1. Creating a 'level playing field'
for open source software
options in IT selection and
procurement
http://oss-watch.ac.uk
@osswatch

2. 1. Strategy

3. What Are We Talking About?

4. Free Software
"Free as In Freedom"
0) The freedom to run the program, for any
purpose
1) The freedom to study how the program works,
and adapt it to your needs
2) The freedom to redistribute copies so you can
help your neighbour
3) The freedom to improve the program, and
release your improvements to the public,
so that the whole community benefits

5. Open Source
•
•
•
•
Freely Redistributable
Source Code Included
Derived Works Permitted
Integrity of Author Source
Code
• No Discrimination Against
Persons or Groups
• No Discrimination Against
Fields of Endeavor
• Distribution of License
• License Must Not Be
Specific to a Product (or
distribution)
• License Must Not Restrict
Other Software
• License Must Be
Technology-Neutral (no
'click wrap')

6. Open Development
●
●
●
Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) just refers to the
licence
Open Development refers to projects which are developed
with engagement and contribution from communities,
which promotes sustainability.
Not all FOSS software is produced by Open Development,
e.g. Android, MySQL

7. Why does this matter?

8. Sustained Value
●
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is often (although not
necessarily) lower for FOSS solutions
●
No license fees to pay when
purchasing/upgrading
●
Open market for service providers
●
Option to provision some or all of the solution
yourself

9. Sustained Value
●
Sustainability
●
Risk Management
●
What if the company disappears?
●
What if the software is bought and killed off?
●
What is the exit strategy?
●
Transparency of open development makes
judging "health" of a project easier

10. Meeting User Needs
●
●
●
●
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No restrictions on your use of the software
Design your own trials and pilots
Make changes (or have them made)
Share the costs of niche requirements with others in the
community
Access to the "best of breed" solutions

11. Case Studies
Department for Culture, Media and Sport
●
Replaced proprietary intranet platform with open source
Wordpress
●
Procured development services from and SME through
G-Cloud
●
Developed the new system through an iterative process
●
Solution realised for £15k, with ongoing monthly costs in
the hundreds, a 90% saving

12. Case Studies
NHS
●
Developing Spine2 communications infrastructure using
Riak database in place of current Oracle solution
●
Riak chosen "to deliver a more flexible and resilient
solution"
●
No major proprietary solutions in Riak's field
●
Riak developed by Basho, Spine2 being developed by BJSS,
engaged through G-Cloud

13. Case Studies
City of Munich
●
Migrated all municipal systems from Microsoft software to
FOSS
●
Switch instigated by end-of-life of existing products, and
the prospect of further lock-in in the future
●
Migrating office documents and apps costs €200k more
than if they'd upgraded to newer MS Windows
●
However, €6.8m saved on licensing costs
●
Total savings exceeded €10m, although "Our main goal was
to become independent"

14. Case Studies
French Profile
●
Gendarmerie Nationale switched 37,000 Windows
Desktops to Ubuntu Linux, with double that due to by
migrated by summer 2014.
●
Lowered TCO by 40%, 2m per year
●
"Using Ubuntu Linux massively reduces the number of local
technical interventions" – ongoing savings made on support
costs

15. 2. Policy

16. Agnostic
●
●
Don't mention "open source"
Has its merits, avoids creating "Fear, Uncertainty and
Doubt"
● "Open source software, while it can be useful in many
instances and appear to be cost effective, may present a
security risk because open source developers don’t
typically follow security best practices when developing
their software." - IRS Memorandum on use of FOSS
● Relies on already-instilled culture to be effective

17. Agnostic
●
●
Don't mention "open source"
Has its merits, avoids creating "Fear, Uncertainty and
Doubt"
● "Open source Software, while it can be useful in many
instances and appear to be cost effective, may present a
security risk because open source developers don’t
typically follow security best practices when developing
their software."
● Relies on already-instilled culture to be effective

18. Equal consideration
●
●
●
●
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Require that both open source and proprietary solutions are
considered on a level playing field
"The Government will actively and fairly consider open
source solutions alongside proprietary ones in making
procurement decisions" - UK Cabinet Office Open Source
Policy
Encourages an awareness of open source options
Need to put in place a process for ensuring that solutions
can be considered equally
Need to monitor the procurement process to ensure that
such a policy is followed

19. Preferential
●
●
●
●
Explicitly prefer open source solutions
"Where there is no significant overall cost difference
between open and non-open source products that fulfil
minimum and essential capabilities, open source will be
selected on the basis of its inherent flexibility." - UK
Government Digital By Default Service Manual
Maximises the advantage taken of the inherent benefits of
open source
Particularly relevant when selecting technologies for
development of new software and services

20. 3. Process

21. Levels of Engagement
Deep
Engagement
Shallow
Engagement
Pure
Procurement
Customisation
Contribution
Leadership

22. Selection and Procurement
• Does the traditional IT procurement process work against
open source?
– RFQ/RFPs require investment from the seller, recouped
from subsequent licensing and mandatory support fees.
– Companies offering support for OSS typically lack a sales
team working overtime to understand, master, and win
procurement competitions.
– Pre-sales trials and installations are also at cost to the
vendor. For closed source, this can be recouped in later
fees. For open source, its not clear how this would
happen

23. Active Pre-Procurement
• How do we ensure a good range of solutions are considered
if we don’t get responses to RFPs for some of the best
options?
• One answer is to spend more effort identifying and
analysing potential solutions available before issuing
RFPs/RFQs.
– An open relatively free-form open RFI could be followed by a
closed RFP.
– SSMM is a methodology developed by OSS Watch involving
iterative evaluation and selection phases
– Open Source Options (CO) and Open Source Options for
Education (OSSWatch) are resources to help identify candidate
solutions

24. Paid Discovery Stage
• Include a budget for a paid discovery stage for OSS
candidates
• In other words, engage potential OSS vendors commercially
- or fund an in-house team - to help answer all of the same
questions you may be expecting from closed-source
vendors as part of their pre-sales activity
• Example: Moodle vs. Blackboard competition, University of
Bolton

25. Unbundling Pre-RFP
• The pre-procurement analysis process can be used to
identify ways to unbundle solutions
• For example, pre-procurement may identify an OSS product
such as Drupal as the best-fit, and then go to RFP for
customisation and support services.

26. Unbundling Post-RFP
• In some cases there are options to unbundle parts of a
proposal (services, applications, middleware, database,
infrastructure) and to ask the supplier to consider open
source alternatives
• If open alternatives are not considered possible (e.g. “it only
works on SQL Server”) this needs to be considered as a
lock-in risk

27. Parallel Purchasing
• It may be worth considering parallel processes - and parallel
RFPs - for closed-source and open-source procurement
and then comparing the outcome of each in a runoff
• An example of parallel procurement is the Swedish public
sector framework, Öppna programvaror
• However, the argument can be made that better value can
be realised by a combined process where considerations are
balanced
– e.g. looking at how areas such as lock-in and exit
strategy are considered versus sustainability

28. Evaluating Sustainability
• Sustainability involves asking questions like:
–
–
-
Is anyone else using it?
Is anyone around to fix issues/apply patches?
Can I buy services and support for it?
Will it be around in 5 years time
• All software solutions should be evaluated for sustainability.
However, for open source the process is different from
closed source
– For OSS much more of the data needed is publicly available, and
tools exist to help analyze it, from informal guidance-driven
models to complex frameworks such as QSoS and BRR
– For closed source we’re more reliant on company-provided
evidence

30. Deep Engagement

31. “request for partnership”
• If there are no clear existing solutions, can we procure a
partnership to collaborate on a solution?
• For example, an existing project may be the best fit, but still
requires additional investment in software development to
support the user requirements.
• Often in the past this has been externally funded as
projects e.g. Jisc, EC, and in some cases subcontracted to
development partners e.g. Cottage Labs

32. Evaluating openness
• Where a solution requires development (partnership or
internal) another key factor to evaluate is openness
• The OSS Watch Openness Rating is a simple tool for
measuring how open an open source project is to
engagement and collaboration

33. Business Case
• Making the procurement process a level playing field
doesn’t need to create bureaucracy
• The process can scale relative to that of the potential
procurement.
– For example, using informal sustainability evaluation for small
procurements, adopting formal measures such as QSoS at large
scale
• An effective process can help deliver sustained value and
meet user needs

34. 4. Practice

35. How does procurement practice
fit into this picture?
Awareness of policies, processes and tools
Understanding of how open source works and the issues
involved
Capacity to effectively evaluate open source as well as closed
source solutions using standard tools
Cultural alignment with the strategy and its aims

36. Questions and Discussion