{"id":88,"date":"2008-10-17T16:44:40","date_gmt":"2008-10-17T15:44:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commonplatform.co.uk\/?p=88"},"modified":"2008-10-17T16:44:40","modified_gmt":"2008-10-17T15:44:40","slug":"the-bbcs-open-source-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commonplatform.co.uk\/index.php\/2008\/10\/17\/the-bbcs-open-source-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"The BBC&#8217;s open source rules"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-90\" title=\"Magna Carta\" src=\"http:\/\/commonplatform.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/magna-carta.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"203\" srcset=\"https:\/\/commonplatform.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/magna-carta.jpg 550w, https:\/\/commonplatform.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/magna-carta-300x122.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In ten or fifteen years, when the BBC has finally been translated from a dark brown top-down industrial-era content funnel into a glittering archipelago composed of pure energy (you know what I mean) we\u2019ll look back on <a title=\"The BBC's rules for publishing software under an open source licence\" href=\"http:\/\/commonplatform.co.uk\/index.php\/the-bbcs-rules-for-publishing-open-source-software\/\">this document<\/a> as a kind of <a title=\"Look up 'magna carta' at wikipedia.org\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Magna_carta\">magna carta<\/a> of openness, a foundation document for the new republic of shared knowledge that the BBC will help to found.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s an unprepossessing document, not a constitution or a charter, just the simple rules that software developers at the BBC have to observe when thinking about releasing their code under an open source licence. And it\u2019s not a generous document either: rather compromised in fact. Software may only be released if:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The software must have no or negligible commercial application or value, and is unlikely, if licensed, to bring revenue back to the BBC.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The software is \u2018non-mission critical\u2019, and there are not likely to be any competitive uses of the software which might enable a third party to profit from the BBC\u2019s investment.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And it must not be released if:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The software would otherwise give the BBC a direct competitive advantage that it would lose following such release.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But reassuringly, neither should it be released if:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The quality of the software is appropriate for the BBC\u2019s internal purposes but does not meet external standards.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So hardly a <a title=\"Look up 'declaration of independence' at wikipedia.org\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence\">declaration of independence<\/a> or a <a title=\"Look up 'communist manifesto' at wikipedia.org\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Communist_manifesto\">communist manifesto<\/a>. In fact the rules make it explicit: BBC developers may release only good but rather unimportant code into the world. The rules are a good expression of a certain first generation timidity in the release of code and I\u2019d like to think that the next revision will scrap the requirement for code to have \u201cno commercial application or value\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t want to overstate the importance of this document (it\u2019s really just part of one BBC department\u2019s process) but these rules are fascinating because they seem to capture the final moments of the closed era, the era during which it was appropriate to develop rich and useful code (in a public service setting) while withholding it from reuse and extension in the wider community and economy.<\/p>\n<p>The full set of rules are <a title=\"The BBC's rules for publishing software under an open source licence\" href=\"http:\/\/commonplatform.co.uk\/index.php\/the-bbcs-rules-for-publishing-open-source-software\/\">here<\/a>. Thanks again to Rob Hardy for sending them to me. If you know of other rules like these or of code or content that are being released by the BBC under similar or different terms, do <a title=\"Send me an email!\" href=\"mailto:steve@bowbrick.com\">let me know<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In ten or fifteen years, when the BBC has finally been translated from a dark brown top-down industrial-era content funnel into a glittering archipelago composed of pure energy (you know what I mean) we\u2019ll look back on this document as a kind of magna carta of openness, a foundation document for the new republic of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4,8,67,72,73,71,64],"class_list":["post-88","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bbc","tag-commonplatform","tag-gpl","tag-opensource","tag-release","tag-rules","tag-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commonplatform.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commonplatform.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commonplatform.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commonplatform.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commonplatform.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/commonplatform.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91,"href":"https:\/\/commonplatform.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions\/91"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commonplatform.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commonplatform.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commonplatform.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}