Guest editors’ introduction
Free and Open
Source Software
Keith W. Miller, University of Illinois at Springfield
Jeffrey Voas, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Tom Costello, UpStreme
T
imes change. In 2001, a Microsoft execu-
tive publically stated that “open source
is an intellectual property destroyer.
I can’t imagine something that could be
worse than this for the software business and the
intellectual-property business.”1 Today, Microsoft
has an official open source presence on the Web
(www.microsoft.com/opensource), and in July
2010, Jean Paoli, the General Manager for Interop-
erability Strategy at Microsoft, delivered a keynote
address at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention.
Historically, free and open source software
(FOSS) pioneers, such as Richard Stallman and
Linus Torvalds, were the public faces of a move-
ment widely thought to be outside the mainstream
of commercial software. But now, corporate en-
tities are big players in FOSS. Microsoft, IBM,
Oracle, and State Farm are just a few of the “big
name” companies with serious public stakes in
open source technologies.
It seems sensible, then, for IT Pro to revisit the
history of FOSS and take a closer look at FOSS
today.
A Review of FOSS
A few of you might be old enough to remember
when “free” was the standard term for software.
14 IT Pro November/December 2010 Published by the IEEE Computer Society 1520-9202/10/$26.00 © 2010 IEEE
In the 1950s and early 1960s, computer software
was mainly the concern of academics and cor-
porate researchers, so it was treated more like
scholarly work (in the public domain) than a pro-
prietary asset. Computer manufacturers focused
on selling hardware, so they threw in the soft-
ware for free. Both IBM and DEC had active user
groups that shared tips and software with other
users.
In the second half of the 1960s, as software
costs increased for manufacturers, software was
either bundled with hardware or priced sepa-
rately. Licensing agreements and copyright pro-
tection became common ways to legally protect
software. In 1966, the UK issued what was prob-
ably the first software patent.2
In 1984, Richard Stallman launched the GNU
project (www.gnu.org). Stallman, who also
founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF),
has been an outspoken and controversial ad-
vocate for free software. GNU’s General Pub-
lic License (GPL), which has several different
versions, has been widely influential. However,
GNU’s success didn’t lead to a monolithic
movement led by Stallman; rather, different
groups have championed slightly different li-
censing agreements.
 Another important group, founded in 1998, is
the Open Source Initiative (OSI). Although both
FSF and OSI promote alternatives to proprietary,
closed-source software, relations haven’t always
been cordial between the two organizations.
Stallman has accused the OSI of ignoring impor-
tant freedoms in favor of corporations, while OSI
proponents have criticized Stallman for his overly
rigid “social activism” (see http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/History_of_Free_Software). Despite
their distinct philosophical views of FOSS, Stall-
man and others insist that FSF and OSI, as well
as other independent producers of FOSS, are
allies.
Some of the distinctions between different
kinds of FOSS licenses require detailed study,
which we don’t have space for in this brief in-
troduction. However, some common themes
are noteworthy. Unless a piece of software is
declared public domain (no copyright protection
claimed at all), FOSS legal protections are based
on copyright law. All FOSS gives users access to
the source code.
One distinction is important to mention: some
FOSS licenses (chief among them, FSF’s GPL
licenses) require that any software that uses
software protected under the GPL must be dis-
tributed under a GPL license. This is the “viral”
and “copyleft” provision. Some open source ad-
vocates consider copyleft optional. Thus, OSI
accepts FSF’s GPL license, but it also endorses
some licenses that FSF rejects.
Despite a good deal of controversy between
the different organizations involved in promot-
ing FOSS, there’s a long list of thriving FOSS
projects. If you or your organization uses GNU/
Linux, TeX, Mozilla Firefox, the Apache server,
the Open Office suite, or Java, then FOSS is part
of your technical world.
FOSS has also inspired many academic re-
searchers. Economists are interested in the
business model of entities that often give away
products. Ethicists study the motivations of pro-
grammers involved in FOSS projects and the
philosophical impact of a viable alternative to
proprietary software. Computer scientists are
examining the technical effectiveness of a devel-
opment model that employs “many hands,” only
a few of whom make their living developing or
maintaining FOSS. And never forget that FOSS
and commercial software need each other; the
competition between the two keeps the software
marketplace in check with added diversity and
innovation.
With that as a background as to how we got
to where we are today, we now introduce the
four articles selected for this special issue of
IT Pro.
In This Issue
The first article, “Open Source Software Con-
siderations for Law Enforcement,” by Mun-Wai
Hon, Greg Russell, and Michael Welch, explores
the benefits of FOSS for state and local govern-
ments. It presents the three key benefits to such
organizations: low initial acquisition costs, the
FOSS and commercial software
need each other; the competition
between the two keeps the software
marketplace in check.
ability to analyze source code for backdoors and
other security risks, and system interoperabil-
ity. Then it discusses generic complaints about
FOSS—such as the lack of technical support—
but also mentions complaints specific to law en-
forcement, such as the lack of relevant applications.
Another issue it raises is the difficulty FOSS us-
ers face when they’re more accustomed to Micro­
soft and other widely used commercial products,
which have a more universal look and feel.
The second article, “Free/Open Services,”
deals with services instead of software. The au-
thors, G.R. Gangadharan, Vincenzo D’Andrea,
and Michael Weiss, propose applying the con-
cepts behind FOSS to services to advance the
field of service-oriented computing. They ar-
gue that by having access to the source code of
the interfaces, novel composite and derivative
services can be created. Although they admit
that their proposal is far from endorsed by tra-
ditional service providers, they argue that their
vision will expand the number of services avail-
able, widen the adoption of computing services
in general, and be a benefit to the community
of subscribers who rely on access to computing
services.
In “Community Source Software in Higher
Education,” Harry Jiannan Wang, Jon Blue,
computer.org/ITPro 15
 Guest Editors’ Introduction

and Mathieu Plourde discuss the increased use of
FOSS in higher education. More specifically, they
discuss community source—code that’s created
by a broad set of volunteers—in contrast to com-
mercial open source. Here, the authors narrow
their focus further to community source that’s
being developed for and by educators. To better
explain their story to present practical experi-
ences with FOSS, the authors walk us through
the Sakai learning and collaboration system via a
case study showing how the University of Dela-
ware put the principles of FOSS into practice.
The last article is “Open Source for Enter-
prise Geographic Information Systems,” by
David A. Garbin and James L. Fisher. It pres-
ents yet another case study where open source
software addresses a concern of public impor-
tance: the use of geographic information sys-
tems for analytic modeling to digest weather
and climate information and to predict how
events are likely to unfold. For example, users
can take predicted weather patterns and overlay
them on existing land infrastructures (such as
roads, bridges, or buildings) to determine what
is likely to be most affected. The authors go on
to argue that FOSS solutions for this important
area of societal impact are more cost effective
and flexible that existing commercial offerings,
once again showing the cost benefit to the pub-
lic sector from FOSS.
2. K. Bresford, Patenting Software under the European Patent
Convention, Sweet & Maxwell, 2000, p. 4.
Keith W. Miller is the Schewe Professor of Computer
Science at the University of Illinois at Springfield. His
research interests include computer ethics, software test-
ing, and online learning. He’s the editor in chief of IEEE
Technology and Society. Contact him at miller.keith@
uis.edu.
Jeffrey Voas is a computer scientist at the National In-
stitute of Standards and Technology (NIST). He also
serves as the IEEE Computer Society’s second vice president
(2010) and is IEEE Division VI’s Director-Elect (2010).
Contact him at j.voas@ieee.org.
Tom Costello is CEO of UpStreme, a business and tech-
nology management consultancy with practice specialties in
enterprise strategies and software logistics. Contact him at
tcostello@upstreme.com or www.upstreme.com.
Selected CS articles and columns are available
for free at http://ComputingNow.computer.org.

W
e hope you find the articles in this spe-
cial issue insightful. We welcome your
feedback.

Acknowledgments
We may identify certain products or companies in this document,
but such identification does not imply recommendation by the
US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) or
other agencies of the US government, nor does it imply that the
products or companies identified are necessarily the best available
for the purpose. This article was not coauthored by Jeffrey Voas as
a NIST employee. It reflects Voas’s opinion—not the opinions of
the US Department of Commerce or NIST.

References
1. B. Charny, “Microsoft Raps Open-Source Ap-
proach,” CNET News, 3 May 2001; http://news.cnet.
com/2100-1001-257001.html&tag=mncol%3btxt.

16 IT Pro November/December 2010