The British Computer Society (BCS) Open Source Specialist Group (OSSG) proudly announces a meeting on Open Source Software Quality in Practice to be held on 27th October 2005 from 6pm to 9pm at Southampton Solent University formerly Southampton Institute, HC024, Herbert Collins Building, East Park Terrace, Southampton SO14 OYN (7 minutes walk from Southampton Central Railway Station). A buffet and refreshments will be available during the evening in HC019. The main speakers will be Mark Taylor, Executive Director of the Open Source Consortium, which is currently at the centre of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) sponsored Open Source Academy; and Dr Graham Oakes, a Systems Engineer with over 20 years worldwide private and public sector experience. Professor Margaret Ross will say a few introductory words on behalf of BCS Hants Branch and the Quality Specialist Group whose support at this event includes a free prize draw available to all those attending to win a free book. There will also be free demonstrations available of VMware running on Southampton Solent University PC’s, which allows multiple operating systems including Linux and Windows to run simultaneously on the same PC. This is in fact the first OSSG event to be supported by a BCS Branch and/or another Specialist Group and also the first of many planned events to be held outside London since the inauguration of OSSG earlier this year.

Mark Taylor is the founder and Executive Director of the Open Source Consortium (OSC), which has a membership of more than 80 of the leading Open Source businesses in the UK.

The OSC has a dual purpose: (1) To do business with the UK Government and Public Sector; and (2) To act as the two way communication vehicle between Government and the Open Source community and emerging Industry.

The OSC is currently at the centre of the ODPM sponsored Open Source Academy. More details about the OSC can be found at http://www.opensourceconsortium.org.

Dr Graham Oakes set up his own independent consultancy, Graham Oakes Ltd, in 2003 to help organisations use technology to achieve their business goals. Contact details for Graham can be found at http://www.grahamoakes.co.uk. Prior to going independent, he was Director of Technology at Sapient Ltd, where he set up and managed project review processes for the fixed-price/fixed-time projects Sapient delivered to clients such as BP, Hilton International, Vodafone and the Office of the eEnvoy.

Prior to working for Sapient, he set up and managed the project review process for Sony/Psygnosis’ portfolio of 60 development projects, with an annual budget of £50m. His client list includes Amnesty International, Cisco Worldwide Education, The Open University, Oxfam, Intermediate Technology Development Group, MessageLabs, and Sapient Ltd.

A signed certificate awarding BCS Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Points for attending this event will be made available at the venue.

For more information about this event please contact Mark Elkins via email address mark_elkins@bcs.org or phone 023 80 319560.

On Monday 18th July 2005 at the BCS London Offices an interesting and informative OSSG Committee meeting took place with Open Source Initiative (OSI).

Present at this informal meeting from OSI were Danese Cooper and Chris DiBona who both serve on the OSI Board of Directors. Also in attendance were Zaheda Bhorat and Simon Phipps who are currently unaffiliated to OSI except by interest. Simon works for Sun Microsystems, and Zaheda works for Google. They are both “Open Source Domain Experts” in their respective companies. Representing OSSG at the meeting were Committee members Patrick Tarpey, Andrew Nicholson, and Mark Elkins.

Danese outlined the purpose of OSI whose website can be found at http://www.opensource.org/. So far more than 50 licences have been approved by OSI, which owns the Open Source trademark. This means that anyone wishing to call a new Licence Open Source should get it approved by OSI. However OSI is not keen to promote a proliferation of Open Source Licences such as “vanity licences”. Danese explained this is where the main motive of an individual is to try and create a licence for the sole reason of associating their name with it. Please see http://opensource.org/docs/policy/licenseproliferation.php for a fuller OSI view on Licence proliferation.

Simon Phipps mentioned that roughly 60% of all Open Source Developers are based in Europe. In many parts of the world there is some confusion over the Open Source concept resulting in a total disregard for the ideology behind Open Source Licensing terms. For example OSI members voiced a concern that it was not uncommon for Open Source code to be taken and used without putting the code developed from it back into the Open Source pool.

Chris DiBona and Danese Cooper who are both based in California have recently written a book with Mark Stone entitled Open Sources 2.0 and published by Oreilly & Associates Inc. Zaheda Bhorat who works in London requested to be kept informed of forthcoming OSSG events so we look forward to seeing her again in the next few months. Dependent on other commitments there is a fair chance we will see Simon Phipps, who is a BCS Hampshire member, at our forthcoming Open Source Software Quality in Practice event to be held in Southampton on the 27th October 2005 at Southampton Institute (shortly to become Southampton Solent University from 15th August 2005).