Open source software came under scrutiny at a recent forum organized by the IP Academy and the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS). Moderated by Associate Professor Daniel Seng from Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore and Senior Fellow at IP Academy, the forum examined the open source model from the point of view of the end user, the service provider, the Business Software Alliance and the legal community.

The user

Dr Cheok Beng Teck, director, Mindef, CIO Office, is hoping to see a shift in the IT business model, where his organization will no longer need to pay so much for licences.

?I?d rather shift the budget from licences to services. That way I don?t pay for what I may not use,? he said.

The CIO Office is budgeting for a Linux desktop project next year, following the success of its Open Office deployment.

The strategic reason behind the interest in open source is that ?as a buyer, we want choice,? said Cheok. ?We want to send the message to the vendor that Mindef is always looking for cost effective choices. We don?t want to let vendors take us for granted.?

Security is also an important consideration. ?With open source, we can view the code and can assure ourselves that there is no Trojan horse, no malicious code in there.?

The CIO Office handles IT portfolio worth about S$300 million (US$182 million) a year, and counts 65,000 National Service men and full time employees of the SAF and the Ministry of Defense amongst its users.

Applications include enterprise resource planning, knowledge management, as well as B2E, B2C and B2B systems.

Last year, it announced the deployment of the open source office productivity suite Open Office in its organization.

When it comes to actual implementation of open source, however, the real issue is change management, especially when it involves front-end users.

?At the backend, it?s straightforward because all you need are good tech people,? said Cheok. ?But at the front end, people get emotional about it. It took us more than 18 months to get used to it.?

The deployment of Open Office involved about 200 users. ?Every step we took, we communicated our success. This is an important part of change management. You have to convince the users that it does not disrupt their operations.?

While open source software has been in the picture since the 1990s, it has played a role primarily in the backend. Recently, however, with the model reaching maturity, Mindef has developed a framework to manage open source in a more systematic manner, said Cheok.

It has developed policies on the use of open source software and put it under the organization"s technical architecture ? an important move which signals that the software can be used because it is part of the standard.

Cheok?s advice to organizations is to conduct a stringent TCO evaluation before embarking on open source, and to make the move ?only if it makes sense to switch?.

In his experience, open source is more attractive if developing a totally new system. ?With existing systems, there are switching costs,? he said.

He estimates that his organization has saved up to US$15 million by not having to upgrade Office 97 to the latest version. But, he emphasized, ?Do not use it because it?s free. Use it because it meets your requirements.?

The service provider

Service provider NCS recently added a third religion ? open source ? to its existing beliefs in Microsoft technologies and Java, because it fills a void, said chief operating officer Chong Yoke Sin. NCS has about 1,500 staff involved in consulting and application development.

As applications come increasingly under the purview of the business function, users are less concerned about the platforms on which those applications run. It makes sense, therefore, for the platform software to be commoditised.

?The users care only that they get the function, and are not really concerned if the platform is Microsoft, Java or open source,? said Chong. ?The base software has to be free and commoditised.?

For a service provider, this is significant as enterprises continue to cut costs.

?We are sandwiched between the customers and the suppliers. We are expected to deliver a certain level of quality and availability at a certain price,? said Chong.

?But if we have to pay a large amount of money for proprietary software, it will make us less competitive.?

Set this against the narrowing gap between proprietary software and open source when it comes to stability and functionality, and the appeal of open source becomes obvious.

With proprietary software, service providers have to fork out for development licences, and there will also be overheads involved in managing the licences, she said.

But, she emphasized, there is still space to play for proprietary players. The idea is to use open source as a base, but to value add based on domain expertise and best practices.

As for the future, she said open source can only be successful if the movement grow. ?Don?t ignore the movement of the market,? she said.

BSA

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) believes in healthy competition, and that good decisions must come from good information, said Goh Seow Hiong, director of Software Policy, Asia, BSA.

According to Goh, cost, security and flexibility are not inherent in the open source model or the proprietary model. In a paper ?Considering Open Source and Commercial Software?, Goh pointed out that the argument that open source software is cheaper than commercial software should be considered in the context of the lifetime costs of a product, which proponents of commercial software would argue are at least comparable between both models.?

He also argued that ?the security of any technological product and implementation is not pre-determined by the method of development or distribution?while the design of security features matters significantly, it is equally important how well the software is deployed, configured and maintained, including upgrading the products to fix flaws as they are discovered?.

He has also pointed out that both open source and commercial software products are predicated on strong copyright protection.

?Open source software products, like their commercial counterparts, set forth licensing terms and conditions that dictate how these programs may be utilized, modified and distributed,? he said.

Goh?s advice is that enterprises should do their own assessment and to stay neutral in the procurement decision. ?Look at the options out there. Do not start with the position that you want a specific product or that it is developed in a certain way,? he said.

The legal viewpoint

There is copyright protection for open source software, said lawyers at the Open Source Forum. But the whole concept of open source is incompatible with the patent system.

According to Dr Stanley Lai, partner with Allen & Gledhill, the fact that a user enters an open source licensing agreement like the GPL does not constitute a waiver of copyright.

And users are deemed to have entered a GPL if they modify and distribute the software. The acceptance of the licence takes place at the point of redistribution, he said.

Copyright exists the moment a work is created and provides protection for up to 70 years after the author of the work dies.

The patent issue, however, is a separate matter. A patent is valid for 20 years but can offer a wider scope of protection.

According to Lau Kok Keng, partner and head of the iTec Practice Group at Rajah and Tann, the idea of patenting is ?fundamentally incompatible? with the open source software model because open source is about sharing, and allowing for free distribution subject to the licence terms.

Once a source code is published, it loses its novelty and development is dispersed, he pointed out. When it comes to the patent model, there are challenges in determining who the author is, and who to grant the patents to.

Lau also pointed out that while open source software is distributed under a licence which allows users to share and modify the software, it is not an unrestricted freedom, and the rights flow down the user chain together with the software.

The terms of open source usage varies with each licence. These terms govern different aspects of software usage such as the re-licensing of the software, whether it can be mixed with non-free software, and whether special privileges are retained for the original copyright holder over other modifications.

Lai?s advice is for users to scrutinize the licence terms carefully to see what can or cannot be done.