Principles into Practices

Jon Reades - j.reades@ucl.ac.uk

1st October 2025

Principles

Foundations was designed around these principles:

• Software and data should be free (as far as practicable).
• Software and data should be open (as far as practicable).
• Software should run on all platforms (you get the idea).
• Software and data should reflect what you will encounter in the ‘real world’.

What is Open Source?

Generally, open source refers to a computer program in which the source code is available to the general public for usage, modification from its original design, and publication of their version (fork) back to the community.

Source: Wikipedia

How is Open Source Helpful?

1. If you can think of it, someone has probably built it.
2. Given enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow.¹
3. ‘Free as in speech’ (always).
4. ‘Free as in beer’ (often).²

All of the tools used this week are open source and free.

1. By this I mean that, if you use Microsoft to do everything then you are dependent on their tools, even when they aren’t appropriate. There are many small, open source applications that do really useful but narrow things.
2. When you have many people involved and they are working in an open environment then issues are often spotted spotted and solved more quickly. While this claim is open to some debate, there’s certainly no evidence that closed source code is any better than open source.
3. A more interesting claim has to do with the potential for interested people to get involved in making code better – for instance, for some languages there may be very few translators available, leading private companies to simply ignore localisation; whereas for open source you can contribute the translation yourself! Or if you really think something isn’t working the way it should then you can offer up a solution that will make it better and, if the people running the project don’t agree, you can still do it and launch your own, competing project.
4. Finally, many (though by no means all) open source projects are also free as free food, beer, or rides. If you have been taught to use ESRI’s ArcGIS or Microsoft Excel this seems crazy: how can you have free competition to those? Well, why not give QGIS and LibreOffice a try!

1. Also known as Linus’ law via Eric Raymond’s The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

2. Or chai, thalis, etc.

What is Open Data

Open data is data that anyone can access, use and share. Governments, businesses and individuals can use open data to bring about social, economic and environmental benefits.

Source: data.europa.eu

FAIR Play

Wilkinson et al. (2016) set out the following principles:

• Findable: data and metadata should be easy to find for computers and humans.
• Accessible: it should be clear how the data found can be accessed.
• Interoperable: data should work for range of analyses, storage, and processing needs.¹
• Reusable: metadata and data should be well-described so they can be used/combined easily.

There are strict and loose versions of these principles. Many governments truggle with the ‘R’ part because of licensing restrictions.

1. Shape files fail this test.

How is Open Data Helpful?

According to Open Data Institute (n.d.) (amongst others):

1. Promotes transparency and accountability in government and services.
2. Promotes efficiency and service delivery.
3. Promotes innovation and economic growth.
4. Empowers citizens.
5. Reduces costs.

Open data is valuable!

1. This can be scary for many, especially those in government; however, making data open can help to debunk conspiracies and demonstrate that government is not corrupt! It can also help government to spot where there are problems.
2. We get increased efficiency and better service delivery if governments can look across departments or states to compare performance or enable others to turn up opportunities for improvement.
3. Companies can innovate off of government data: Land Registry and EPC data in the UK, for instance, give companies certainty that they won’t have to pay for this data and can build commercial products using it. The biggest gain here is in making government mapping data available.
4. There’s a strong assumption here that citizens are data literate, which I think doesn’t always hold; however, crime mapping, bus route mapping, and so on can help citizens to advocate for resources and support.
5. Governments can also save by not having to constantly respond to FOI requests or rebut other access requests from citizens and companies.

What is Open Code?

A term that I just came up with to distinguish it from open source software. Here used in the sense of sharing ‘your workings’ in teaching and/or research.

How is Open Code Helpful?

1. Allow others to build on your work (reuse, collaboration).
2. Allow others to learn from your work (speed, bug detection).
3. A way to attract contributors to your project (visibility, collaboration).
4. A mechanism for perpetuating a potlatch ecosystem (community building, recognition, visibility).¹

There are many ways to share code, including contributing questions and answers to public fora like Stack Overflow,

1. Where ‘knowledge is power’, not ‘power is right’.

Thank You

References

Open Data Institute. n.d. “SOD0009 - Evidence on Statistics and Open Data.” https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/45220/pdf/.

Wilkinson, Mark D., Michel Dumontier, IJsbrand Jan Aalbersberg, Gabrielle Appleton, Myles Axton, Arie Baak, Niklas Blomberg, et al. 2016. “The FAIR Guiding Principles for Scientific Data Management and Stewardship.” Scientific Data 3 (1):160018. https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18.