Public funding of open source software is one of the most direct ways that government spending can grow the supply side of the economy. Taxpayers will directly benefit from the public domain technologies developed to replace the contracts CERN is moving away from. Software and science share an important economic trait, that once you produce them you can maximize their total impact by spreading them around as much as possible. That's an advantageous situation for public funding without IP restrictions, which is the model of academia.
Migrating away from Microsoft won't be easy. Despite high licensing costs, Windows, AD and Exchange are still great solutions with millions of people familiar with them, good documentation and support.
I agree that only public funding and massive donations would allow the development of true alternative to these products.
The building blocks are already there: desktop Linux, openLDAP, FreeRADIUS, LibreOffice, etc.
What is needed is lots of refinements, improvements and UI/UX polish to have a package that small shops to Fortune 500 companies could deploy.
Counter point: the more the government gets into funding OSS, they will essentially become a competitor to other software companies. Now the government both has the power and incentive to hinder private companies with rules and regulations.
I think that if the government needs OSS software for actual use by the government, then that's fine. Don't make the government become a competitor to private industry. Look how that turned out with Uber vs. Taxis.
OSS is just like anything in the free market. If people and companies want it that much, they will spend time and energy on it.
I'm not proud of it, but I worked on SharePoint at CERN IT. Some examples of how dysfunctional it was:
- When asking about version control I was told that if I really wanted to use it I could have Visual SourceSafe 6.0 or something from way back in the nineties. It was basically CVS 0.1 alpha with a GUI, and I ended up learning Git instead.
- I made sure all my changes worked on Firefox, because that's what I knew the physicists were using. My boss wanted me to support IE only, and after a heated discussion the quote which always haunted me was "We don't care about the physicists!"
- A colleague lamented about having spent about a year developing some uber-flexible interface in SharePoint which would've been an order of magnitude simpler in other content management systems.
The rest of CERN is completely different, as indicated by cernguy.
I left a year into a two-year contract, and I'm happy to say I've not worked on a Microsoft platform ever since!
Why was management pushing for it so hard? Better (existent) salespeople for microsoft vs OSS? Or were there actual reasons they thought microsoft would be better
"The Microsoft Alternatives project (MAlt) started a year ago to mitigate anticipated software license fee increases. MAlt’s objective is to put us back in control using open software."
"A prime example is that CERN has enjoyed special conditions for the use of Microsoft products for the last 20 years, by virtue of its status as an “academic institution”. However, recently, the company has decided to revoke CERN’s academic status, a measure that took effect at the end of the previous contract in March 2019, replaced by a new contract based on user numbers, increasing the license costs by more than a factor of ten. Although CERN has negotiated a ramp-up profile over ten years to give the necessary time to adapt, such costs are not sustainable."
CERN had a major role in making kicad what it is today. they implemented tons of complex stuff that you normally only find in really expensive CAD tools.
Hope they can repeat that with a few more FOSS projects!
Would be nice to push up also the other parts of the physical design - LibreCAD[1] and FreeCAD[2], Yosys[3] and Symbiflow[4], Chisel/FIRRTL[5], and many others.
CERN has really done wonders to revive the project and get it organized again. Before that, the 2012 build became the last sane build from the project team for a few years. The project appeared to have lost steam and began to fragment. You had to download "latest" windows builds from some random server. Linux distributions stopped packaging at the 2012 build making it appear as if kicad was dead. This forced you to find a 3rd party package or build from source. Then there were a few forks to add features started by random individuals which were always unstable. Component names were renamed with stupid and confusing names to the point where I stopped using it. It almost looked like the project was dead at that point and this was 2014/15.
I recently picked it back up to investigate and was pleasantly surprised. It felt like the team dearly missed the sanity of 2012 version, continued from there and modernized it. Thank you CERN.
I worked support some hardware CERN used once. Fun guys to talk with / work with.
They call me up one day to note that one of their devices I supported had an accident and they were concerned they didn't know why. So they sent me photos.
This device had rows of modular cards installed in it. In the center of the device with two cards pulled out you could see that something had burred and even melted some of the surrounding cards. But it didn't look like any given card had failed as much as there was some sort of really hot fire ... that had been in the air between the cards or something. Now keep in mind this was just what a handful of photos looked like, so who really knows. Makes no sense that there was something floating in the air between the cards hot enough to do that thing ... but that is what it looked like.
Anyway it was like a good 100k+ in hardware burned up, possibly MUCH more as the full chassis held a lot more than that. So I promise them a new chassis and such and tell them to pack it up nicely and we will have a courier come and get it and send it to our QA team. The CERN guys promised not to expose the equipment to anymore micro black holes ;)
The process to send stuff to the QA team in strange situations like this was a painful series of steps. The QA team was BRUTAL about process (even if they never followed it themselves...). They also were a real pain to even email, but that was part of the process. Amusingly enough when I sent them the photos and explained it was CERN even the QA ultra dry guys cracked some good X-files references ;)
Still wonder what the hell happened to that equipment.
It is awesome to see how CERN is supporting open source. They have been long time users of our open core GitLab with 12,000 users https://about.gitlab.com/customers/cern/
I visited CERN once in my role at GitLab. The scale of CERN and the level of people there is really impressive.
Many teams had implemented very complicated pipelines doing all sorts of things. Including using GitLab to design, validate and eventually produce hardware that was used in ATLAS.
I'm waiting for some of these documents being made public. I am working for a government institution that is making much of the same moves. Would be nice to see what an immense IT undertaking like this comes up with.
>...increasing the license costs by more than a factor of ten
When I hear stories like that I always wonder what was the thought process of the sales people that managed that account. Probably something like that:
- Hey, do you remember our old customer CERN, a world-famous scientific non-profit organization that pushes the boundaries of human knowledge about the universe?
- Yeah, what about them?
- Let's charge them 10 times more for our software licenses
It’s also worth noting that CERN has been running (not just using!) many open source projects since way back. Geant, madx, root and cling come to mind.
I'm honestly pretty happy about this. I'm hoping that by aiming to replace the commercial products they use with opensource alternatives, the alternatives leave with a better polish and user experience. I also see CERN as an institution that is willing to hire the devs needed to maintain / support a project.
Does this mean that no scientist at CERN can use applications like Mathematica? Or is this just focusing on essential foundation software like operating systems (moving away from Windows)
While some rely on Mathematica most at Cern uses ROOT for data science. The impact on the science program is more likely to come from ditching Oracle databases and LabView... That said, this is an IT department initiative, users also have access to software from their home institutes.
The latter. It's about replacing things like Active Directory, Exchange, Skype, etc. None of the projects relate to the actual science, except maybe Visual Studio licenses? But I know of nobody that uses ROOT on Windows with VS.
While this post is referring to desktop/server software, CERN are also using open source platforms in some of their experiments: they recently re-performed some of the 2012 analysis that led to the discovery of the Higgs boson, on top of Kubernetes.
Adam and I spoke to a computer scientist and two physicists from CERN for our podcast, and you might like to listen if you like physics or software.
That's kind of ironic. I was doing paid contract work in 1994 (on Linux!) that involved customizing the open source CERN httpd server (before Apache existed, or loadable modules in a web server).
Matrix would be a good fit for most research institutions, allowing cooperation trough federation. Heck, even Mastodon could be interesting, and ActivityPub as a transport layer for publications.
However, one issue is that small institutions cannot afford to self-host everything, or make the necessary adjustments themselves. I wonder if CERN and other big institutions could perform some heavy lifting (and maybe provide some shared services, hosting servers, etc.) without necessarily centralizing everything like it is done nowadays.
I'm a big Matrix fan but am curious about what options they have for integrating and managing it in a typical enterprise environment. For example:
-what happens for stuff like user management with Active Directory etc?
-what happens for things like FOIA requirements considering it is e2e encrypted?
I'd like to see more done in the open networking space. Cumulus Linux was talked about a ton just a few years ago, but it seems like I haven't heard about it as much lately. Probably because Juniper and Cisco have (mostly) managed to catch up on the automation front.
I couldn't find anything concrete on the CERN website, but in their virtual DC tour I noticed HP Procurves as top-of-rack switches. I was really hoping to see whitebox switches.
I came across a white paper years ago (2012/2013 ish) on how they used Icinga (An early but rapidly growing Nagios fork) and mod-gearman to monitor their ATLAS computing farm. At the time, as a newly appointed sysadmin, I was looking in to possible solutions that could scale well myself and their usage was very inspiring. Eventually deploying something similar where I'm still working now.
> Needless to say, isolated initiatives will waste effort and resources.
If the centralized procurement approach is what put everyone in the current mess, what indication is there that a centralized approach to open source won't produce the same issues?
I personally wonder why commit to open source in a centralized manner vs commit to interoperable standards (but not the specific tools used to speak to the standard).
jury probably still out, and no direct insight, but the overall incentives/philosphy driving acquisition for each could theoretically be drastically different (e.g. optimizing for openness, community, xyz instead of vendor size, ability to negotiate discounts, etc)
I suspect this is specifically targeting Windows. I think this would be a good idea for anyone really. I don't know whose or which decision brought MS into this mess, but this isn't a sustainable OS for the future.
Our company still relies on it, but any new piece of software has to be platform independent. Licensing income probably skyrocketed on MS end, but I don't think they made any friends with W10.
Maybe MS is correct that W10 will be the last Windows. But maybe not because of rolling releases.
Anyway, good news and the correct strategy in my opinion.
[+] [-] whatshisface|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] remir|6 years ago|reply
I agree that only public funding and massive donations would allow the development of true alternative to these products.
The building blocks are already there: desktop Linux, openLDAP, FreeRADIUS, LibreOffice, etc.
What is needed is lots of refinements, improvements and UI/UX polish to have a package that small shops to Fortune 500 companies could deploy.
[+] [-] Nightshaxx|6 years ago|reply
I think that if the government needs OSS software for actual use by the government, then that's fine. Don't make the government become a competitor to private industry. Look how that turned out with Uber vs. Taxis.
OSS is just like anything in the free market. If people and companies want it that much, they will spend time and energy on it.
[+] [-] cernguy|6 years ago|reply
CERN has never been a Microsoft organisation excepted in the head of management that was pushing for Microsoft solutions everywhere without success.
- Scientific computation are done at CERN under Linux with the Root framework.
- Most (all?) scientists uses OSx or Linux.
- All computing clusters runs SC Linux or centos.
- Most internal softwares: indico, EDH, landb, and other are running under Linux and are web based.
- All DBs are OSS or oracle
- All storages system are home made (EOS, Castor) or ceph based and run under Linux.
- Data distribution is home made and based on a framework named xrootd under Linux.
- Software distribution is also Linux based and run as a fuse module (cernVMFS)
- Most systems services are UNIX C++ and Java for the control part.
- CERN uses Openstack for virtualisation After the management pushed for Hyper-V and failed miserably.
- Management pushed for SharePoint for years before the entire website switched to PHP and Drupal.
There si not real "Microsoft" at CERN excepted AD and phones. It is however a study case of bad management decisions in IT.
[+] [-] l0b0|6 years ago|reply
- When asking about version control I was told that if I really wanted to use it I could have Visual SourceSafe 6.0 or something from way back in the nineties. It was basically CVS 0.1 alpha with a GUI, and I ended up learning Git instead.
- I made sure all my changes worked on Firefox, because that's what I knew the physicists were using. My boss wanted me to support IE only, and after a heated discussion the quote which always haunted me was "We don't care about the physicists!"
- A colleague lamented about having spent about a year developing some uber-flexible interface in SharePoint which would've been an order of magnitude simpler in other content management systems.
The rest of CERN is completely different, as indicated by cernguy.
I left a year into a two-year contract, and I'm happy to say I've not worked on a Microsoft platform ever since!
[+] [-] chipperyman573|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] anthony_barker|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rkeene2|6 years ago|reply
[0] http://AppFS.net/
[+] [-] Polyisoprene|6 years ago|reply
"The Microsoft Alternatives project (MAlt) started a year ago to mitigate anticipated software license fee increases. MAlt’s objective is to put us back in control using open software."
"A prime example is that CERN has enjoyed special conditions for the use of Microsoft products for the last 20 years, by virtue of its status as an “academic institution”. However, recently, the company has decided to revoke CERN’s academic status, a measure that took effect at the end of the previous contract in March 2019, replaced by a new contract based on user numbers, increasing the license costs by more than a factor of ten. Although CERN has negotiated a ramp-up profile over ten years to give the necessary time to adapt, such costs are not sustainable."
[+] [-] ethbro|6 years ago|reply
Nice to see some of the old guard is still alive and well within the Microsoft walls.
[+] [-] budu3|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hanniabu|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timbit42|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] panpanna|6 years ago|reply
Hope they can repeat that with a few more FOSS projects!
[+] [-] xvilka|6 years ago|reply
[1] https://librecad.org/
[2] https://www.freecadweb.org/
[3] http://www.clifford.at/yosys/
[4] https://symbiflow.github.io/
[5] https://chisel.eecs.berkeley.edu/
[+] [-] MisterTea|6 years ago|reply
I recently picked it back up to investigate and was pleasantly surprised. It felt like the team dearly missed the sanity of 2012 version, continued from there and modernized it. Thank you CERN.
[+] [-] sigstoat|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duxup|6 years ago|reply
They call me up one day to note that one of their devices I supported had an accident and they were concerned they didn't know why. So they sent me photos.
This device had rows of modular cards installed in it. In the center of the device with two cards pulled out you could see that something had burred and even melted some of the surrounding cards. But it didn't look like any given card had failed as much as there was some sort of really hot fire ... that had been in the air between the cards or something. Now keep in mind this was just what a handful of photos looked like, so who really knows. Makes no sense that there was something floating in the air between the cards hot enough to do that thing ... but that is what it looked like.
Anyway it was like a good 100k+ in hardware burned up, possibly MUCH more as the full chassis held a lot more than that. So I promise them a new chassis and such and tell them to pack it up nicely and we will have a courier come and get it and send it to our QA team. The CERN guys promised not to expose the equipment to anymore micro black holes ;)
The process to send stuff to the QA team in strange situations like this was a painful series of steps. The QA team was BRUTAL about process (even if they never followed it themselves...). They also were a real pain to even email, but that was part of the process. Amusingly enough when I sent them the photos and explained it was CERN even the QA ultra dry guys cracked some good X-files references ;)
Still wonder what the hell happened to that equipment.
[+] [-] sytse|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jobvandervoort|6 years ago|reply
Many teams had implemented very complicated pipelines doing all sorts of things. Including using GitLab to design, validate and eventually produce hardware that was used in ATLAS.
[+] [-] Beltiras|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Boulth|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dgudkov|6 years ago|reply
When I hear stories like that I always wonder what was the thought process of the sales people that managed that account. Probably something like that:
- Hey, do you remember our old customer CERN, a world-famous scientific non-profit organization that pushes the boundaries of human knowledge about the universe?
- Yeah, what about them?
- Let's charge them 10 times more for our software licenses
- Can't see anything wrong about it, go ahead
[+] [-] newaccoutnas|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pletnes|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gen3|6 years ago|reply
and what I said last time:
I'm honestly pretty happy about this. I'm hoping that by aiming to replace the commercial products they use with opensource alternatives, the alternatives leave with a better polish and user experience. I also see CERN as an institution that is willing to hire the devs needed to maintain / support a project.
[+] [-] josephagoss|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lokimedes|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akubera|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nxpnsv|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crb|6 years ago|reply
Adam and I spoke to a computer scientist and two physicists from CERN for our podcast, and you might like to listen if you like physics or software.
https://kubernetespodcast.com/episode/062-cern/
[+] [-] kazinator|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MayeulC|6 years ago|reply
However, one issue is that small institutions cannot afford to self-host everything, or make the necessary adjustments themselves. I wonder if CERN and other big institutions could perform some heavy lifting (and maybe provide some shared services, hosting servers, etc.) without necessarily centralizing everything like it is done nowadays.
[+] [-] secfirstmd|6 years ago|reply
-what happens for stuff like user management with Active Directory etc? -what happens for things like FOIA requirements considering it is e2e encrypted?
[+] [-] mxuribe|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sh-run|6 years ago|reply
I couldn't find anything concrete on the CERN website, but in their virtual DC tour I noticed HP Procurves as top-of-rack switches. I was really hoping to see whitebox switches.
[+] [-] nullify88|6 years ago|reply
https://cds.cern.ch/record/1455464/files/ATL-DAQ-PROC-2012-0...
[+] [-] ridaj|6 years ago|reply
> Needless to say, isolated initiatives will waste effort and resources.
If the centralized procurement approach is what put everyone in the current mess, what indication is there that a centralized approach to open source won't produce the same issues?
I personally wonder why commit to open source in a centralized manner vs commit to interoperable standards (but not the specific tools used to speak to the standard).
[+] [-] cat199|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Apofis|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] linker3000|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raxxorrax|6 years ago|reply
Our company still relies on it, but any new piece of software has to be platform independent. Licensing income probably skyrocketed on MS end, but I don't think they made any friends with W10.
Maybe MS is correct that W10 will be the last Windows. But maybe not because of rolling releases.
Anyway, good news and the correct strategy in my opinion.
[+] [-] zucker42|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dukwon|6 years ago|reply
It's not: it's things like Active Directory, Skype4B, Office, Exchange etc. Desktop OS's aren't covered by MAlt.
[+] [-] uoylj|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]