open source at the bbc

BBC R&D

Open Source at the BBC

Michael SparksBBC Research and Development

[email protected]

I work on scaling online delivery of BBCcontent to as wide an audience as possible

Presented at Open Source Forum Russia, April 2005

©2005 BBC. Part of the Kamaelia project, http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/ [email protected] R&D

Open Source

• The BBC...

• Is a creator of open source software

• Is a user of open source software

• Why?

• Good business reasons

• Good public service reasons


Proprietary Systems

• The BBC...

• Is a creator of proprietary systems

• Is a user of open proprietary systems

• Why?

• Good business reasons

• Good public service reasons

For balance...


Terminology

• Free/Libre, Open Source Software

• Terms often used interchangeably

• BBC tends to use latter term, since it focusses on approach, not politics


Why use Open Source?

• Why does the BBC use Open Source

• Open source software is not special, per se

• Open Source software represents solutions

• No specific policy for or against:

• Solutions, proprietary and open source are all evaluated on their merits

• However open source is itself often a extra merit


What Open Source Softwaredoes the BBC use?

• Lots, more than could be listed. A subset:

• Running the business

• Network infrastructure - Apache, Perl

• Desktop Applications - Open Office, Firefox

• Desktops - Mac OS X

• Building the Business

• Standards development

• Video codecs, file formats, network systems, ...


The real question

• Why would the BBC NOT use Open Source?

• Would you ask about proprietary?

• It would prevent the use of useful technologies:

• It would isolate us from community developments

• It would limit the BBC’s choices

• It would mean, for example, no Apple based systems

• It is difficult to avoid open source software


The Real question (2)

• Why would the BBC NOT use Open Source?

• ... or open source derived systems?

• We would not be able to use - the internet, email, the web

• If would mean no Microsoft based systems:

• Even Microsoft produce products containing or as open source - “One of the great things about IronPython is it’s open source”

• If you use the internet, you cannot avoid open source, even if you tried.


BBC R&D Open Source

• Projects available as open source:

• Kamaelia - Network streaming research platform

• Dirac - Wavelet based video codec

• AAF - Professional video/audio authoring and storage format

• ... and others


Why release X as Open Source?

• Variety of business reasons.

• A selection:

• Not your core business, not a saleable product

• Will be in development anyway.

• No feedback is no loss, any feedback or patches back is a benefit to the business

• Standardisation development

• Collaboration

• Validation of theories and peer review


Open Source vs Open Standards

• Open source and Open Standards are NOT the same thing.

• Open standards allow any interested party who is able to participate to join the process

• Often hardware systems result in a paid membership to run the standards body

• Open Source allows any interested party to fork the software given a need.

• This may be because of a narrow minded developer/group choosing to exclude a section of the possible community, through licemsing or arrogance.


Open Source vs Open Standards

• Good Open source based Open Standards...

• Have a good means of dealing with conflict

• Good examples:

• Internet RFCs, and associated processes

• Python PEPs, and associated processes


Benefits of Open Source

• People who need problems solved work together to get them solved

• Feedback on your solution

• Suggestions of better approaches

• Validation of approach

• It provides a lever to boost the brainpower of your organisation


Experience• Real Benefits to BBC R&D projects:

• Dirac:

• Community stepped forward to assist and direct development

• Performance boosts

• Kamaelia:

• Validation of ideas

• “This framework looks like it has a real chance of making a complex problem simple”

• Opened doors to collaboration with partners


Biggest Benefits

• The biggest benefits the BBC gains from releasing in-house code as open source:

• We maximise the benefit to the BBC and the BBC’s community of users from the investment the BBC makes in R&D.

• The biggest benefit the BBC gains from using open source software:

• We are using code developed by people with similar uses to use, and who will therefore fix the biggest pain points first.


Software Licensing

• The BBC seeks to safeguard its investment in development.

• Various options: (simplified)

• You only have the right to use

• You can do anything, as long as you allow others the same with your code, and credit all authors

• You can do anything, so long as you credit authors

• You may do anything you like


Case Study: Kamaelia• Scalable media distribution experimentation

platform.

• Released December 2004

• Licensing allows proprietary applications to use the toolkit, but changes to the toolkit must be shared. Also includes patent pooling style protection.

• Has allowed public discussion, with a variety of benefits

• System has been ported to mobile phones; validation of approach; architectural improvements; cross linkage to other projects.

“камилия”


Thank you!

• Any questions?

• [email protected]

open source at the bbc

Economy & Finance

uk open source

open source software

open source

open standards

interested party

real question

kamaelia project

bbc gains