JISC

An article published today in a special Central Government issue of Public Service Review gives an overview of developments around open source software, written by staff at the JISC-funded service OSS Watch.

The issue, with a foreword by the Rt Hon Geoff Hoon, formerly Leader of the House of Commons, and articles by London Mayor Ken Livingstone, Peter Hain MP and Lord Adair Turner, Chairman of the Pensions Commission amongst many others, focuses on some of the key issues facing the public sector in the UK.

Written by Randy Metcalfe and Elena Blanco of OSS Watch, the article on open source explores the background to recent developments in the field, including the Government’s policy, on which JISC’s open source policy for JISC-funded projects and services draws.

“The JISC advice,” say the authors, “might be summed up as ‘Get your IPR house in order before you commit even your first line of code’ … If matters are sorted at the start, and then a clear and consistent IPR registry of code contributions maintained throughout, [projects] would know exactly where they were at the end. Like much good policy, JISC’s advice is not revolutionary. It merely codifies Best Practice.”

The authors explain the reasons for the establishing of the OSS Watch service by JISC, its growth and pioneering work in evaluating the deployment of open source software in UK FE and HE and its provision of guidance materials, support and advice to those communities. Special emphasis is made on the issue of sustainability and how the open source model of community engagement may answer some long-term sustainability issues.

“An initial investment to pump-prime a project might,” write the authors, “be able to take advantage of ongoing development effort on a volunteer basis for as long as the software remains useful to the community.”

Engaging with open source is, the authors conclude, not a matter of idle curiosity, but rather one of “pure pragmatic importance.”

Read the OSS Watch article