Open Source at the BBC

Open Source at the
BBC
Michael Sparks
BBC Research and Development
michaels@rd.bbc.co.uk

I work on scaling online delivery of BBC
content to as wide an audience as possible
Presented at Open Source Forum Russia, April 2005
BBC 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

©2005 BBC. Part of the Kamaelia project, http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/ BBC R&D michael@rd.bbc.co.uk

Proprietary Systems
For balance...

• The BBC...
• Is a creator of proprietary systems

• Is a user of open proprietary systems

• Why?
• Good business reasons

• Good public service reasons


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 Software
does 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
“камилия”
• 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.

Thank you!

• Any questions?
• michael@rd.bbc.co.uk


Open Source at the BBC

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