[Sussex] BBC and Microsoft sign agreement

[Fay Zee]

On 29/09/06, Andrew Guard <andrew at andrewguard.com> wrote:
> I must of missed that story when BBC have been in talks with open source
> projects.
>
> Fixed up!
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5390000.stm

At the LinuxWorld Expo today I attended the talk by Michael Sparks of
the BBC development team, entitled "Open Sourcing at the BBC: When,
Why, Why Not and How".

Basically, he couched it in questions, such as: Q. Why would you avoid
Microsoft? A. No good reason, if you are assessing products on merit
and want to take advantage of the latest technology and existing
communities. Q. Why would you not avoid open Source? A. No good
reason, if you are assessing products on merit and want to take
advantage of the latest technology and existing communities.

He reported that the BBC uses a mix of platforms - Windows, Linux,
Solaris and OSX- and software to meet the aims of the BBC. They
especially use Linux in the research department, where he's based, but
elsewhere Windows is widely used, as Microsoft is an approved
supplier. However, on the desktop, Firefox is approved, although
OpenOffice.org  isn't on the approved list, but is used where
appropriate.



Michael went on to talk about the open source software the BBC has
developed, such as freeview, now in use elsewhere, and Dirac, a
royalty free free video codec for online and offline delivery, and why
it pays companies to open source "anything they write as an overhead
rather than as a product". In other words, if it's something they have
to write anyway, for use internally, there's an advantage to open
sourcing it. Chiefly:
     No feedback == No loss
     Any feedback == Benefit

All-in-all, it was an interesting talk. He's a first rate speaker - I
heard him speak at Bristol Fave 2005 and that was just as good.

Fay