Table of Contents

• Introduction
• What is OSS?
• Licensing
• Proprietary Software
• Why use OSS?
• Collaborative Development
• Security
• OSS Licensing and Legal Issues
• Restrictive vs Permissive Licensing
• Rights in copyright
• Choosing a License
• How to Work in OSS Projects
• Contributing properly
• Leadership vs Control
• Continuous Integration, Delivery and Deployment

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Introduction

What is OSS?

• OSS means source code is made available with a license that provides rights to examine, modify and redistribute, without restriction on the user's identity or purpose

• Two different philosphical strains:

  • Idealistic -> "Free" as in freedom.
  • Pragmatic -> Primary considerations are technical, including faster and better development

Licensing

• Permissive (such as BSD-licensed software)
• Restrictive (such as GPL-licensed software)

Proprietary Software

• Only the owners of the software have full legal access to the source code involved. Access may also be granted to trusted partners who have signed NDAs (closed source)

• Usually authors are working under a contract

Why use OSS?

Collaborative Development

• Shared progress means not everyone has to solve the same problems and make the same mistakes.

• More eyes reviewing code can lead to stronger, and more secure code, although not always the case as OSS is usually underfunded

Security

• Published code is usually cleaner as it can be embarrassing to show ugly code + coding standards are more prevalent + others need to look at the code

• No security through obscurity

• No "Just trust me"

• Potentially faster bug repair

OSS Licensing and Legal Issues

Restrictive vs Permissive Licensing

• Restrictive -> Software must remain open (GPL, a copyleft license)

• Permissive -> Modifications/enhancements do not need to be avaliable publicly.

Rights in copyright

Public Domain	Non-Protective FOSS License	Protective FOSS License	Proprietary License	Trade Secret
All rights relinquished	More rights granted	Neutral	More rights retained	All rights retained

Choosing a License

• Switching licenses during the life of the project can be difficult

• Projects can sometimes mix and match licenses.

  • Certain sections of code can also contain additional provisions

How to Work in OSS Projects

Contributing properly

• Before contributing, you should:

  • Read the mailing list for the project (if any)
  • Study archives
  • Join a IRC if there is one
  • Understand how contributions are submitted
  • Study previous history

• Could start off by contributing by testing, finding bugs

• Questions to ask:

  • Why does this project exist, and why was it started?
  • Has it diverged from its original purpose?
  • Is the community large or small?
  • Any collective or singular governance structure?
  • What kind of license does it adopt, and is there a contributor license agreement before you can start?

• Contribute small unit-sized bites, not large code dumps

  • Hard to review

Leadership vs Control

• Projects can fail because:
  • There is insufficient interest
  • Competition from more established projects
  • Poor leadership
  • Not enough developers
  • Insufficient funding

Continuous Integration, Delivery and Deployment

• Continuous Integration -> Changes are merged into the main branch as soon as possible. Automated builds are run on as many variations of software and hardware as possible

• Continuous Delivery -> The release process is automated and projects are ready to be delivered to consumers of the build

• Continuous Deployment -> The product is released to consumers