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Our Blogs Open Sauce linux.conf.au: The Beeb and the penguin
Our Blogs Open Sauce linux.conf.au: The Beeb and the penguin | linux.conf.au: The Beeb and the penguin |
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| by Sam Varghese | |
| Sunday, 27 January 2008 | |
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Page 2 of 6 Like thousands of software engineers around the world, Cunningham telecommutes to his office in the UK everyday. FOSS is important to organisations of this kind but cost isn't the only factor. "The other factors are the functionality that we've produced: it's unique because we've concentrated on free software. That's allowed us to put together a lot of the building blocks that were out there, such as the ffmpeg and other libraries. And (we've) put together something - after we've written a bit more code it has a lot more functionality than commercial systems which are very expensive. So, for example, there was a quote given to a production for using completely file-based digital workflow. It was something like 300,000 pounds, which is $A1 million." If FOSS isn't used, then both the hardware and software tend to be proprietary. "In the broadcast area you often get - instead of commodity PCs and equipment, you'll get the bespoke equipment, such as proprietary networks, which, rather than using ethernet, they'll use their own protocol over fibre. And that way, when you buy that system, you have to buy their switch. you have to buy their software, you have to buy their hardware, you have to buy their storage as well, which is a real sticking point for many companies using it." Cunningham says the BBC has concentrated on everything being commodity stuff. "We use ethernet, we use PCs off the shelf, so the only thing special is the software but that itself is made of a lot of free software as well as the software that we've written and released." |
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