When you’re considering free and open source software, whether for procurement or as a basis for developing new software, you need to take account of sustainability. This means evaluating whether the project is capable of delivering improvements and fixing problems with its products in a timely manner, and that the project itself has a reasonable prospect of … Read more
In our recent survey on free and open source software in the UK education sectors, we asked colleges and universities for their main reasons for not selecting an open source solution according to 12 criteria. Below you can see how important each of the criteria were rated for software running on servers: Interoperability and migration … Read more
We’ve just updated our Open Source Options for Education list, providing a list of alternatives to common proprietary software used in schools, colleges and universities. Most of the software we list is provided by the academic and open source communities via our publicly editable version. Some new software we’ve added in this update includes: SageMath … Read more
As a result of the OSS Watch National Software Survey, we now have 10 years of survey data on open source in universities and colleges in the UK, so we can look at some long term trends. Today I’ve been looking at institutional IT policies. Back in 2003, most IT policies in colleges and universities … Read more
tl;dr: Open Source is inherently no more or less secure than closed source software. For a more thorough answer to this question, we’ve just updated our briefing note, “Is Open Source Software Insecure? An Introduction To The Issues” where we look at some of the ways in which software is considered secure, and look at … Read more
Last week I presented at ALT-C in Nottingham on the topic of open source in education and the public sector. This was partly to invite people to participate in Open Source Options for Education, and partly to open up discussions around software procurement policies and processes in the sector. The discussion tended to confirm our … Read more
In case you missed it, Jisc Inform has an article by OSS Watch on open source for colleges, in which we highlight the Open Source Options resource. I’ll also be doing a short talk at ALT-C next month on Open Source Options in education – see you there! Read more
OSS Watch has been awarded a place on G-Cloud, the UK Government cloud procurement initiative, and will be making a range of services available through the CloudStore. The UK Government has been working to make the purchasing of public sector ICT as simple and transparent as possible. All services listed on the CloudStore are part … Read more
Last week Open Source, Open Standards 2013 took place in London, an event focussed on the public sector. Naturally these being two topics we’re very keen on here at OSS Watch I went along too. Overall the key message to take away from the event was just how central to public sector IT strategy these two themes … Read more
OSS Watch Briefing Paper: Open Standards and Open Source Open source software and open standards are two of the key interventions in technology policy, whether that policy is made by governments, public sector organisations, or companies. Open standards can ensure interoperability and assist portability, allowing the switching of solutions and avoiding vendor lock-in. Standards can also … Read more