubuntu is perfectly capable of running Firefox, with its extensions, and Adobe Air, and Chrome and Dropbox. If anything, its desktop candy is even sweeter. The Mac will beat it on reliability, since Apple own the entire supply chain. But Ubuntu is at least as pretty to look it, arguably prettier... and that's before the next release brings some new, even tastier interface themes.
There were suggestions in the past couple of weeks that Apple's iconic 'I'm a Mac, I'm a PC' series of commercials may be at an end. On reflection, it's no surprise. It just doesn't matter that much any more. In the wake of the open source revolution, we're all the same.
Except for Internet Explorer, which still sucks.
Cabinet Office’s open source fail
A PQ from Conservative shadow minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office what her policy is in respect of the installation and use of (a) Internet Explorer, (b) Firefox and (c) Opera website browsers by Government departments.
To which Angela Smith replies:
Government policy regarding installation and use of web browsers is that all decisions must be in line with value for money requirements. In addition, the Open Source, Open Standards, Re-use strategy requires Departments to consider open source browsers such as Firefox and Opera on a level basis with proprietary browsers such as Internet Explorer.
A slightly disappointing answer on a few levels. It shouldn't necessarily be seen as an either/or thing. A Strategy which says 'we don't have any specific preference' isn't really a strategy. Oh, and without wanting to be too picky, Opera isn't actually open source.*
I've had trouble finding a copy of it online; so here's the key section of the Opera licence:
All intellectual property rights such as, but not limited to, patents, trademarks, copyrights or trade-secret rights related to the Software are exclusively the property of, and remain vested in, Opera Software ASA and/or its suppliers.
You shall not modify, translate, reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the Software or any part thereof or otherwise attempt to derive source code, create or use derivative works therefrom. You agree not to modify the Software in any manner or form or to use modified versions of the Software including, without limitation, for the purpose of obtaining unauthorized access to the Services or disabling features of the Software or Services.
See that bit about 'You shall not attempt to derive source code'? Well, that's basically the complete opposite of Open Source. We're going to have real trouble making this debate happen if we can't even get the basics right.
* Although, in an unexpected moment of charity, I'm wondering whether it's actually a punctuation failure. Perhaps they meant 'open source browsers such as Firefox, and [non-open source browsers like] Opera'? No, I doubt it too.
Update (er, a year later): To their credit, I suppose, they did issue a correction in Hansard a few days later: 'Errors have been identified in the response given to the right hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) on 24 February 2010. The words "such as Firefox and Opera" and "such as Internet Explorer" were incorrectly included in the answer.' - maybe this blog does have influence after all.
French military's open-source collaboration
Now this is how open source is meant to work.
In January 2007, the French defence ministry's Direction Générale de l'Armement began work (in association with BT) on a project called Milimail, to enhance Firefox's open-source cousin, the Thunderbird email client for military purposes. It's now known as Trustedbird - and lists among its additional features:
- Deletion receipts (MDN);
- Delivery receipts (DSN);
- Encryption/Signing with triple wrapping;
- RFC 2634 Security Labels and Signed Receipts;
- Address autocompletion with several LDAP directories;
- CRL download from LDAP directories;
- Manage Out of Office settings on a Sieve server
...only some of which I even begin to understand. But apparently, the key enhancement is the fact that you can 'know for sure when messages have been read, which is critical in a command-and-control organization' - according to Mozilla executive David Ascher, quoted by Reuters. And that's good enough for it to hook into NATO systems.
What's more, code from the French project found its way into Thunderbird's v3 public release last December - making the product better for everybody.
The recently revised UK government policy on open source seemed to focus solely on the procurement angle. But as Trustedbird demonstrates, there's potential for the benefits of open source to go much, much wider.
And if a particular open source product doesn't quite meet your exacting specification, that shouldn't mean you simply dismiss it. Ask not what open source can do for you, you might say; ask what you can do for open source.
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