JISC sends guidance on open source software to all colleges and universities

JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) today issued a briefing paper to all colleges and universities in the UK to raise awareness of the issue of open source software. With almost every further and higher education institution in the UK making using of open source software, and with the European Commission and the UK Government giving their support to its development and deployment, it has become a central issue for institutional management of IT systems and services in education.

‘Open source’ refers to software whose source code is openly available to be modified by end-users, in contrast to proprietary software. While such software is already in use in colleges and universities, it is rarely yet part of institutional policies and strategies and there are still a great many misunderstandings concerning it.

The new briefing paper comes after guidelines issued last year by JISC for its projects and follows from the Government’s published policy which, in 2004, set out guidance for the exploitation of publicly funded software development. In its latest guidelines, JISC – supported by its advisory service OSS Watch - advocates the use of open source as the default for software development as well as providing guidelines on copyright, licensing, trademarks, patents and development practice.