I haven't written a blog entry for a while, so I thought I'd better write one about something.  But what can I write about?  Hmmm.  I've been thinking a lot about long-term issues in the sector, and I've come to the conclusion that it would be good for the UK sector to have a network similar to that of Circuit Riders but for open source software developers.  It seems that lots of organisations still feel that professional software development is only possible through commercial software companies and do not realise the benefits of open source software development:

• Existing software may be more easily tailored since there are usually no licencing issues for components, reducing overall development costs
• There is no lock-in to a specific software company to evolve software in the future
• The process of software development is completely transparent and open to discussion at all levels (e.g. collaborating organisations may discuss functionality; collaborating developers may discuss implementation details, bugs, security issues, etc).
• Open source developers take pride in constantly improving their software not just externally but internally, since it is actually the internal code that they publish, a bit like standing naked in front of the world.  This means that security flaws are often picked up very quickly by other developers, since nothing in the developer's code can go unscrutinised by the public.