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Interview I did with Nick Mailer, one of the founders of the Positive Internet Company. an open source only hosting company who host content for people such as Stephen Fry, Ricky Gervais and uber-geeks such as Richard Stallman.

Open source at the business end

When Nick Mailer helped found web-hosting provider The Positive Internet Company, he was instrumental in basing the firm’s activities on free and open-source software. Mailer talks to ZDNet UK about the response from business to that open-source decision.

Actor Stephen Fry’s support of Twitter has been credited with pushing the micro-blogging tool into the mainstream. But his support for all things open source has been equally impassioned, and Fry recently singled out the company that hosts his podcasts for its dedication to open source. “My thanks as always go to the team at The Positive Internet Company. For 10 years they have used only free and open-source technologies like GNU Linux in their organisation,” Fry said.

Side-stepping venture capital funding in favour of organic growth, Positive was financed by turnover from day one, and has built its reputation in the hosting arena through an uncompromising attitude to open source and its cost benefits.

Clients for Positive’s dedicated server and managed hosting services include the British Film Institute (BFI), Stella Artois, the BBC and Barclays bank.

ZDNet UK caught up with Positive co-founder and director Nick Mailer to discover the origins of his company’s belief in open source and the downsides, if any, to running a purely free and open-source software business.

Q: Stephen Fry has said nice things about your devotion to open source and your expertise in hosting — how did that relationship come about?
A: With Stephen Fry there was an interesting osmosis between him and us and free software. His people liked our use of free software and had also heard good things about us through word of mouth and how we had done things for Ricky [Gervais]. Subsequently Stephen Fry has become a big fan of free software and in fact he recorded a birthday video for the GNU Project.

It is interesting that people who are thinking about things outside the immediate technical community are finding interesting ideas going on in free software. I suppose things like Creative Commons have opened that up to a wider sphere of people.

For more go to ZDNet.co.uk

Eweek, the big US tech mag and website has launched a web presence in UK. I have signed on as a freelance reporter and news-editor to cover green IT and sustainability.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Following on from the news yesterday about the UK government’s magnanimous decision to give open source a “level playing field” (is that an admission that the government hasn’t treated open source providers fairly in the past?) – the boss of UK IT professional organisation SOCITM has given his take on the announcement.

Richard Steel, head of the society for public sector IT managers, has written a blog entry on the issue claiming that:

“Open Source” software development, in my experience, lags proprietary development by several years. I don’t think we could achieve the anytime, anywhere fixed and mobile infrastructure with tele-presence we require, now, for flexible and new ways of working using only Open Source”

And:

“I don’t like the term “Open Source”. It’s misleading; what many people mean is “anything but Microsoft”; few businesses actually use open source directly – they buy software derived from open source that has been commercially packaged and sold with support, which, in practice, is little different to licensed software.”

Steel’s less than enthusiastic, (or is should that be boldly pragmatic?) take on open source won’t come as a surprise to some in the FOSS community.

Steel, also CIO at the London Borough of Newham, has been painted as executing a u-turned on plans to use open source software back in 2004, choosing to with Microsoft instead.

Open source lags prop development? Hmmm, I wonder how many updates to Fedora, Suse Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Ubuntu happened during the time it took Microsoft to get Vista out of the door? But that might not be a fair comparison given installed base of Linux versus Windows. Still not sure that Steel’s comments hold water at all.

A good account of the Newham Microsoft issue here and Steel’s take on it:

Steel’s full blog entry on the government’s open source announcement here:

Only just noticed that ZDNet.co.uk has updated the way it displays video. This a good thing as it means that I can now embed some of the video I shot while I worked on the site – from 2003 to 2008 – on some of my other blogs.There is loads of great content on ZD (not just my own obviously) so it’s good to delve into the archives and look around.This a video I shot in Kenya back in 2007 as part of a trip in cooperation with IT charity Computer Aid to see how the technology the charity collects from UK businesses is used by hospitals and schools in the developing world. This video looks at how Computer Aid works with a fantastic organisation called AMREF which operates a flying doctors service in Africa.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

This is the story I wrote for Eweek Europe on the UK gov take on open source:

The UK government has announced that open source could be key to helping the public sector cut IT costs during the downturn with some commentators claiming savings could be as much as £600m a year.

In a statement released late on Tuesday, the government announced what it claimed was a new policy on open source that should “ensure maximum value for money for taxpayers”.

The new policy is a reaction to the development of open source and the government’s approach to IT, said the minister for digital engagement, Tom Watson: “The world of technology has moved on hugely since we last set out our thinking on Open Source, which is why it was so important to update our policy,” he said.

The decision to encourage greater use of open source was also based on greater support for community development by IT vendors, he said:  “Open Source products are more competitive and have become easier to include in business, and major players in the IT industry now support the use of Open Standards.”

In fact, most leading vendors have been selling or open source products for several years, including the industry stalwarts such as IBM, HP, Sun and Dell.

Microsoft, which supplies IT to numerous government departments and public sector organisations, has only recently begun to work with the open source community and support truly open standards.

Open source providers and the UK open source community welcomed the announcement, saying that as long as the government doesn’t fall prey to proprietary versions of the open source message, it could save large amounts of money on public sector IT budgets.

For more go to: UK Government To Save £600m With Open Source

Yep – in typical fashion, even the government’s tacit admission that it was behind the curve on open source was released late.

The press release/statement/apology – Government levels the playing field for open source – wasn’t sent out from the Ministry of Truth until at least 7.00pm – when most reporters are tucked up in the nearest hostelry.

And what about that headline – “levels the playing field’ – that seems to imply that until now the government has been quite happy with uneven playing field when it comes to procuring anything but proprietary technology but I might be being unfair.

Interestingly though the release also states that “major players in the IT industry now support the use of Open Standards”. For major players basically read Microsoft as I am not sure what other major players have recently stumbled over this open source thing: IBM, HP, Dell – have all been supporting Linux (to some degree or other) for years.

Anyway, better late than passed-over-in-favour-of-a -reduced-price-which-quickly-becomes-lock-in, I guess.

The timing is also interesting – is it down to open source reaching critical mass? Or could it be something to do with the fact that the government has given all our money to bankers and can no longer afford to throw money at whichever proprietary solutions EDS thinks is best?

Minister for Digital Engagement (what sort of job title is that??? Does that mean he can marry two computers that are very much in love), Tom Watson clearly thinks that open source can save the government some cash: “Open Source software is a not a cure-all remedy and is not the only solution to IT questions. However, by levelling the playing field and allowing Open Source to be as competitive as possible we can ensure that taxpayers get maximum value for money from Government IT, something that is more important than ever during the worldwide financial climate”

However he won’t actually goes as far as to say its a superior development model or anything that positive at all. The whole statement reads more like “It could save us a few quid and everyone is doing it so shucks I guess we should too”

Anyways the governments approach is based around three ideas – (three – count’em – not one, not two but three! – Fear, surprise and ruthless efficiency)

There are three aspects to the new policy:

Open Source software: the policy includes 10 actions that will actively help make sure the best possible, best value for money software solutions are put forward for tenders, be they Open Source or propriety products.

Open Standards: the policy contains an explicit reference to Open Standards, ensuring systems are inter-operable and avoiding getting locked into a particular product where possible. Re-use: the Government will look to re-use what it has already bought, with successful solutions being made available across Government.

So there you go – that’s that open source thing taken care off. Tune in next week when the government decides that this Interwebby thing might actually be useful.

A contact who has travels to Rwanda fairly often and has been impressed by the country’s investment in IT infrastructure over recent years, just sent me a rather worrying/amusing link.

The country has ambitions to become the “Singapore of Africa” and plans to develop its broadband network to a level that will attract outside investors and foreign companies to take it seriously.

However, becoming an “IT Hub” is more than just about putting cables in the ground as the Indian Satyam scandal showed.

It seems that The Permanent Secretary (PS) in the Rwandan Ministry of Education was arrested recently for asking for a bribe from a potential supplier to the government. If that wasn’t bad enough – it seems said civil servant has now done a bunk from police custody.

Read the whole sorry tale here:

This piece I wrote for HR Magazine about Private Medical Insurance is live online. (It has been since December but I don’t always find out when features written for print mags make it onto the interweb)

Just noticed that a piece I wrote for CIO Magazine on data breaches is now live on the US and UK sites:

The 5.30am electronic rumble of a BlackBerry set to vibrate. The sound no CIO wants to hear at that hour as it can only mean bad news.

The chief security officer apologizes for waking you but she is clearly agitated. She has just been woken herself by the security consultants you called in to carry out a data audit. The team pulled a late shift last night and discovered some anomalies in the main customer database. The CSO is doing a poor job of covering her panic as she stumbles out with: “It might be nothing”. But you both know that you wouldn’t be having this conversation now if that’s what she really felt.

Despite the security breach at HM Revenue and Customs(HMRC) in November last year, it seems that many companies are still failing to heed the lessons learned from the incident. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has been notified of almost 100 data breaches by public, private and third sector organisations since HMRC.

“Data is the lifeblood of many organizations but it is not often looked after very well,” says CIO Peter Birley of law firm Browne Jacobsenon his personal CIO Blog. Recent high-profile breaches include the loss of the personal details of around 5000 prison officers in September this year and allegations of a significant data loss at US hotel chain Best Western.

For more go to CIO.co.uk

Got to love this.