Back to the Future Again: 2020 FLOSS 3.0

Yesterday I wrote about my experiences last week at the Open World Forum. As I noted, the two-day event closed with the presentation of the latest edition of the 2020 FLOSS Roadmap. Even though I'd not been to the Open World Forum before, I have written about the two previous versions of the Roadmap (still available.)

On Open Enterprise blog.

Open Proofs

The problem:

The world depends on having secure, accurate, and reliable software - but most software isn't. In some circumstances we need "high confidence" (aka "high assurance") software built on top of verified software. Verified software, in this context, is software that has been proved to have or not have some property using formal methods (formal methods apply mathematical techniques to prove properties of software). Yet developing verified software is currently very difficult to do, or improve on, because there are few fully-public examples of verified software. Verified software is often highly classified, sensitive, and/or proprietary. This lack of detailed examples impedes progress by software developers, tool developers, users, teachers, and even current practitioners.

Unlike a mathematical proof, software normally undergoes change due to changing conditions and needs. So just publishing unchangeable software, with an unchangeable proof, isn't enough. Instead, we need a number of "open proofs".

The solution:

"Open proofs" solve the problem by releasing implementation, proofs, and tools as FLOSS. With such rights, developers can build on the examples to build larger works, teachers and students can use the examples for learning and research, users can verify that the proof is valid, and tool suppliers can use real examples to improve tools. Both realistic examples (for building on and tool development) and small examples (for teaching) are needed.

Not all systems need to be revealed to the public, but we need public examples as "seed corn" to develop more verified software. To be high assurance, such software would need to come with some automated test suite, but that isn't a strict requirement to be an open proof.

Open proofs do not solve every possible problem, of course. For example: (1) the formal specification might be wrong or incomplete for its purpose; (2) the tools might be incorrect; (3) one or more assumptions might be wrong. But they would still be a big improvement from where we are today. Many formal method approaches have historically not scaled up to larger programs, but open proofs may help counter that by enabling tool developers to work with others.

2020 FLOSS Roadmap and Looking Forward

Making predictions is hard - especially about the future, as the saying goes. Against this background, I had low expectations of the “2020 FLOSS Roadmap”, which came out of the recent Open World Forum in Paris....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Open Source in European Public Administrations

If you're trying to keep up with the increasing number of public administrations in Europe discovering the joys of free software, here's a handy resource: the Open Source Observatory and Repository.

The OSOR provides a platform for the exchange of information, experiences and FLOSS-based code for the use in public administrations. Your are invited to participate in this exchange and make use of the OSOR services:

* international news on Open Source topics;
* a repository with code and documentation on software for public administrations;
* a state-of-the art forge for working together.

The value and usefulness of the platform will increase with the number of contributors and of contributions that are offered for sharing.

Everybody is welcome as a user. However, if you want to upload code and information or intend to open a community project, you will have to register on the forge. In case you come from the business sector, you will be required to reference a sponsor from the public sector.

The OSOR admits all free, libre, and open source software that is distributed under licenses that are recognised by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) or the Open Source Initiative (OSI) and code that is released under the European Union Public License (EUPL).

And remember: it's all about sharing....

FOOGL (Firefox, OpenOffice.org, GNU/Linux) Usability

First, we had the hugely-important, but horribly-named "Economic impact of FLOSS on innovation and competitiveness of the EU ICT sector" report, and now we have the equally horribly-named tOSSad F/OSS Usability report.

Since this is actually about Firefox, OpenOffice.org and GNU/Linux, they should, of course, have called it the FOOGL Usability Report. Despite this monumental gaffe, it does include some very useful information about usability, traditionally viewed as free software's Achilles Heel:

The survey showed that the majority of respondents agree that all three products have sufficient number of features and are user-friendly in general. Among the positive features of Firefox and OpenOffice.org are their user-friendly graphical interfaces. These include menus with clear definitions and abbreviations, and logical navigation of the main and context menus. OpenOffice.org and Firefox was also considered to have a sufficient set of features and are easy to install.

Regarding GNU/Linux, the survey results show that in average there is a positive opinion among the survey respondents in terms of installation, information presentation, navigation and the overall impression from the operating system. Therefore it can be concluded that the more experience users have with GNU/Linux, the more positive is their opinion of it.

However, respondents also mentioned gaps in the usability area of these products. For some users, one of the GNU/Linux’s disadvantages is the difficulty of installation of hardware and the learning curve needed in the process of migration from the MS Windows interface. OpenOffice.org also has some issues with insufficient performance compared to MS Office, according to the respondents.

Apart from sole usability aspects, the survey discovered that there is a need for more information about which F/OSS programs represent alternatives to their commercial counterparts. The survey also showed that no charge and the GNU General Public License (GPL) remain the main reasons for switching to F/OSS products.

(Via Erwin Tenhumberg.)

Free Software by Numbers

With my previous caveat, this report from Rishab Aiyer Ghosh into the state of free software in Europe looks to contain important material, with some eye-catching figures:

• The existing base of quality FLOSS applications with reasonable quality control and distribution would cost firms almost Euro 12 billion to reproduce internally. This code base has been doubling every 18-24 months over the past eight years, and this growth is projected to continue for several more years.

• This existing base of FLOSS software represents a lower bound of about 131 000 real person-years of effort that has been devoted exclusively by programmers. As this is mostly by individuals not directly paid for development, it represents a significant gap in national accounts of productivity. Annualised and adjusted for growth this represents at least Euro 800 million in voluntary contribution from programmers alone each year, of which nearly half are based in Europe.

• Firms have invested an estimated Euro 1.2 billion in developing FLOSS software that is made freely available. Such firms represent in total at least 565 000 jobs and Euro 263 billion in annual revenue. Contributing firms are from several non-IT (but often ICT intensive) sectors, and tend to have much higher revenues than non-contributing firms.

• Defined broadly, FLOSS-related services could reach a 32% share of all IT services by 2010, and the FLOSS-related share of the economy could reach 4% of European GDP by 2010. FLOSS directly supports the 29% share of software that is developed in-house in the EU (43% in the U.S.), and provides the natural model for software development for the secondary software sector.

(Via Erwin Tenhumberg.)