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Open Source does guarantee quality

From Open Source to Virtual Shore, the IT industry is undergoing a fundamental revolution in production methods.

Interview with Jean-Pierre Barbéris - General Manager, Services and Solutions, Bull

For non IT specialists, Open Source can sometimes seem to be quite a vague concept. How would you define it?

J-P. B. Above all, Open Source is a principle: that of collective development. Individuals each contribute their own skills to build a solution to a particular problem together. The idea has really taken off thanks to the Internet, which has enabled the formation of worldwide communities of interest, and facilitated collaborative working. Each community is organized into a network that focuses on a software problem - often highly specific - and works on a solution which becomes their collective ‘heritage’. This solution is then continually improved, enriched and maintained, which means it tends towards increasingly high quality, indeed often better than commercial software. In addition – because of the transparency inherent in sharing it with a whole network of people– the least effective ideas or contributors are rapidly sidelined, as a result of a kind of software ‘Darwinism’. So, to sum up, the four key pillars of Open Source are collaborative design, the network, heritage and quality.

People often confuse the idea of Open Source with software being available for free. So what role do commercial companies play in this movement?

J-P. B. Beware of the idea of ‘free software’; because there is always some price to be payed, whether it be in kind (by contributing to the community) or, for a customer, in terms of payment for associated services. Nevertheless, it is true that with so-called ‘free’ software licenses you do not have to pay each time you use them. And at a time when software is spread everywhere, it is very advantageous to be able to freely re-use as much as possible. So, for all the companies that need to incorporate software as part of their products or services, using Open Source components allows them to develop complex systems more rapidly, at a lower cost, and more freely, while at the same time benefiting from the extremely valuable support of the relevant community. That is why businesses are actively involved in the Open Source movement: the return on investment is excellent. At Bull, for example, 80% of the code used on our supercomputers is Open Source. If we had had to rely on commercial alternatives, they would have proved very expensive and we would have been dependent on third parties. On the other hand, Open Source software has never been used at such a high level and with such demanding constraints: and that is where we have applied our know-how and added value. In many cases, Open Source is a well-understood form of ‘coopetition’. Everyone wins, by working together to provide themselves with basic, high quality standard components: the difference comes from the way these are put together.

So, doesn’t this way of working represent a fundamental revolution in the world of IT?

J-P. B. – Effectively, yes. Since the very beginning, IT operated according to a ‘Taylorist’ logic: projects were divided up into smaller pieces, and each was given to a different person to work on, with the results being assembled at the end. Offshoring is really nothing more than a worldwide geographical extension of this principle: certain elements are farmed out to where they can be developed at a lower cost, or even, quite simply, where there are sufficient resources to work on them. The difficulty comes in ensuring that each of the various elements is what was expected, in terms of its functionality, quality, timescales and ability to be integrated with the other elements. This vision is completely the opposite of collaborative production, where tasks can be divided up in a very different way, and where the networking aspect has a very positive impact on quality and productivity. We are moving from ‘offshoring’ towards ‘virtual shoring’, where everyone involved works in the same, shared space and tasks are allotted to those who are available and qualified to perform them. To do this, you need access to an appropriate tool: a software factory such as NovaForge™, a pioneering development platform created by Bull, which brings together all the tools needed for effective, networked software development (coding, test, de-bugging, quality control, project management...) in an integrated and consistent way. It also requires a highly innovative form of project governance. The project leaders have to provide relevant ideas from the very beginning; they have to ensure that an initial version is available very quickly, and that they understand how to subsequently make the community work so that it enriches the solution effectively in a collaborative way. This requires a particular kind of working culture, now well developed at Bull, which we share with the young graduates that we recruit; they are very receptive to it.

What will Open Source software, and the companies that adopt its methods, do for the end customer?

J-P. B. – As in the textile industry, the media, transport... changes in modes of production will turn the available offerings upside-down. For the customer, Open Source will translate into the development of new product segments alongside the traditional offerings from the big software publishers and suppliers. On the one hand, it will bring ‘low cost’ computing, that delivers simple, high-quality functionality for minimal cost, with the publishers operating in this field using their business know-how to assemble the best Open Source components. And on the other hand, it will deliver high-end, specialist computing, that is responsive and close to the customer. Low-volume solutions that still deliver high profit margins, using Open Source components and methods so that experts can concentrate on tackling the real issues that demand enormous technical expertise and business understanding. The latter is precisely how Bull has positioned itself.