> Given that a recent EU study (http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/17/0113235 ) > has shown the benifits of FLOSS, why can't the BBC monolith move to an open > development system? Surely the BBC should lead the way in opening up it's internal > proprietary junk, after all as a licence fee payer I've already paid for it, and not > only am I willing to test it, I'm willing to submit bugs via an open bug tracking > system a la bugzilla, and maybe even develop for it. What with the new licence fee > settlement, it's a cheaper and better way to get things done. Personally the engine > that's used in sports\celeb daq is something else I'd like to use. The BBC has made quiet steps towards open-sourcing things - see http://www.bbc.co.uk/opensource/
However one of the problems with open sourcing is that a lot of the BBC's applications are built very specifically for the architecture and infrastructure used by the BBC, which is not your average LAMP setup :) I think the problem is that getting applications into a state where they can be outsourced, is often a major task in itself - I'm sure we wouldn't get much thanks if we did release apps that were a mess and completely awful to install. Hence why what's been opensourced so far, is often the little pieces - easy to prepare. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
