The organization is rejecting Microsoft software and other commercial products. We discuss the reasons and highlight other companies making the switch to open source software.
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Their Reasons
For the past 20 years, CERN has utilized Microsoft products — operating system, cloud platform, Office suites, Skype, and more. However, the IT company denied the lab the status of an 'academic organization', which previously allowed for discounts on software licenses.
To be fair, from a formal standpoint, CERN is indeed not an academic organization. The research laboratory does not confer academic degrees. Additionally, most of the scientists working on projects are officially employed by various universities worldwide.
Under the new agreement, the cost of Microsoft packages is calculated based on the number of users. For a large non-profit organization like CERN, this new calculation method resulted in an unmanageable sum. The cost of Microsoft applications for CERN tenfold.
To address the issue, CERN's information department launched the Microsoft Alternatives Project, or MAlt. Despite the name, the goal is to move away from all commercial software solutions, not just those of the IT giant. The full list of applications planned for replacement is currently unknown. However, the first priority at CERN will be to find alternatives for email and Skype services.
CERN representatives promise to share more details in mid-September. Progress can be .
Why Open Source
By transitioning to open source software, CERN aims to avoid vendor lock-in and gain full control over the data collected. There is a lot of data — for instance, three years ago CERN 300 TB of data generated by the Large Hadron Collider.
CERN already has experience with open source — some services for the LHC have been developed by the lab's engineers. The organization is also actively involved in the development of the open-source ecosystem. It has long supported a cloud platform for IaaS — OpenStack.
Until 2015, CERN engineers collaborated with specialists from Fermilab developing its own Linux distribution — . It was a clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Later, the laboratory switched to CentOS, and Fermilab discontinued its distribution development in May of this year.
Among the recent open-source projects at CERN, one can highlight of the very first browser . It was created by Tim Berners-Lee back in 1990. At that time, he was working on the NeXTSTEP platform and it was developed using Interface Builder. Most of the information was displayed in text format, but there were images as well.
The browser emulator . The source code can be found .
CERN is also involved in open hardware. Back in 2011, the organization the Open Source Hardware initiative and continues to support the repository . In it, enthusiasts can follow the organization's developments and participate in them.
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An example of a project could be . Its participants are creating a switch for synchronizing data transmitted in complex Ethernet networks. The system supports operation with thousands of nodes and can transmit data with high accuracy over a 10 km long fiber optic. The project is actively updated and is used by large European research laboratories.
Who else is transitioning to open software
At the beginning of the year, several major telecommunications providers — AT&T, Verizon, China Mobile, and DTK — reported actively working with open-source software. They are part of the foundation, which focuses on the development and promotion of network projects.
For example, AT&T introduced its system for working with virtual networks, ONAP. It is gradually being implemented by other foundation members. At the end of March, Ericsson based on ONAP that allows segmenting networks at the push of a button. It is expected that open solutions mobile operators with the rollout of next-generation mobile networks.
Some universities in the UK are also transitioning to open software. Half of the universities in the country open source solutions, including . Its educational processes are built on — a web application that provides the ability to create websites for online learning.
Gradually, an increasing number of educational institutions are beginning to use the platform. Community members are convinced that soon most universities in the country will connect to it.
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Source: habr.com
