The College of Computing was pleased to welcome Dave Lane from Egressive Limited and founding member of the Effusion Group to talk about open source and business practice. This proved to be an excellent opportunity for the students to hear how open source has influenced business practice and examine ideas of goodwill and trust in business.

Dave began by contrasting open source with proprietary software and getting feedback from the students on the the differences. A brief history of software development followed that looked at the first computers and software (open source), the progression to proprietary software and the subsequent increase in open source today. Dave also made mention of the Effusion Group, a group of small companies with a focus on open source and the use of open standards. The mention of open standards became a discussion point about communication and how proprietary formats affect this.

Interspersed with some great discussions about software development in general Dave talked about business ethics and the approach they take at Egressive, in particular the idea of trust, goodwill and their focus on a triple bottom line business practice (measuring the business on it financial, social and environmental success). Discussion regularly came back to monopolies and the impact a monopoly has on an industry which allowed the students to explore some of their own opinions about monopolies related to the computer industry.

While discussing the use of open source as a means to make businesses more profitable by allowing effective use of resources Dave commented on piracy and the distinction between software that comes with source code and software that has been stolen. His point that it is "better to use software that encourages use without resorting to piracy" was well made as was his point about the cost of protecting proprietary software from piracy. We hope to see some of these ideas coming through in future project work.

We wish to thank Dave for taking the time to talk to the students during class and for his time after class answering questions and talking with students individually.