Chris DiBona, Sam Ockman and Mark Stone (eds), Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution, Sebastopol (CA): O'Reilly and Associates, Inc (1999).

Bruce Perens

The typical computer user owns lots of software that he bought years ago and no longer uses today. He may have upgraded his computer or changed brands, and then the program wouldn't work any longer. The software might have become obsolete. The program may simply not do what he needs. He may have bought two or more computers, and doesn't want to pay for a second copy of the software. Whatever the reason, the software that he paid for years ago isn't up to the task today. Does that really need to happen?

What if you had the right to get a free upgrade whenever your software needed it? What if, when you switched from a Mac to a PC, you could switch software versions for free? What if, when the software doesn't work or isn't powerful enough, you can have it improved or even fix it yourself? What if the software was still maintained even if the company that produced it went out of business? What if you could use your software on your office workstation, and your home desktop computer, and your portable laptop, instead of just one computer? You'd probably still be using the software you paid for years ago. These are some of the rights that Open Source gives you.

The Open Source Definition is a bill of rights for the computer user. It defines certain rights that a software license must grant you to be certified as Open Source. Those who don't make their programs Open Source are finding it difficult to compete with those who do, as users gain a new appreciation of rights they always should have had. Programs like the Linux operating system and Netscape's web browser have become extremely popular, displacing other software that has more restrictive licenses. Companies that use open-source software have the advantage of its very rapid development, often by several collaborating companies, and much of it contributed by individuals who simply need an improvement to serve their own needs.

The volunteers who made products like Linux possible are only there, and the companies are only able to cooperate, because of the rights that come with Open Source. The average computer programmer would feel stupid if he put lots of work into a program, only to have the owner of the program sell his improvement without giving anything back. Those same programmers feel comfortable contributing to Open Source because they are assured of these rights:

• The right to make copies of the program, and distribute those copies.
• The right to have access to the software's source code, a necessary preliminary before you can change it.
• The right to make improvements to the program.

These rights are important to the software contributor because they keep all contributors at the same level relative to each other. Everyone who wants to is allowed to sell an Open Source program, so prices will be low and development to reach new markets will be rapid. Anyone who invests the time to build knowledge in an Open Source program can support it, and this provides users with the option of providing their own support, or the economy of a number of competing support providers. Any programmer can tailor an Open Source program to specific markets in order to reach new customers. People who do these things aren't compelled to pay royalties or license fees.

The reason for the success of this somewhat communist-sounding strategy, while the failure of communism itself is visible around the world, is that the economics of information are fundamentally different from those of other products. There is very little cost associated with copying a piece of information like a computer program. The electricity involved costs less than a penny, and the use of the equipment not much more. In comparison, you can't copy a loaf of bread without a pound of flour.

Analysis of the Open Source Definition

In this section, I'll present the entire text of the Open Source Definition, with commentary (in italic). You can find the canonical version of the Open Source Definition at http://www.opensource.org/osd.html.

Pedants have pointed out minor ambiguities in the Open Source Definition. I've held off revising it as it's little more than a year old and I'd like people to consider it stable. The future will bring slight language changes, but only the most minor of changes in the intent of the document.

The Open Source Definition (Version 1.0)

Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of an open-source program must comply with the following criteria:

Note that the Open Source Definition is not itself a software license. It is a specification of what is permissible in a software license for that software to be referred to as Open Source. The Open Source Definition was not intended to be a legal document. The inclusion of the Open Source Definition in software licenses, such as a proposed license of the Linux Documentation Project, has tempted me to write a more rigorous version that would be appropriate for that use.

To be Open Source, all of the terms below must be applied together, and in all cases. For example, they must be applied to derived versions of a program as well as the original program. It's not sufficient to apply some and not others, and it's not sufficient for the terms to only apply some of the time. After working through some particularly naive interpretations of the Open Source Definition, I feel tempted to add: this means you!

1. Free Redistribution

 
The license may not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license may not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

This means that you can make any number of copies of the software, and sell or supply them away, and you don't have to pay anyone for that privilege.

The "aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources" was intended to fit a loophole in the Artistic License, a rather sloppy license in my opinion, originally designed for Perl. Today, almost all programs that use the Artistic License are also available under the GPL. That provision is thus no longer necessary, and may be removed from a future version of the Open Source Definition.


 
2. Source Code

 
The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of downloading the source code, without charge, via the Internet. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed.

Source code is a necessary preliminary for the repair or modification of a program. The intent here is for source code to be distributed with the initial work, and all derived works.

3. Derived Works

 
The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.

Software has little use if you can't maintain it ( fix bugs, port to new systems, make improvements), and modification is necessary for maintenance. The intent here is for modification of any sort to be allowed. It must be allowed for a modified work to be distributed under the same license terms as the original work. However, it is not required that any producer of a derived work must use the same license terms, only that the option to do so be open to them. Various licenses speak differently on this subject--the BSD license allows you to take modifications private, while the GPL does not.

A concern among some software authors is that this provision could allow unscrupulous people to modify their software in ways that would embarrass the original author. They fear someone deliberately making the software perform incorrectly in a way that would make it look as if the author was a poor programmer. Others are concerned that software could be modified for criminal use, by the addition of Trojan horse functions or locally-banned technologies such as cryptography. All of these actions, however, are covered by criminal law. A common misunderstanding about software licenses is that they must specify everything, including things like "don't use this software to commit a crime." However, no license has any valid existence outside of the body of civil and criminal law. Considering a license as something apart from the body of applicable law is as silly as considering an English-language document as being apart from the dictionary, in which case none of the words would have any defined meaning.


 
4. Integrity of the Author's Source Code

 
The license may restrict source code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution of "patch files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time.

Some authors were afraid that others would distribute source code with modifications that would be perceived as the work of the original author, and would reflect poorly on that author. This gives them a way to enforce a separation between modifications and their own work without prohibiting modifications. Some consider it un-aesthetic that modifications might have to be distributed in a separate "patch" file from the source code, even though Linux distributions like Debian and Red Hat use this procedure for all of the modifications they make to the programs they distribute. There are programs that automatically merge patches into the main source, and one can have these programs run automatically when extracting a source package. Thus, this provision should cause little or no hardship.

Note also that this provision says that in the case of patch files, the modification takes place at build-time. This loophole is employed in the Qt Public License to mandate a different, though less restrictive, license for the patch files, in contradiction of Section 3 of the Open Source Definition. There is a proposal to clean up this loophole in the definition while keeping Qt within Open Source.

The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software.

This means that Netscape, for example, can insist that only they can name a version of the program Netscape Navigator(tm) while all free versions of the program must be called Mozilla or something else.
 

5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups

 
The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.

A license provided by the Regents of the University of California, Berkeley, prohibited an electronic design program from being used by the police of South Africa. While this was a laudable sentiment in the time of apartheid, it makes little sense today. Some people are still stuck with software that they acquired under that license, and their derived versions must carry the same restriction. Open Source licenses may not contain such provisions, no matter how laudable their intent.

6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

 
The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

Your software must be equally usable in an abortion clinic, or by an anti-abortion organization. These political arguments belong on the floor of Congress, not in software licenses. Some people find this lack of discrimination extremely offensive!

7. Distribution of License

 
The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties.

The license must be automatic, no signature required. Unfortunately, there has not been a good court test in the U.S. of the power of a no-signature-required license when it is passed from a second party to a third. However, this argument considers the license in the body of contract law, while some argue that it should be considered as copyright law, where there is more precedent for no-signature licenses. A good court test will no doubt happen in the next few years, given the popularity of this sort of license and the booming nature of Open Source.

8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product

 
The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program's being part of a particular software distribution. If the program is extracted from that distribution and used or distributed within the terms of the program's license, all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the original software distribution.

This means you can't restrict a product that is identified as Open Source to be free only if you use it with a particular brand of Linux distribution, etc. It must remain free if you separate it from the software distribution it came with.

9. License Must Not Contaminate Other Software

 
The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software.

A version of GhostScript (a PostScript-rendering program) requires that the media on which it is distributed contain only free software programs. This isn't permissible for Open Source licenses. Fortunately, the GhostScript author distributes another (somewhat older) version of the program with a true Open Source license.

Note that there is a difference between derivation and aggregation. Derivation is when a program actually incorporates part of another program into itself. Aggregation is when you include two programs on the same CD-ROM. This section of the Open Source Definition is concerned with aggregation , not derivation. Section 4 is concerned with derivation.


 
10. Example Licenses

 
The GNU GPL, BSD, X Consortium, and Artistic licenses are examples of licenses that they consider conformant to the Open Source Definition. So is the MPL.

This would get us in trouble if any of these licenses are ever changed to be non-Open-Source--we'd have to issue

a revision of the Open Source Definition immediately. It really belongs in explanatory text, not in the Open Source Definition itself.

Analysis of Licenses and Their Open Source Compliance

To understand the Open Source Definition, they need to look at some common licensing practices as they relate to Open Source.

Public Domain

A common misconception is that much free software is public-domain. This happens simply because the idea of free software or Open Source is confusing to many people, and they mistakenly describe these programs as public-domain because that's the closest concept that they understand. The programs, however, are clearly copyrighted and covered by a license, just a license that gives people more rights than they are used to.

A public-domain program is one upon which the author has deliberately surrendered his copyright rights. It can't really be said to come with a license; it's your personal property to use as you see fit. Because you can treat it as your personal property, you can do what you want with a public-domain program. You can even re-license a public-domain program, removing that version from the public domain, or you can remove the author's name and treat it as your own work.

If you are doing a lot of work on a public-domain program, consider applying your own copyright to the program and re-licensing it. For example, if you don't want a third party to make their own modifications that they then keep private, apply the GPL or a similar license to your version of the program. The version that you started with will still be in the public domain, but your version will be under a license that others must heed if they use it or derive from it.

You can easily take a public-domain program private, by declaring a copyright and applying your own license to it or simply declaring "All Rights Reserved."

Free Software Licenses in General

If you have a free software collection like a Linux disk, you may believe the programs on that disk are your property. That's not entirely true. Copyrighted programs are the property of the copyright holder, even when they have an Open Source license like the GPL. The program's license grants you some rights, and you have other rights under the definition of fair use in copyright law.

It's important to note that an author does not have to issue a program with just one license. You can GPL a program, and also sell a version of the same program with a commercial, non-Open-Source license. This exact strategy is used by many people who want to make a program Open Source and still make some money from it. Those who do not want an Open Source license may pay for the privilege, providing a revenue stream for the author.

All of the licenses they will examine have a common feature: they each disclaim all warranties. The intent is to protect the software owner from any liability connected with the program. Since the program is often being given away at no cost, this is a reasonable requirement--the author doesn't have a sufficient revenue stream from the program to fund liability insurance and legal fees.

If free-software authors lose the right to disclaim all warranties and find themselves getting sued over the performance of the programs that they've written, they'll stop contributing free software to the world. It's to their advantage as users to help the author protect this right.

The Future

As this essay went to press, IBM joined the Open Source world, and the venture capital community is discovering Open Source. Intel and Netscape have invested in Red Hat, a Linux distributor. VA Research, an integrator of Linux server and workstation hardware, has announced an outside investor. Sendmail Inc., created to commercialize the ubiquitous Sendmail e mail delivery program, has announced six million dollars in funding. IBM's Postfix secure mailer has an Open Source license, and another IBM product, the Jikes Java compiler, has a license that, at this writing, tries but doesn't quite meet the intent of the Open Source Definition. IBM appears to be willing to modify the Jikes license to be fully Open Source, and is collecting comments from the community as I write this.

Two internal Microsoft memos, referred to as the Halloween Documents, were leaked to the online public. These memos clearly document that Microsoft is threatened by Open Source and Linux, and that MS will launch an offensive against them to protect its markets. Obviously, they are in for some interesting times. I think we'll see Microsoft use two main strategies: copyrighted interfaces and patents. Microsoft will extend networking protocols, including Microsoft-specific features in them that will not be made available to free software. They, and other companies, will aggressively research new directions in computer science and will patent whatever they can before they can first use those techniques in free software, and then they'll lock us out with patent royalty fees. I've written an essay for the webzine Linux World on how to fight Open Source's enemies on the patent front.

The good news is that Microsoft is scared! In the secondHalloween document, a Microsoft staffer writes about the exhilarating feeling that he could easily change part of the Linux system to do exactly what he wanted, and that it was so much easier to do this on Linux than it was for a Microsoft employee to change NT!

Efforts to hurt us from inside are the most dangerous. I think we'll also see more attempts to dilute the definition of Open Source to include partially-free products, as they saw with the Qt library in KDE before Troll Tech saw the light and released an Open Source license. Microsoft and others could hurt us by releasing a lot of software that's just free enough to attract users without having the full freedoms of Open Source. It's conceivable that they could kill off development of some categories of Open Source software by releasing a "good enough," "almost-free-enough" solution. However, the strong reaction against the KDE project before the Qt library went fully Open Source bodes poorly for similar efforts by MS and its ilk.

We've escaped Trojan horses so far. Suppose that someone who doesn't like us contributes software that contains Trojan horse, a hidden way to defeat the security of a Linux system. Suppose, then, that this person waits for the Trojan-horse software to be widely distributed, and then publicizes its vulnerability to security exploits. The public will then have seen that their Open Source system may leave us more vulnerable to this sort of exploit than the closed system of Microsoft, and this may reduce the public's trust in Open Source software. They can argue that Microsoft has its share of security bugs even if they don't allow outsiders to insert them, and that the disclosed source-code model of Open Source makes these bugs easier to find. Any bug like this that comes up on Linux will be fixed the day after it's announced, while a similar bug in Windows might go undetected or unrepaired for years. But they still need to beef up their defense against Trojan horses. Having good identification of the people who submit software and modifications is their best defense, as it allows us to use criminal law against the perpetrators of Trojan horses. While I was manager of the Debian GNU/Linux distribution, they instituted a system for all of their software maintainers to be reliably identified, and for them to participate in a public-key cryptography network that would allow us to verify whom their software came from. This sort of system has to be expanded to include all Open Source developers.

We have tremendous improvements to make before Linux is ready for the average person to use. The graphical user interface is an obvious deficit, and the KDE and GNOME projects are addressing this. System administration is the next frontier: while linuxconf partially addresses this issue, if falls far short of being a comprehensive system-administration tool for the naive user. If Caldera's COAS system is successful, it could become the basis of a full solution to the system administration problem. However, Caldera has had trouble keeping sufficient resources allocated to COAS to finish its development, and other participants have dropped off the bandwagon due to the lack of progress.

The plethora of Linux distributions appear to be going through a shake-out, with Red Hat as the perceived winner and Caldera coming in second. Red Hat has shown a solid commitment to the concept of Open Source so far, but a new president and rumors of an Initial Public Offering (IPO) could mean a weakening of this commitment, especially if competitors like Caldera, who are not nearly as concerned about Open Source, make inroads into Red Hat's markets. If the commitment of commercial Linux distributions to Open Source became a problem, that would probably spawn an effort to replace them with pure Open Source efforts similar to Debian GNU/Linux, but ones more directed to the commercial market than Debian has been.

Despite these challenges, I predict that Open Source will win. Linux has become the testbed of computer science students, and they will carry those systems with them into the workplace as they graduate. Research laboratories have adopted the Open Source model because the sharing of information is essential to the scientific method, and Open Source allows software to be shared easily. Businesses are adopting the Open Source model because it allows groups of companies to collaborate in solving a problem without the threat of an anti-trust lawsuit, and because of the leverage they gain when the computer-programming public contributes free improvements to their software. Some large corporations have adopted Open Source as a strategy to combat Microsoft and to assure that another Microsoft does not come to dominate the computer industry. But the most reliable indication of the future of Open Source is its past: in just a few years, they have gone from nothing to a robust body of software that solves many different problems and is reaching the million-user count. There's no reason for us to slow down now.
 
 

software

A week later in San Francisco, a different sentiment was in evidence at the LinuxWorld trade show. IBM, perhaps the most influential patent holder in the tech industry, said it wouldn't use its hefty patent portfolio against Linux, as it released into the public domain the software code for its Java-based Cloudscape database.

"No single vendor, no matter how large, can claim a monopoly on innovation," said senior vice president Nick Donofrio. And Matthew Szulik, CEO of Linux distributor Red Hat denounced patent holders' "veiled threat of legal intimidation" against users of open-source software during his speech.

Open source will help establish a shared worldwide computing environment, Red Hat CEO Szulik says.

Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, Darl McBride, SCO Group CEO and Linux public enemy No. 1, largely sat on the sidelines, defending the market for commercial Unix. There was little new information about the company's $5 billion intellectual-property infringement lawsuit against IBM and suits against some large Linux users, but, McBride told InformationWeek, "if they lose in court, then Linux is at that point a runaway train, and they never will chase it down."

Linux and other open-source software customers might fear a train wreck, given that the intellectual-property agendas of some of the largest IT companies appear to be on a collision course. The fast-growing popularity of Linux and other open-source products has garnered the attention of commercial vendors, who see opportunities for building open-source communities that ultimately contribute to the bottom lines of their for-profit software.

For instance, IBM hopes to encourage developers to write applications in Java, greasing the wheels for sales of its pricey WebSphere middleware and other commercial products. But the potential to run afoul of intellectual-property claims, combined with the sheer proliferation of open-source projects, means customers need to make open-source choices carefully.

Concerns about what patents the city of Munich, Germany, might violate in moving 14,000 PCs from Windows to Linux caused city officials last week to delay those plans. Patent issues could be a "catastrophe" for the city's Linux effort, an official says. Stateside, Open Source Risk Management, a startup that offers insurance against patent and copyright violations, last week released a study that cites 283 possible patent claims that might be applied against Linux.

A third of the patents are owned by Linux backers, including Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Novell, and Oracle, which are unlikely to assert claims. "IBM has no intention of ever asserting its patent portfolio against the Linux kernel unless forced to," Donofrio said.

However, Microsoft owns 27 of the patents and is getting more aggressive on intellectual property. The company plans to accelerate its patent filings from a little more than 2,000 in fiscal 2004 to more than 3,000 in fiscal 2005. Protecting its intellectual property could become more important to Microsoft in a world in which the software business doesn't ensure a lock on profits. "Will software be a business that generates a lot of profit in the future, or will it not?" Ballmer asked. "That really is the big question people ask us when they talk about open source."

What's more, the number of open-source software projects is multiplying quickly, raising the question of whether there's a development community to support them. Computer Associates last week offered a prize of up to $1 million to entice developers to program for its newly open sourced Ingres database. SourceForge.net, a Web site run by Open Source Technology Group that hosts open-source projects, now counts 80,000 of them--most obscure. And HP's top Linux executive, Martin Fink, last week said that the large number of open-source licenses is causing confusion.

Amid the open-source rush, some customers are cautious. "You can make any code you want open source," says Michael Reeves, a manager of mainframe operations for Fidelity Investments. "That doesn't mean a company is going to obtain it and run it in production systems."

For others, large tech vendors' support of open-source software is a boon. "It gives you confidence that there will be increased collaboration among these vendors and their technologies," says Robert Taylor, senior director of IT for construction and engineering company Fluor Corp. Few tech vendors believe they can avoid the open-source movement entirely. Microsoft has been releasing more code to developers under its Shared Source licensing program and, in April, for the first time released projects to SourceForge. Last month, SourceForge said two Microsoft technologies are among the top 5% of active projects hosted on the site and that more than a quarter of the projects on its site are Windows-related. Sun Microsystems, the largest Unix supplier, has changed its tune on the open-source model. It's putting the final touches on a plan to release the Solaris operating system, the crown jewel of its software, under an open-source license next year. "It's a priority," says president Jonathan Schwartz. "We just have to make sure they have the licensing details worked out right."

The debate about whether open-source software poses a threat to intellectual-property rights in some ways boils down to how innovative technology users can be. More freely available open-source code built around industry standards means more leeway for customers to use their IT budgets to fund new development instead of infrastructure, said IBM's Donofrio.

Open source will help establish a shared computing environment around the world, said Red Hat's Szulik, and commercial products that add value to open source will have immense markets in which to thrive. But the current patent-protectionist environment could stymie growth. Developers might labor on a product only to face patent- or copyright-infringement claims "that would make years of work a lost cause," Szulik said. "There's potential for a small number of firms, because of their financial resources, to take out a large number of patents."

SCO's McBride counters that in a world of free software "there would be no economic engine to drive the software industry forward. In the information age that they live in, intellectual-property rights will take a front-and-center role in terms of how people make money."

More than 70% of open-source development is backed by companies with commercial interests in the outcome, such as IBM or Oracle, says Bill Weinberg, an architecture specialist at Open Source Development Labs, the group backed by HP, IBM, Intel, and Red Hat that's assembling open-source software into a robust stack to appeal to businesses. That's changing the way companies buy software, he says, and giving those who want new choices more options. It's a promising middle ground, but one that still appears to be shifting.

Even companies that aggressively adopt cutting-edge technology need compelling reasons to replace what already works. E.&J. Gallo Winery uses Linux to run a handful of applications but relies heavily on Windows PCs and IBM AS/400s for its desktop and core apps. Open-source vendors and developers have to be able to show companies how their technology can be extended into business situations, how employees can be trained to use the technology, and how it can be supported. If open source can answer these key concerns, there will be a place for it eventually, says Gallo CIO Kent Kushar. "We're all trying to get more with less, and we're looking for help."

TechWeb News contributed to this report.

This story courtesy of InformationWeek.

The dizzying array of SMB VoIP products and unified communications available on the market means solution providers can pick and choose which features and capabilities to push to customers. That is even more so the case with open source, since there is flexibility with pricing, hardware add-ons and bundled services. There's a lot of money up for grabs, too; the Dell'Oro Group, Redwood City, Calif., has projected total PBX revenues to exceed $7.5 billion in 2011, driven by strong IP PBX sales. Over the same period, the installation of IP lines into the SMB is expected to grow by 30 percent every year, making up 60 percent of line shipments into the SMB by 2011.

Most open source IP PBX solutions are based on one of two software packages: Asterisk, a complete feature-rich PBX solution, or SIPfoundry, which includes SIP-based projects such as sipX and reSIProcate. Asterisk offers traditional PBX functionality, which means nearly all the features that a buyer would expect to find in an enterprise-class PBX such as directory-based voicemail, conference calling, integrated messaging, interactive voice response (IVR) systems, three-way-calling, caller ID and call queues. While several vendors offer Asterisk-based systems, solution providers comfortable with Linux and software development can download the source code, build the solution on their own hardware and sell their own, branded PBX.

Being Linux-based, Asterisk does not require any elaborate or expensive hardware, freeing up solution providers to source the hardware at a lower cost. If the system needs to work with analog lines or FXO/FXS adapters, special network interface cards can easily be added to the machine. If compiling the source code sounds too intimidating or time-consuming, Asterisk-based vendors, such as Digium Inc., Huntsville, Ala.—the primary developer and sponsor—and Fonality, Los Angeles, are just some companies that offer pre-packaged solutions.

Why Open Source PBX?
Open source PBX has many selling points including customizability, stability, performance, flexibility and deep functionality. The legacy PBX market is expensive, complicated and often not very easy to customize. Customers also like the price tag; bids for open source PBX deployments often are 45 percent to 60 percent less than deployments using proprietary systems. Cheap doesn't have to dent the solution provider's bottom line, either. Open source telecom products like Digium's can offer as much as a 50 percent product margin, which is far higher than the 10 percent range commonly seen in proprietary offerings. Digium offers Switchvox, which is essentially the Asterisk IP PBX on a pre-configured server with some other enhancements. The software version, Switchvox Free Edition, can be installed on any hardware, supports 15 virtual, IP or analog phone extensions and can handle up to eight concurrent phone calls at once. Digium also has Switchvox as a hosted PBX solution. The Switchvox Hosted Edition runs many copies of Switchvox IP PBX software in a virtual environment, allowing several customers to be supported on a single server.

There are many ways to deploy an Asterisk solution and to add-on various services. For example, solution providers can install the FXS analog adapter to support analog phone lines instead of getting it pre-installed by the vendor. An entire IP PBX solution can be rolled out without using a single phone; customers can have a solution based entirely on softphones and conference-calling applications installed directly on their desktop machines. Services revenue can often be double that generated from traditional deployments, especially if the customer pays for support via a subscription.

Switchvox supports mashups, where the phone system can be integrated with other packages to create applications that are accessible from the user's dashboard. These applications can be as simple as displaying a Google Maps page based on the caller ID location, or looking up the caller ID information in a Sugar CRM application. Other applications can show what other users on the system are doing. While integration with Sugar CRM is built-in, creating applications to show images from Flickr or to return search engine results based on the caller's name is also straightforward.

Firewall configuration is another common task. If the firewall is Linux-based, configuring the firewall to prioritize all UDP packages (SIP relies on UDP) and setting some traffic rules can Boost voice quality and reliability. If the firewall is not flexible, the VoIP solution can be integrated with a gateway/firewall product that can handle these configurations. Creating rules on an Asterisk server can allow callers to call in from outside the network with a cellphone and then use the service to dial out anywhere.

Another benefit of open source PBX: most VoIP phones should work with the system, so existing phones can be used. If a specific phone type is preferred, Polycom Inc., Pleasanton, Calif., has a multiyear agreement to integrate Asterisk telephony features into its SIP-based desktop and phone products for the SMB. Since any VoIP phone will work, it's actually more cost-efficient to migrate from an existing VoIP implementation to this one, than to roll out a brand new one.

Next: Where To Look

Where To Look
With the number of partnerships between open-source and traditional vendors, it's easier than ever for channel partners to get in on the action.

Digium's Switchvox is sold through 3Com Corp., Santa Clara, Calif. The "3Com Asterisk," priced at $1,595, includes a 3Com-co-branded interface and easy configuration/provisioning of 3Com SIP phones.

Earlier this year, Dell Inc., Round Rock, Texas, quietly began offering Dell hardware with Fonality's trixbox Pro software installed. These companies also provide professional services and support as a subscription service.

It probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone practicing this, but hackers and makers absolutely love LEGO. They think you’d be hard pressed to find a Hackaday reader, young or old, that hasn’t spent some quality time with the little plastic bricks from Billund, Denmark. So it follows that there’s a considerable community of individuals who leverage their better than average technical prowess to utilize LEGO in new and unique ways. But the activities and history of these LEGO hackers is not exactly common knowledge to those who aren’t heavily vested in the hobby.

During the latest FOSSCON 2018 in Philadelphia, Daniel Pikora gave attendees a comprehensive look at the intersection of open source development and the world’s most popular brand of construction toys. A software developer with a penchant for open source code by trade, he’s also an avid member of what’s known as the Adult Fan of LEGO (AFOL) community who’s exhibited his creations at shows across the United States and Canada. Such a unique perspective, with a foot in both the FOSS and LEGO camps, makes Daniel an ideal tour guide for this particular microcosm of toys and tech.

In a whirlwind presentation that took attendees through 49 slides in about as many minutes, Daniel covered LEGO’s beginnings in the 1930s to the rise of 3D printed custom bricks, and everything in between. Some of the engineering-centric product lines, such as Technic and Mindstorms, were already fairly well known to the types of folk who spent a beautiful Saturday in Philadelphia at an open source conference. But Daniel’s deep-dive into the long history of open source LEGO projects brought to light the work of so many dedicated developers that everyone walked away with a newfound respect for the amount of work the AFOL community has put into elevating LEGO from a child’s toy to a legitimate tool. Join me below for a look at the particulars of that deep dive.

Open Source Spirit

One of the key points Daniel made early on in the presentation is that, contrary to common misconceptions, LEGO products (I.E. the physical “bricks”) are not open source. In fact, the LEGO company is very aggressive about protecting their intellectual property and any unauthorized use of their brand or designs is likely to be met with legal action. That said, LEGO appreciates the near ubiquity of their products in the hacker’s toolkit, and they’ve occasionally made some concessions to their otherwise strict terms of use.

For example, in 2010 LEGO released a document describing the protocol for their “Power Functions RC” product line which opened with the following “license”:

Please feel free to use any information from this document for personal, non-commercial use only,
provided you keep intact copyright, trademark and other proprietary rights of the The LEGO Group –
have fun.

While this simplistic license is unlikely to get the approval of the Free Software Foundation anytime soon, open source licenses with non-commercial clauses aren’t unheard of. Even though LEGO doesn’t often use official open source licenses for their products, few could argue that LEGO doesn’t embrace the spirit of open source. The exchange of information and a culture of “remixing” is pervasive in not only the AFOL community but the LEGO company itself.

In 2016, after hearing that some customers had come up with an alternate way of assembling the gearbox in the Technic Porsche 911 GT3 RS kit, LEGO released a statement encouraging customers to experiment and find their own solutions. The statement closed with a line that encapsulates LEGO’s feelings on open source, at least in spirit if not in letter:

LEGO Technic really is the ultimate open source design product and now that it is finally available, they look forward to seeing all the ‘improved’ models their fans create. After all, that is what LEGO building is all about.

The World of LDraw

While the LEGO hardware might not be open, there’s no shortage of open source software that has sprung up surrounding it. Primarily these tools are designed to help builders plan and document their projects using the open source LDraw file format. It would be fair to say that these tools are a cornerstone of the AFOL community, and have enabled collaborative efforts that might otherwise have been impossible.

The original LDraw, and its eponymous file format, was released for DOS in 1995 by James Jessiman as the first unofficial LEGO CAD package. He put considerable effort into making the file format modular and extendable, so others naturally adopted it in their own programs. Sadly, James passed away just a few years after the release of LDraw due to complications from the flu. As a fitting memorial, the community continues to use and develop the LDraw format that he pioneered.

Accordingly, there’s a huge list of software packages that utilize the now Creative Commons licensed LDraw format. Even LEGO’s official CAD program, Digital Designer, offers support for it. Daniel walked attendees through over a dozen LDraw-compatible tools, with a specific focus on those which are released under an open source license and for multiple platforms.

Playtime Goes High Tech

Daniel wrapped up the presentation with some details about the latest advancements in the AFOL community, including 3D printing custom or rare pieces and the latest generation of Linux-powered LEGO Mindstorms. These technologies are allowing for LEGO creations that go far beyond what was capable in the early days, and further cement LEGO as a practical system for rapidly developing hardware projects.

AFOL members point to a detail in 2008’s Iron Man that shows Tony Stark using some open source Mindstorms code during the construction of the Mk I suit as validation that LEGO has transcended its humble beginnings as a replacement for wooden children’s blocks in the late 1940’s. While the reference is obviously tongue-in-cheek, it does go to show the pervasive influence LEGO has had on the generations of engineers who got their start rummaging through piles of multicolored bricks.

In keeping with the understanding that knowledge is a public good and should be transmitted as broadly as possible, the faculty of Connecticut College has adopted an Open Access Policy. This policy was modeled on those already in place at both large research institutions and peer Oberlin Group member colleges.

The policy seeks to make scholarship produced by the faculty of the College freely available to all through their institutional repository, Digital Commons @ Connecticut College, unless prohibited by the licensing agreement between the author and publisher.

The policy will benefit the faculty, by increasing the potential audience for their scholarship; the College, by enhancing its research reputation; and the broader community, by insuring that scholars without access to research libraries will still be able to carry out their work.

The Open Access movement has gained considerable strength over the past decade with many funding agencies requiring free access to grant-funded research and over 100 colleges and universities adopting Open Access policies. They are excited to be a part of that movement.

To make participation in Connecticut College's Open Access policy simple, Information Services has developed a submission form. It can be found at http://www.conncoll.edu/camelweb/index.cfm?fuseaction=library_manuscripts.

If you have any questions about the Open Access policy, you may contact Ben Panciera.

Open Access FAQ

What is Open Access?

Open Access is defined as the practice of offering scholarly research freely over the Internet.  For practical purposes, when they talk of Open Access here at Connecticut College, they are referring to one of two things:

• Author self-archiving of research articles in Connecticut College’s institutional repository, Digital Commons  http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/  or self-archiving in a subject-based repository such as http://arxiv.org/
• Open Access publishing, or, a faculty author putting their articles in a web-based open access journal that has self-identified as being open access.

Why Open Access?

As a freely available resource on the Web, Open Access research offers faster access to content and can result in more readers than traditional research. Both forms of Open Access come in response to the rising cost of serial subscriptions.  These escalating costs have limited access to scholarly research in colleges and universities, and have eliminated access for those researchers who do not have research libraries.  Both of these limitations are particularly felt in areas of the world (Asia, Africa, and Latin America) with significantly fewer research libraries and research libraries with low budgets.

Okay, so what are they doing here at Connecticut College?

The faculty at Connecticut College adopted an Open Access policy in 2012. The Connecticut College policy deals only with author self-archiving and depositing peer-reviewed journal articles into Digital Commons upon their publication in a traditional journal.

What sort of institutions have an Open Access policy?

Over 100 colleges and universities and a handful of governmental agencies have adopted policies in recent years. These include major research institutions like Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Texas, and Stanford and liberal arts colleges like Oberlin, Bryn Mawr, Bucknell, and Lafayette.

What will I have to do?

When a faculty member has an article accepted for publication at a peer-reviewed journal, he or she will forward to Information Services an electronic copy of the manuscript after peer review, but before the publisher has finalized it (i.e. the post-print copy). Consulting with the faculty member, IS staff will then determine whether it is permitted to place the article online and under what conditions. About 70% of scholarly journals allow for some form of free republication of traditionally published research.

What conditions do publishers attach to Open Source self-archiving?

Most publishers require that they explicitly indicate the journal, issue, and page numbers for the published version of the article. Many also require that they create a link to the subscription-only version of the article online. Some publishers allow (or even require) that the post-print is replaced with a pdf of the final published version as it appears in the journal. Some publishers require an embargo on Open Access self-archiving that may range from six to twenty-four months.

What if the journal does not allow for any Open Source self-archiving?

If no self-archiving is allowed, the article will not be posted online. There will be no action contrary to any publisher’s policy concerning republication. If the author wishes, IS staff can create a record for the article in Digital Commons and link to the subscription-only version online.

Can I put research that is not peer reviewed or creative work in Digital Commons?

Yes. It will not be required under the proposed Open Access policy, but conference papers, reviews, articles for non peer-reviewed publications, fiction, poetry, etc. may be posted in Digital Commons, as long as it is allowed by the publisher. Post-prints of articles published before the adoption of the policy may be posted online as requested.

What are the benefits to me as an author?

Several studies of self-archived research in the natural and social sciences have shown that these Open Access articles receive more citations than articles that are not self archived in the same issues of the same journals. The number of citations is also more likely to hold steady or increase over time.  You can also learn about the downloading history of your work, along with the search terms researchers used to find your work, in the monthly author report received from Digital Commons.  These reports will tell you not only the number of times an article was downloaded, but also the domains from which the obtain request came.

How does the College benefit?

The College benefits from the higher profile of its faculty research. The College community also secures greater access to the research produced by its own faculty. In one study, it was found that over 20% of the research published by Connecticut College faculty is not in journals that the library can subscribe to.

Are there other benefits?

Yes, the broader scholarly community gains access to the research produced by the faculty of the College. This is of critical importance to independent scholars without consistent access to a research library and to those at institutions in the United States and abroad that can’t afford expensive journal subscriptions.

What about copyright issues? Is copyright violated by putting published articles in an open repository?

The Open Access policy requests that authors grant a license to Connecticut College to freely display their research on the Internet, subject to the terms and conditions of the authors’ agreements with their publishers. The author or publisher will continue to retain copyright. All of the rights and duties that exist in traditional publication remain in an Open Access environment, including the ability to prosecute in cases of piracy or plagiarism.

So, I turned articles in to IS for inclusion in Digital Commons.  What does that look like?

Follow this link to see one author’s articles in Digital Commons:

http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/comscifacpub/

I already have my own website. Can I just put my research there?

If you want to maintain your own website, the best solution would be to link from your site to the archived copy in Digital Commons. Digital Commons presents several advantages for the author. There are multiple backup systems for the Digital Commons servers. Documents in Digital Commons are more visible to search engines. Digital Commons also compiles monthly reports for authors documenting the number of downloads of each paper and the search strings or referring sites researchers used to find each paper.

I understand the benefits, but do not want my article to be made Open Access.

The proposed policy has an opt-out provision; no member of the faculty will be forced to publish in Open Access.  

There were multiple coauthors for my article. What are my obligations to them?

It is the practice in self-archiving that coauthors do not need to be notified in advance of their paper being placed online. Repositories do indicate all authors of a paper and most list institutional affiliation at the time of publication. If you wish to notify your coauthors in advance of making your article available, you are free to do so. If you do not want to make your paper available because you cannot notify your coauthors, that is permissible under the proposed policy.

Tech leaders have been vocal proponents of the need to regulate artificial intelligence, but they’re also lobbying hard to make sure the new rules work in their favor.

That's not to say they all want the same thing.

Facebook parent Meta and IBM on Tuesday launched a new group called the AI Alliance that’s advocating for an “open science” approach to AI development that puts them at odds with rivals Google, Microsoft and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.

These two diverging camps — the open and the closed — disagree about whether to build AI in a way that makes the underlying technology widely accessible. Safety is at the heart of the debate, but so is who gets to profit from AI's advances.

Open advocates favor an approach that is “not proprietary and closed,” said Darío Gil, a senior vice president at IBM who directs its research division. "So it’s not like a thing that is locked in a barrel and no one knows what they are.”

WHAT'S OPEN-SOURCE AI?

The term “open-source” comes from a decades-old practice of building software in which the code is free or widely accessible for anyone to examine, modify and build upon.

Open-source AI involves more than just code and computer scientists differ on how to define it depending on which components of the technology are publicly available and if there are restrictions limiting its use. Some use open science to describe the broader philosophy.

The AI Alliance — led by IBM and Meta and including Dell, Sony, chipmakers AMD and Intel and several universities and AI startups — is “coming together to articulate, simply put, that the future of AI is going to be built fundamentally on top of the open scientific exchange of ideas and on open innovation, including open source and open technologies,” Gil said in an interview with The Associated Press ahead of its unveiling.

Part of the confusion around open-source AI is that despite its name, OpenAI — the company behind ChatGPT and the image-generator DALL-E — builds AI systems that are decidedly closed.

“To state the obvious, there are near-term and commercial incentives against open source," said Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI's chief scientist and co-founder, in a video interview hosted by Stanford University in April. But there's also a longer-term worry involving the potential for an AI system with “mind-bendingly powerful” capabilities that would be too dangerous to make publicly accessible, he said.

To make his case for open-source dangers, Sutskever posited an AI system that had learned how to start its own biological laboratory.

IS IT DANGEROUS?

Even current AI models pose risks and could be used, for instance, to ramp up disinformation campaigns to disrupt democratic elections, said University of California, Berkeley scholar David Evan Harris.

“Open source is really great in so many dimensions of technology,” but AI is different, Harris said.

“Anyone who watched the movie ‘Oppenheimer’ knows this, that when big scientific discoveries are being made, there are lots of reasons to think twice about how broadly to share the details of all of that information in ways that could get into the wrong hands,” he said.

The Center for Humane Technology, a longtime critic of Meta's social media practices, is among the groups drawing attention to the risks of open-source or leaked AI models.

“As long as there are no guardrails in place right now, it’s just completely irresponsible to be deploying these models to the public,” said the group's Camille Carlton.

IS IT FEAR-MONGERING?

An increasingly public debate has emerged over the benefits or dangers of adopting an open-source approach to AI development.

Meta’s chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, this fall took aim on social media at OpenAI, Google and startup Anthropic for what he described as “massive corporate lobbying” to write the rules in a way that benefits their high-performing AI models and could concentrate their power over the technology's development. The three companies, along with OpenAI's key partner Microsoft, have formed their own industry group called the Frontier Model Forum.

LeCun said on X, formerly Twitter, that he panic that fearmongering from fellow scientists about AI “doomsday scenarios” was giving ammunition to those who want to ban open-source research and development.

“In a future where AI systems are poised to constitute the repository of all human knowledge and culture, they need the platforms to be open source and freely available so that everyone can contribute to them,” LeCun wrote. “Openness is the only way to make AI platforms reflect the entirety of human knowledge and culture.”

For IBM, an early supporter of the open-source Linux operating system in the 1990s, the dispute feeds into a much longer competition that precedes the AI boom.

“It’s sort of a classic regulatory capture approach of trying to raise fears about open-source innovation," said Chris Padilla, who leads IBM's global government affairs team. "I mean, this has been the Microsoft model for decades, right? They always opposed open-source programs that could compete with Windows or Office. They’re taking a similar approach here.”

WHAT ARE GOVERNMENTS DOING?

It was easy to miss the “open-source” debate in the discussion around U.S. President Joe Biden's sweeping executive order on AI.

That's because Biden's order described open models with the highly technical name of “dual-use foundation models with widely available weights” and said they needed further study. Weights are numerical parameters that influence how an AI model performs.

“When the weights for a dual-use foundation model are widely available — such as when they are publicly posted on the Internet — there can be substantial benefits to innovation, but also substantial security risks, such as the removal of safeguards within the model,” Biden's order said. He gave U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo until July to talk to experts and come back with recommendations on how to manage the potential benefits and risks.

The European Union has less time to figure it out. In negotiations coming to a head Wednesday, officials working to finalize passage of world-leading AI regulation are still debating a number of provisions, including one that could exempt certain “free and open-source AI components” from rules affecting commercial models.