WCM Field Notes: Give Open Source A Chance

WCM Field Notes is a regular column written in collaboration with Jon Marks (@McBoof), Head of Development at LBi. This second issue looks at what Open Source really means, and suggests ways for you to sensibly include both open source and proprietary systems in your Content Management System selection exercise. 

There seems to be a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt surrounding open source content management these days. Last week, I was fortunate enough to be asked to speak at a British Computer Society Open Source event but was rather surprised by the lack of agreement about Open Source Software (OSS).

Many attendees thought that Open Source and Open Standards are one and the same. During the panel debate, one of the delegates even said "I would always select Open Source because it allows me to develop using an agile methodology," … which really got me growling.

So I'd like to use this post to clarify 3 somewhat interrelated concepts — open standards, open source and open data. Once we've done that, I'll offer my thoughts on how to go about including OSS and proprietary options in your CMS Selection RFP on a nice, happy and level playing field.

[Editor's Note: Don't miss the previous edition of WCM Field Notes: The Skinny on JCR, CMIS and OSGi.]

What Does Open Really Mean? 

Concept: Open Standards 

Open standards are what make the Internet possible. The railway gauge (the width between the tracks of a railway) is the classic example used to explain the concept. Back in the day, train tracks were of different widths so people and cargo actually needed to change trains because the one they were on didn't fit on the next track.

Once the width was standardized, life became a whole lot easier for everyone. Open standards are the railway tracks of the web. I was planning to stretch this analogy further, with the software being the trains and the cargo being the data but my wise colleagues advised me not to. The analogy, er, quickly fell off the rails.

For a standard to be truly open, it should have been created in a transparent way and should be available for anyone to use. Some people believe that a standard cannot be truly open unless it comes with an open source reference implementation.

I don't buy this — the standard is nothing to do with the source code, although having a reference implementation certainly helps. There are several bodies that work extremely hard to develop and foster open standards. The ones that most affect my world are the W3C, IETF, OASIS and the JCP Program.

We have many useful open standards. We have low level standards that are the plumbing of the Internet, such as TCP/IP, DNS and HTTP. We have standards that allow us to make web pages that work on multiple browsers and devices (XHTML, CSS) and perform clever interactions ( XMLHttpRequest to support AJAX). We have accessibility standards (WCAG, WAI-ARIA) that ensure all users can access the pages. And we have semantic and classification standards (RDF, Dublin Core) that ensure the machines can understand and use the content too.

Higher up the chain, standards get more domain specific. There are many data format standards. If you judge a standard by its adoption (which is the best way), then XML was the most successful standard of the last decade. 

There are standards for content syndication, for authenticating users across many applications, for the creation of "widgets", for portability across social networks and almost anything else you can think of.

SQL was a wildly successful standard that allowed us to store and access content. The Java Content Repository (JCR) standard is a well known content management specific standard, and Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) is a newly emerging one. I talked about the JCR and CMIS in the previous WCM Field Notes column. And I've created An Incomplete Directory of Open Standards for those that want a more complete list.

Image Credit: Rob Cottingham

Concept: Open Source

True open source software is software that is licensed under specific open terms (free and redistributable) and developed using a particular open process, part of which includes full access to the source code, for anyone. That's really about it. A good definition of OSS can be found on the Open Source Initiative website.

My friend Justin Cormack came for a beer and a chat after the BCS event. He has written an excellent blog post helping to distill the essence of OSS, and its impact on content management. He says:

open source…started with developers, about more efficient ways of building, architecting and delivering software; in terms of influence on the end users it is still small.

This is very important. The fact that a product is open source should not matter much to anyone except the development teams. And maybe those signing the checks and the lawyers, but we'll talk about this later.

comments

Useful article?

 Email It      

Follow @cmswire

Related Articles:

• Myths & Realities of Drupal
• SDL's Acquisition of Alterian: Get the Details
• Internet Explorer Regains Market Share From Firefox, Chrome

Tags: cms, jon marks, open data, open source, open standards, rfp, selecting a cms, web cms, web publishing

WCM Field Notes is a regular column written in collaboration with Jon Marks (@McBoof), Head of Development at LBi. This second issue looks at what Open Source really means, and suggests ways for you to sensibly include both open source and proprietary systems in your Content Management System selection exercise.