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80-595: The National Computing Centre ( NCC ) was an independent not-for-profit membership and research organisation in the United Kingdom. After the original organisation was liquidated in 2010, Redholt Limited changed its name to the National Computing Centre Limited ( NCC Ltd ) and acquired the assets of the original NCC through a pre-pack administration arrangement . This new for-profit company, formed in 2010, initially offered some of

160-406: A Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) program to support open source innovation. The adoption of open-source software by industry is increasing over time. OSS is popular in several industries such as telecommunications , aerospace , healthcare , and media & entertainment due to the benefits it provides. Adoption of OSS is more likely in larger organizations and is dependent on

240-544: A bug needs to be fixed in their project. This is established by communicating with the OSS community through avenues such as bug reporting and tracking or mailing lists and project pages. Next, OSS developers select or are assigned to a task and identify a solution. Because there are often many different possible routes for solutions in OSS, the best solution must be chosen with careful consideration and sometimes even peer feedback . The developer then begins to develop and commit

320-517: A copy of the license is provided to recipients with the code. One important legal precedent for open-source software was created in 2008, when the Jacobson v Katzer case enforced terms of the Artistic license , including attribution and identification of modifications. The ruling of this case cemented enforcement under copyright law when the conditions of the license were not followed. Because of

400-454: A new bug. Early releases : The first version of the software should be released as early as possible so as to increase one's chances of finding co-developers early. Frequent integration: Code changes should be integrated (merged into a shared code base) as often as possible so as to avoid the overhead of fixing a large number of bugs at the end of the project life cycle. Some open-source projects have nightly builds where integration

480-416: A number of matters to all creditors as soon as possible after the completion of the sale. This was done in an attempt to provide greater transparency to creditors. On 1 November 2013, following a government-commissioned review, a new Statement of Insolvency Practice 16 was introduced. It requires administrators to disclose the following: The main benefit of a pre-pack administration is the 'continuity' of

560-508: A public good as it is available to everyone and does not decrease in value for others when downloaded by one person. Open source software is unique in that it becomes more valuable as it is used and contributed to, instead of diminishing the resource. This is explained by concepts such as investment in reputation and network effects . The economic model of open-source software can be explained as developers contribute work to projects, creating public benefits. Developers choose projects based on

640-484: A purchaser prior to the appointment of an administrator, and the administrator effects the sale immediately on, or shortly after, his appointment". The difference between a pre-pack sale and a normal sale is that in a normal sale the administrator markets the business and negotiates the terms of the sale after his appointment. The reasons an administrator sells on a pre-pack basis, rather than after post-appointment marketing, vary from case to case, but they often involve

720-651: A reciprocal agreement with General Services Administration in the United States. In 1996, the National Computing Centre sold its overseas education business, NCC Education , to stave off a financial crisis that occurred when the company breached its borrowing limits. In 1999, it sold its commercial divisions (turnover of less than £10 million), which provided escrow, consultancy, system engineering services to its existing management team supported by ECI Ventures for £5 million. This new company

800-447: A similar way user scripts and custom style sheets allow for web sites, and eventually publish the modification as a fork for users with similar preferences, and directly submit possible improvements as pull requests . The Open Source Initiative 's (OSI) definition is recognized by several governments internationally as the standard or de facto definition. OSI uses The Open Source Definition to determine whether it considers

880-615: A software license open source. The definition was based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines , written and adapted primarily by Perens . Perens did not base his writing on the "four freedoms" from the Free Software Foundation (FSF), which were only widely available later. Under Perens' definition, open source is a broad software license that makes source code available to the general public with relaxed or non-existent restrictions on

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960-422: A victory for OSS supporters. In open-source communities, instead of owning the software produced, the producer owns the development of the evolving software. In this way, the future of the software is open, making ownership or intellectual property difficult within OSS. Licensing and branding can prevent others from stealing it, preserving its status as a public good . Open source software can be considered

1040-446: Is a general concern that the pre-pack administrator, in agreeing to the pre-pack in consultation with the company’s management team (and usually its secured creditors), favours the interests of the managers and secured creditors ahead of those of the unsecured creditors. The speed and secrecy of the transaction often lead to a deal being executed, about which the unsecured creditors know nothing and offers them little or no return. There

1120-404: Is a good or service, what can be considered a modification, governance through contract vs license, ownership and right of use. While there have been developments on these issues, they often lead to even more questions. The existence of these uncertainties in regulation has a negative impact on industries involved in technologies as a whole. Within the legal history of software as a whole, there

1200-556: Is absolutely another terrific way that individuals and organizations choose to contribute to open source projects. Groups like Open Collective provide a means for individuals to contribute monthly to supporting their favorite projects. Organizations like the Sovereign Tech Fund is able to contribute to millions to supporting the tools the German Government uses. The National Science Foundation established

1280-544: Is done automatically . Several versions: There should be at least two versions of the software. There should be a buggier version with more features and a more stable version with fewer features. The buggy version (also called the development version) is for users who want the immediate use of the latest features and are willing to accept the risk of using code that is not yet thoroughly tested. The users can then act as co-developers, reporting bugs and providing bug fixes. High modularization: The general structure of

1360-606: Is effectively operating under the protection of the court until it emerges. An example is the airline industry ; in 2006, over half the industry's seating capacity was on airlines that were in Chapter 11. In a pre-packaged case, the plan proponents will have secured sufficient support from creditors to confirm their plan of reorganization prior to filing for Chapter 11 reorganization. Pre-packaged plans of reorganization virtually always impair (i.e. pay less than in full) one or more classes of creditors, and so in order to ensure that

1440-404: Is innovative since open-source programs are the product of collaboration among a large number of different programmers. The mix of divergent perspectives, corporate objectives, and personal goals speeds up innovation. Moreover, free software can be developed in accordance with purely technical requirements. It does not require thinking about commercial pressure that often degrades the quality of

1520-560: Is legal variety in this definition. Some jurisdictions attempt to expand or reduce this conceptualization for their own purposes. For example, The European Court of Justice defines a computer program as not including the functionality of a program, the programing language , or the format of data files. By limiting protections of the different aspects of software, the law favors an open-source approach to software use. The US especially has an open approach to software, with most open-source licenses originating there. However, this has increased

1600-459: Is often a suspicion that the consideration paid for the business may not have been maximized due to the absence of open marketing . Credit may have been incurred inappropriately prior to the pre-pack and this may not be fully investigated. Open-source software This is an accepted version of this page Note to admins : In case of doubt, remove this template and post a message asking for review at WT:CP .   With this script , go to

1680-403: Is one in which the debtor files for Chapter 11 relief without having agreed in advance to the terms of a plan of reorganization with its creditors. During the course of the Chapter 11 case, the debtor or, if the debtor does not retain the exclusive right to propose a plan, a creditor or creditor group may formulate and propose a plan of reorganization. A company undergoing Chapter 11 reorganization

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1760-415: Is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Open-source software may be developed in a collaborative, public manner. Open-source software is a prominent example of open collaboration , meaning any capable user is able to participate online in development, making

1840-436: Is that it can attract negative publicity if the former directors are seen to be shedding liabilities. The Insolvency Service monitors compliance with SIP 16. Its reports show that in 2010 it reported 10 insolvency practitioners to their licensing bodies, and in 2011 it reported 21. In the United States, typically the term pre-packaged bankruptcy is used instead of pre-packaged insolvency . A conventional bankruptcy case

1920-468: Is theoretically challenging in economic models, it is explainable as a sustainable social activity that requires resources. These resources include time, money, technology and contributions. Many developers have used technology funded by organizations such as universities and governments, though these same organizations benefit from the work done by OSS. As OSS grows, hybrid systems containing OSS and proprietary systems are becoming more common. Throughout

2000-889: The distributed version control system (DVCS) are examples of tools, often open source, that help manage the source code files and the changes to those files for a software project in order to foster collaboration. CVCS are centralized with a central repository while DVCS are decentralized and have a local repository for every user. concurrent versions system (CVS) and later Subversion (SVN) and Git are examples of CVCS. The repositories are hosted and published on source-code-hosting facilities such as GitHub . Open-source projects use utilities such as issue trackers to organize open-source software development. Commonly used bug trackers include Bugzilla and Redmine . Tools such as mailing lists and IRC provide means of coordination and discussion of bugs among developers. Project web pages, wiki pages, roadmap lists and newsgroups allow for

2080-544: The "voice of the computer user" and offered no substantial services to its client base and became a shell company. In July 2013 the registered address was changed to an accommodation address in London and between then and July 2017 the operational address was at times listed as Aston Abbotts in Buckinghamshire, Bournemouth and Welwyn Garden City. In July 2017, NCC Ltd changed its name to IT Accreditations Limited and

2160-609: The 1970s and 1980s NCC had a joint venture with Blackwell Publishing (NCC Blackwell) which was a significant publisher of academic computing books. Between 1989 and 1996, NCC operated with five main divisions – education, consulting, escrow, membership services, and system engineering deriving income from membership fees and its commercial activities. A valued component was the Computer Validation Service, which ran Validation testing for Fortran 77 and Pascal . These validation tests were issued in accordance with

2240-462: The Bazaar , open-source influential contributor Eric S. Raymond suggests a model for developing OSS known as the bazaar model. Raymond likens the development of software by traditional methodologies to building a cathedral, with careful isolated work by individuals or small groups. He suggests that all software should be developed using the bazaar style, with differing agendas and approaches. In

2320-586: The Naked Leader and joint ventures included: the NCC/Ashridge Business School MBA; NCC/AQA Applied ICT; and ProfIT. Funds were spent attempting to develop new products and services including web hosting which did not prove commercially successful. In 2002 NCC adopted a policy of vigorous support for open-source software . Funds were also received from Microsoft towards a software evaluations centre. Contracts were won to support

2400-641: The Public Interest . Within Europe some notable organizations are Free Software Foundation Europe , open-source projects EU (OSP) and OpenForum Europe (OFE). One Australian organization is Linux Australia while Asia has Open source Asia and FOSSAsia . Free and open source software for Africa (FOSSFA) and OpenAfrica are African organizations and Central and South Asia has such organizations as FLISOL and GRUP de usuarios de software libre Peru . Outside of these, many more organizations dedicated to

2480-554: The UK Royal Mail to Consignia. These survival strategies failed and the National Computing Centre diminished rapidly in size and turnover. NCC continued to make unsustainable losses but there was no change in strategic direction. To stem the losses NCC was forced to rapidly close or dispose of many of the acquisitions at a loss to the organisation. Michael Gough left the business in February 2008. In March 2008, Steve Markwell

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2560-519: The United States has focused on national security in regard to open-source software implementation due to the perceived threat of the increase of open-source software activity in countries like China and Russia, with the Department of Defense considering multiple criteria for using OSS. These criteria include: if it comes from and is maintained by trusted sources, whether it will continue to be maintained, if there are dependencies on sub-components in

2640-473: The advancement of open-source software exist. FOSS products are generally licensed under two types of licenses: permissive licensing and copyleft licensing . Both of these types of licenses are different than proprietary licensing in that they can allow more users access to the software and allow for the creation of derivative works as specified by the terms of the specific license, as each license has its own rules. Permissive licenses allow recipients of

2720-591: The appointment of Rob Cotton as Finance Director and who also took over control of the Escrow division in May of that year, with Morris leaving at that time. Following a substantial fall off of revenues as Y2K came and passed, and due to the failure of the company before this date to invest in its general consultancy, security, system engineering and escrow business during the Y2K period, the group began to make monthly losses before

2800-555: The backing of the United States Treasury was formed to acquire profitable assets, under section 363 of the Bankruptcy Code , with the new company planning to issue an initial public offering (IPO) of stock in 2010. The remaining pre-petition creditors claims are paid from the former corporation's assets. A review from Wolverhampton University identified the several criticisms of pre-pack sales. There

2880-402: The bazaar model should exhibit the following patterns: Users should be treated as co-developers: The users are treated like co-developers and so they should have access to the source code of the software. Furthermore, users are encouraged to submit additions to the software, code fixes for the software, bug reports , documentation, etc. Having more co-developers increases the rate at which

2960-514: The benefits of the changes to the escrow business instigated by Rob Cotton were felt and the company returned to profitability. Renamed NCC Group, in May 2000, and with escrow now the cornerstone of the group, Rob Cotton led a secondary management buy-out in 2003 valuing NCC Group at £30 million and supported by Barclays Private Equity. At this point, the National Computing Centre sold its shares in NCC Group as did Pearse, Bird and Sadler who left

3040-477: The business - the company is protected by the court. This gets rid of debts and contracts. It does not get rid of employees due to the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE). Another big advantage is that the cost of the process is lower than trading administration, as the administrators do not need to find funding to trade the business. The downside of a pre-pack administration

3120-437: The business having already left its iconic building in 2010 it finally left Manchester. The company was formally recorded at Companies House as being insolvent and in a voluntary arrangement as of 2 March 2012. The insolvency practitioner dealing with the companies affairs was Wilkins Kennedy of London. It would appear that from this point NCC Ltd was no longer recognised by any trade body, association or any part of government as

3200-605: The business. The NCC Group subsequently floated on the AIM stock market in 2004 for £55 million and was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2007 with a market capitalisation of nearly £390 million as of June 2014. NCC received substantial proceeds from the sale of NCC Group Limited (circa £11 million between 2000 and 2003 plus dividends) and from the multi-million sale of its Manchester city centre buildings (Armstrong House and Oxford House) to Bruntwood Group. Following

3280-414: The code. The code is then tested and reviewed by peers. Developers can edit and evolve their code through feedback from continuous integration . Once the leadership and community are satisfied with the whole project, it can be partially released and user instruction can be documented. If the project is ready to be released, it is frozen, with only serious bug fixes or security repairs occurring. Finally,

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3360-427: The company's IT usage, operating efficiencies, and the productivity of employees. Industries are likely to use OSS due to back-office functionality, sales support, research and development, software features, quick deployment, portability across platforms and avoidance of commercial license management. Additionally, lower cost for hardware and ownership are also important benefits. Organizations that contribute to

3440-589: The company's assets immediately upon his appointment, without court approval or the approval of the creditors, and he can do so even if the majority creditor objects. Courts have even approved transactions that, as a "necessary evil", have made payments to the former management while leaving little or nothing to unsecured creditors . In January 2009, the Association of Business Recovery Professionals issued Statement of Insolvency Practice 16 to require insolvency practitioners acting as administrators to disclose

3520-477: The development and expansions of free and open-source software movements exist all over the world. These organizations are dedicated to goals such as teaching and spreading technology. As listed by a former vice president of the Open Source Initiative , some American organizations include the Free Software Foundation , Software Freedom Conservancy , the Open Source Initiative and Software in

3600-461: The distribution of project information that focuses on end users. The basic roles OSS participants can fall into multiple categories, beginning with leadership at the center of the project who have control over its execution. Next are the core contributors with a great deal of experience and authority in the project who may guide the other contributors. Non-core contributors have less experience and authority, but regularly contribute and are vital to

3680-601: The focus on patent rights within these licenses, which has seen backlash from the OSS community, who prefer other forms of IP protection. Another issue includes technological protection measures (TPM) and digital rights management (DRM) techniques which were internationally legally recognized and protected in the 1996 World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Treaty . Open source software proponents disliked these technologies as they constrained end-users potentially beyond copyright law. Europe responded to such complaints by putting TPM under legal controls, representing

3760-479: The following considerations. A pre-pack sale avoids the costs of trading (which means creditors receive more back), and indeed, the company and the administrator may not have the funds to trade. It also avoids the administrator taking on the risks associated with trading. The value of the business may deteriorate during administration trading. There may be other factors to prevent trading, such as regulatory problems. The courts have held that an administrator can sell

3840-405: The history with auto-selected revisions . Note to the requestor : Make sure the page has already been reverted to a non-infringing revision or that infringing text has been removed or replaced before submitting this request. This template is reserved for obvious cases only, for other cases refer to Misplaced Pages:Copyright problems . Open-source software ( OSS ) is computer software that

3920-452: The insolvency of the pension fund later that year. Redholt Ltd was owned by a group of six shareholders, including former managers and two Directors of the insolvent National Computing Centre. Redholt Ltd, was renamed as The National Computing Centre Limited (NCC Ltd) in Feb 2011. In 2011 NCC Ltd extended its portfolio of services to include IT consulting, mainly as a virtual organisation through

4000-480: The many benefits provided, a huge issue to be considered is cybersecurity . While accidental vulnerabilities are possible, so are attacks by outside agents. Because of these fears, governmental interest in contributing to the governance of software has become more prominent. However, these are the broad strokes of the issue, with each country having their own specific politicized interactions with open-source software and their goals for its implementation. For example,

4080-560: The mid 2000s, more and more tech companies have begun to use OSS. For example, Dell's move of selling computers with GNU/Linux already installed. Microsoft itself has launched a Linux-based operating system despite previous animosity with the OSS movement. Despite these developments, these companies tend to only use OSS for certain purposes, leading to worries that OSS is being taken advantage of by corporations and not given anything in return. While many governments are interested in implementing and promoting open-source software due to

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4160-400: The ncc.co.uk domain name and company name became the property of NCC Group plc, so ending 50 years of an organisation trading as The National Computing Centre. Pre-packaged insolvency The term "pre-pack sale" has been defined by the Association of Business Recovery Professionals as "an arrangement under which the sale of all or part of a company’s business or assets is negotiated with

4240-463: The necessary education and training was made available. NCC was one of the visible outcomes from Harold Wilson 's " White Heat of Technology " speech and the formation of a Ministry of Technology , the others being the computer company International Computers Limited (ICL) and chip maker Inmos (both now defunct). Initially, most income came directly from government grants, but with the growth of NCC's commercial operations this ceased in 1989. During

4320-508: The number of people employed in the IT sector. OSS can be highly reliable when it has thousands of independent programmers testing and fixing bugs of the software. Open source is not dependent on the company or author that originally created it. Even if the company fails, the code continues to exist and be developed by its users. OSS is flexible because modular systems allow programmers to build custom interfaces, or add new abilities to it and it

4400-537: The number of possible contributors indefinite. The ability to examine the code facilitates public trust in the software. Open-source software development can bring in diverse perspectives beyond those of a single company. A 2024 estimate of the value of open-source software to firms is $ 8.8 trillion, as firms would need to spend 3.5 times the amount they currently do without the use of open source software. Open-source code can be used for studying and allows capable end users to adapt software to their personal needs in

4480-435: The perceived benefits or costs, such as improved reputation or value of the project. The motivations of developers can come from many different places and reasons, but the important takeaway is that money is not the only or even most important incentivization . Because economic theory mainly focuses on the consumption of scarce resources, the OSS dynamic can be hard to understand. In OSS, producers become consumers by reaping

4560-451: The plan can be confirmed by the bankruptcy court, the plan proponents must secure the support of at least two-thirds in amount and more than one-half in number of at least one such impaired class, in addition to ensuring the plan complies with all other requirements for confirmation. Two procedurally difficult aspects of the process are the announcement (which must be structured so as not to trigger contractual termination provisions) and getting

4640-404: The potential to quicken innovation and create of social value. In France for instance, a policy that incentivized government to favor free open-source software increased to nearly 600,000 OSS contributions per year, generating social value by increasing the quantity and quality of open-source software. This policy also led to an estimated increase of up to 18% of tech startups and a 14% increase in

4720-574: The project is fully released and only changed through minor bug fixes. Open source implementation of a standard can increase adoption of that standard. This creates developer loyalty as developers feel empowered and have a sense of ownership of the end product. Moreover, lower costs of marketing and logistical services are needed for OSS. OSS can be a tool to promote a company's image, including its commercial products. The OSS development approach has helped produce reliable, high quality software quickly and inexpensively. Open source development offers

4800-759: The project's development. New contributors are the least experienced but with mentorship and guidance can become regular contributors. Some possible ways of contributing to open-source software include such roles as programming , user interface design and testing, web design , bug triage , accessibility design and testing, UX design , code testing, and security review and testing. However, there are several ways of contributing to OSS projects even without coding skills. For example, some less technical ways of participating are documentation writing and editing, translation , project management , event organization and coordination, marketing, release management, community management, and public relations and outreach. Funding

4880-544: The requisite creditor approval. In 2009, a new entity completed the purchase of continuing operations, assets and trademarks of General Motors as a part of the 'pre-packaged' Chapter 11 reorganization. As ranked by total assets, GM's bankruptcy marks one of the largest corporate Chapter 11 bankruptcies in US history. The Chapter 11 filing was the fourth-largest in US history , following Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. , Washington Mutual and WorldCom Inc. A new entity with

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4960-672: The retirement of Perkins, Michael Gough was appointed as CEO in 2000 and NCC pursued a new strategy of rapidly developing and expanding its membership services by acquisition. After 2000, and particularly after the second sale of its shares in NCC Group in 2003, acquisitions accelerated to acquire a number of related companies, membership organisations, publications, publishing rights and to fund joint ventures. The acquisitions included: Management Consultancy News; Conspectus; CIO Connect; The Construction Industry Computing Association; Certus; The Evaluation Centre; Institute of IT Training; The Impact Programme; and PMP. Publishing rights acquired included

5040-431: The rewards of contributing to a project. For example, a developer becomes well regarded by their peers for a successful contribution to an OSS project. The social benefits and interactions of OSS are difficult to account for in economic models as well. Furthermore, the innovation of technology creates constantly changing value discussions and outlooks, making economic model unable to predict social behavior. Although OSS

5120-496: The same license while weak copyleft licenses require the use of the same license only under certain conditions. Examples of this type of license include the GNU family of licenses , and the MPL and EPL licenses. The similarities between these two categories of licensing include that they provide a broad grant of copyright rights, require that recipients preserve copyright notices, and that

5200-511: The same services as the original NCC but in 2012 became a shell company as it had to file for protection from its creditors and make most of its staff redundant. The National Computing Centre was founded on 10 June 1966 by the Labour government, as an autonomous not-for-profit organisation, in order to be the "voice of the computer user", encourage the growth of computer usage in the UK and ensure that

5280-500: The similarity of the Artistic license to other open-source software licenses, the ruling created a precedent that applied widely. Examples of free-software license / open-source licenses include Apache licenses , BSD licenses , GNU General Public Licenses , GNU Lesser General Public License , MIT License , Eclipse Public License and Mozilla Public License . Several gray areas exist within software regulation that have great impact on open-source software, such as if software

5360-488: The software "in any manner they see fit, without requiring that they pay the author(s) of the software a royalty or fee for engaging in the listed activities." Despite initially accepting it, Richard Stallman of the FSF now flatly opposes the term "Open Source" being applied to what they refer to as "free software". Although he agrees that the two terms describe "almost the same category of software", Stallman considers equating

5440-401: The software evolves. Linus's law states that given enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow. This means that if many users view the source code, they will eventually find all bugs and suggest how to fix them. Some users have advanced programming skills, and furthermore, each user's machine provides an additional testing environment. This new testing environment offers the ability to find and fix

5520-484: The software should be modular allowing for parallel development on independent components. Dynamic decision-making structure: There is a need for a decision-making structure, whether formal or informal, that makes strategic decisions depending on changing user requirements and other factors. Compare with extreme programming . The process of Open source development begins with a requirements elicitation where developers consider if they should add new features or if

5600-456: The software to implement the author's copyright rights without having to use the same license for distribution. Examples of this type of license include the BSD , MIT , and Apache licenses . Copyleft licenses are different in that they require recipients to use the same license for at least some parts of the distribution of their works. Strong copyleft licenses require all derivative works to use

5680-425: The software. Commercial pressures make traditional software developers pay more attention to customers' requirements than to security requirements, since such features are somewhat invisible to the customer. In open-source software development, tools are used to support the development of the product and the development process itself. Version control systems such as Centralized Version control system (CVCS) and

5760-597: The terms incorrect and misleading. Stallman also opposes the professed pragmatism of the Open Source Initiative , as he fears that the free software ideals of freedom and community are threatened by compromising on the FSF's idealistic standards for software freedom. The FSF considers free software to be a subset of open-source software, and Richard Stallman explained that DRM software, for example, can be developed as open source, despite that it does not give its users freedom (it restricts them), and thus does not qualify as free software. In his 1997 essay The Cathedral and

5840-514: The traditional model of development, which he called the cathedral model, development takes place in a centralized way. Roles are clearly defined. Roles include people dedicated to designing (the architects), people responsible for managing the project, and people responsible for implementation. Traditional software engineering follows the cathedral model. The bazaar model, however, is different. In this model, roles are not clearly defined. Some proposed characteristics of software developed using

5920-529: The uptake of IT particularly amongst SMEs including open source software and the Open Source Academy, and the development of an accreditation standard for IT services which became operational in 2009. There was a re-branding exercise in which NCC re-branded as Principia, a brand that was quickly dropped and the NCC brand resumed, a move that seemed to echo a similarly named and disastrous re-branding of

6000-437: The use and modification of the code. It is an explicit "feature" of open source that it puts very few restrictions on the use or distribution by any organization or user, in order to enable the rapid evolution of the software. According to Feller et al. (2005), the terms "free software" and "open-source software" should be applied to any "software products distributed under terms that allow users" to use, modify, and redistribute

6080-551: The use of independent associate consultants. The 'new' NCC Ltd was not a mutual not-for-profit organisation, but retained some of the member organisations of the liquidated company and initially it delivered some of the same products and services. By the end of 2011, the 'new' NCC Ltd once again faced financial difficulties and in 2012 it sought voluntary arrangements with its creditors to step away from its debts. The company had run up substantial losses, had not paid suppliers and had not filed accounts. Nearly all staff were laid off and

6160-415: Was appointed as Chief Executive but there was no improvement in the company's fortunes or significant change in strategic direction. One significant asset remaining, Filetab , was transferred in 2009 to a new company called NCC Filetab whose managing director was also managing director of NCC. With losses and the size of the pension fund deficit increasing, the company was unable to meet its obligations and

6240-404: Was much debate on whether to protect it as intellectual property under patent law , copyright law or establishing a unique regulation. Ultimately, copyright law became the standard with computer programs being considered a form of literary work, with some tweaks of unique regulation. Software is generally considered source code and object code , with both being protectable, though there

6320-473: Was named NCC Services Limited and later became NCC Group Limited of which the National Computing Centre held a 20% share. John Perkins became the new managing director of National Computing Centre, which remained a not-for-profit membership organisation. The NCC Services Ltd management team of Managing Director Chris Pearse and directors John Morris, Peter Bird, and Chris Sadler was strengthened in March 2000 by

6400-404: Was placed into administration by its management. In February 2010, NCC went into administration and ultimately liquidation. The few remaining assets and intellectual property rights were transferred in a "pre-pack" administration arrangement to Redholt Ltd a new private company, thus distancing the new company from the NCC creditors, which included a substantial pension fund liability resulting in

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