45-642: The Open Definition (formerly Open Knowledge Definition ) is published by the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) to define openness for any type of data , content , or other knowledge . The definition's stated purpose is to "[make] precise the meaning of ‘open’ with respect to knowledge". Although it draws philosophically from both the open-source and free software movements , the Open Definition prioritizes license compatibility over copyleft principles requiring derivative works to be released under
90-538: A capital expenditure to an operating expenditure . The process of migration to SaaS and supporting it can also be a significant cost that must be accounted for. A challenge for SaaS providers is that demand is not known in advance. Their system must have enough slack to be able to handle all users without turning any away, but without paying for too many resources that will be unnecessary. If resources are static, they are guaranteed to be wasted during non-peak time. Sometimes cheaper off-peak rates are offered to balance
135-441: A web browser as a publicly available web application . This means that customers can access the application anywhere from any device without needing to install or update it. SaaS providers often try to minimize the difficulty of signing up for the product. Many capitalize on the service-oriented structure to respond to customer feedback and evolve their product quickly to meet demands. This can enable customers to believe in
180-498: A wide area network . SaaS architecture varies significantly from product to product. Nevertheless, most SaaS providers offer a multi-tenant architecture. With this model, a single version of the application, with a single configuration ( hardware , network , operating system ), is used for all customers ("tenants"). This means that the company does not need to support multiple versions and configurations. The architectural shift from each customer running their own version of
225-516: A European project created to share and organise data from seven countries, which ran from October 2013 to May 2016. Software as a service Software as a service ( SaaS / s æ s / ) is a cloud computing service model where the provider offers use of application software to a client and manages all needed physical and software resources. Unlike other software delivery models, it separates "the possession and ownership of software from its use". SaaS use began around 2000, and by 2023
270-480: A free license. The Open Definition contains requirements for content licenses to be considered open licenses , and the OKF maintains a list of compatible licenses. The definition also requires open access , machine readability , and the use of open formats . The OKF's Open Software Service Definition is derived from the Open Definition. The Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) is a United-Kingdom-based NGO that began work on
315-453: A free license—are allowed but not encouraged. The focus is more on license compatibility. Licenses that are noncommercial-only (prohibiting use of content for financial gain) or do not allow derivative works do not meet the Open Definition. Most of the community involved in open data supports the Open Definition over competing ones, such as that offered by the technology firm Gartner —which only covers use and redistribution. The value that
360-552: A higher price. Pooling all resources might make it possible to achieve higher efficiency, but an outage affects all customers so availability must be prioritized to a greater extent. Many systems use a combination of both approaches, pooling some resources and siloing others. Other companies group multiple tenants into pods and share resources between them. In the United States, constitutional search warrant laws do not protect all forms of SaaS dynamically stored data. The result
405-401: A per-tenant basis, rather than shared between all tenants. Routing functionality is necessary to direct tenant requests to the appropriate services. Some SaaS products do not share any resources between tenants—called siloing. Although this negates many of the efficiency benefits of SaaS, it makes it easier to migrate legacy software to SaaS and is sometimes offered as a premium offering at
450-400: A perpetual license for a certain version of the software. There are no specific software development practices that distinguish SaaS from other application development, although there is often a focus on frequent testing and releases. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is the most basic form of cloud computing , where infrastructure resources—such as physical computers—are not owned by
495-494: A variable number of users while providing the instant and continual availability that customers expect. Most end users consume only the SaaS product and do not have to worry about the technical complexity of the physical hardware and operating system. Because cloud resources can be accessed without any human interactions, SaaS customers are provided with the abstraction of limitless computing resources, while economy of scale drives down
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#1732844059604540-656: Is a global, non-profit network that promotes and shares information at no charge, including both content and data. It was founded by Rufus Pollock on 20 May 2004 in Cambridge , UK. It is incorporated in England and Wales as a private company limited by guarantee . Between May 2016 and May 2019 the organisation was named Open Knowledge International , but decided in May 2019 to return to Open Knowledge Foundation . The aims of Open Knowledge Foundation are: Renata Ávila Pinto joined as
585-475: Is commonly used to support this release schedule. Many SaaS developers use test-driven development , or otherwise emphasize frequent software testing , because of the need to ensure availability of their service and rapid deployment. Domain-driven design , in which business goals drive development, is popular because SaaS products must sell themselves to the customer by being useful. SaaS developers do not know in advance which devices customers will try to access
630-424: Is in charge of directing the system and covers functionality such as tenant onboarding, billing, and metrics, as well as the system used by the SaaS provider to configure, manage, and operate the service. Many SaaS products are offered at different levels of service for different prices, called tiering . This can also affect the architecture for both planes, although it is commonly placed in the control plane. Unlike
675-430: Is not allowed. The definition contains detailed criteria for open knowledge. In terms of open data , the definition covers the four main aspects: As such, the requirements of the Open Definition extend beyond open licensing by also requiring the elimination or reduction of technological barriers and pricing. The definition lists nine areas in which the license must be open and seven restrictions that may be placed on
720-465: Is responsible for software updates , including security patches , and for protecting the customers' data. SaaS systems inherently have a greater latency than software run on-premises due to the time for network packets to be delivered to the cloud facility. This can be prohibitive for some uses, such as time-sensitive industrial processes or warehousing. The rise of SaaS products is one factor leading many companies switched from budgeting for IT as
765-421: Is similar to David Wiley 's defunct Open Content License (which allows retaining, revising, remixing, reusing, and redistributing open content works), the Open Definition is more specific. It is concerned with freedom of access and reuse, rather than open governance . The definition's stated purpose is to "[make] precise the meaning of ‘open’ with respect to knowledge". The definition (version 2.1) contains
810-552: Is used by many of the world's governments to host open catalogues of data that their countries possess. The organisation tends to support its aims by hosting infrastructure for semi-independent projects to develop. This approach to organising was hinted as one of its earliest projects was a project management service called KnowledgeForge, which runs on the KForge platform. KnowledgeForge allows sectoral working groups to have space to manage projects related to open knowledge. More widely,
855-1120: The Git version control software . Some of the projects are listed below: Much of the collaboration with other related organisations occurs via events that the foundation hosts. Its premier event is the Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon), which has been held occasionally since 2007. Other events have been organised within the areas of data visualisation and free information network infrastructure. Annually, Open Knowledge Foundation supports International Open Data Day The Panton Principles (for Open Data in Science) in 2010 had large contributions from Open Knowledge people and in 2011 Jonathan Gray and Peter Murray-Rust successfully obtained funding from OSF for two fellowships, held by Sophie Kershaw and Ross Mounce. In 2013 OKF obtained sponsorship from CCIA for 3 fellowships, which were awarded to Rosemarie Graves, Sam Moore, and Peter Kraker. Open Knowledge Foundation also supports Apps for Europe, and D-CENT,
900-643: The UK government 's Public Sector Transparency Board . The Prototype Fund is a project of the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). It is a low-threshold funding program for Germany software developers who develop innovative open source software . The foundation places a strong interest in the use of open source technologies. Its software projects are hosted on GitHub , which utilises
945-559: The software service 's code be free and open-source software and any non-personal data be available under the Open Definition. Lawyer Andrew Katz criticizes this definition for not doing enough to guarantee transparency and prevent vendor lock-in , which occurs when a company makes it deliberately difficult for users to switch to another service. He suggests that adding requirements for a fully documented and freely available API and bulk data export could mitigate lock-in. Open Knowledge Foundation Open Knowledge Foundation ( OKF )
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#1732844059604990-447: The Open Definition provides as a standard is maintaining license compatibility and preventing the openness of data from being reduced by data sharing and reuse policies. In contrast to some other definitions of open knowledge, the Open Definition requires freedom of reuse as well as freedom of access. Thus, many open access scientific publications do not meet the Open Definition. The OKF's Open Software Service Definition requires that
1035-418: The abstraction of limitless computing resources, while economy of scale drives down the cost. SaaS architectures are typically multi-tenant ; usually they share resources between clients for efficiency, but sometimes they offer a siloed environment for an additional fee. Common SaaS revenue models include freemium , subscription , and usage-based fees. Unlike traditional software, it is rarely possible to buy
1080-559: The advantages include reduced upfront cost, increased flexibility, and lower overall cost compared to traditional software with perpetual software licenses . In some cases, the steep one-time cost demanded by sellers of traditional software were out of the reach of smaller businesses , but pay-per-use SaaS models makes the software affordable. Usage may be charged based on the number of users, transactions, amount of storage spaced used, or other metrics. Many buyers prefer pay-per-usage because they believe that they are relatively light users of
1125-616: The ambiguity surrounding the terminology of openness, as well as the Open Software Service Definition. It also supported the development of the Open Database License (ODbL). Outside of technology, Open Knowledge Foundation plays a role in advocating for openness broadly. This includes supporting the drafting of reports, facilitating consultation and producing guides. Rufus Pollock, one of Open Knowledge Foundation's founders, and current board secretary sits on
1170-459: The application plane, the services in the control plane are not designed for multitenancy. The application plane—which varies a great deal depending on the nature of the product—implements the core functionality of the SaaS product. Key design issues include separating different tenants so they cannot view or change other tenants' data or resources. Except for the simplest SaaS applications, some microservices and other resources are allocated on
1215-542: The areas of open access , open data , open content , open science , data visualization and digital rights . In 2015, it consisted of: As of 2018, Open Knowledge Foundation has 11 official chapters and 38 groups in different countries. In November 2022, the Open Knowledge Network was relaunched with two new projects. It also supports 19 working groups. Many of Open Knowledge Foundation's projects are technical in nature. Its most prominent project, CKAN ,
1260-469: The business can be placed in jeopardy. The ease of canceling a subscription and switching to a competitor leave customers with the leverage to get concessions from the seller. While recurring revenues can help the business and attract investors, the need for customer service skills in convincing the customer to renew their subscription is a challenge for providers switching to subscription from other revenue models. SaaS products are typically accessed via
1305-425: The content. The OKF maintains lists of compatible and incompatible licenses that can be applied to knowledge. As of 2017, it was recommending, in particular, six licenses. It would be possible to draft a bespoke license that met the definition, but this practice would likely lead to compatibility issues in the event of reuse. With the Open Definition, copyleft provisions—requiring reuse of content to be available under
1350-707: The continued improvement of the product and help the SaaS provider get customers from an established traditional software company that likely can offer a deeper feature set. Although on-premises software is often less secure than SaaS alternatives, security and privacy are among the main reasons cited by companies that do not adopt SaaS products. SaaS companies have to protect their publicly available offerings from abuse, including denial-of-service attacks and hacking. They often use technologies such as access control , authentication , and encryption to protect data confidentiality . Nevertheless, not all companies trust SaaS providers to keep sensitive data secured. The vendor
1395-439: The cost. Another key feature of cloud computing is that software updates can be rolled out and made available to all customers nearly instantaneously. In 2019, SaaS was estimated to make up the plurality, 43 percent, of the cloud computing market while IaaS and PaaS combined account for approximately 25 percent. In the 1960s, multitasking was invented, enabling mainframe computers to serve multiple users simultaneously. Over
The Open Definition - Misplaced Pages Continue
1440-480: The definition in 2006. According to the OKF, the Open Definition is "substantially derivative" of Bruce Perens ' Open Source Definition and intends to continue Richard Stallman ’s "ideals of software freedom ". The Open Source Definition, which is the most widely used criteria for determining if a license is open source , is itself is derived from the Debian Free Software Guidelines. Although it
1485-874: The first SaaS products to be mass-marketed to consumers. The market for SaaS grew rapidly throughout the early twenty-first century. Initially viewed as a technological innovation, SaaS has come to be perceived more as a business model. By 2023, SaaS had become the primary method that companies deliver applications. Popular consumer SaaS products include all social media websites, email services like Gmail and its associated Google Docs Editors , Skype , Dropbox , and entertainment products like Netflix and Spotify . Enterprise SaaS products include Salesforce 's customer relationship management (CRM) software, SAP Cloud Platform , and Oracle Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning . Some SaaS providers offer free services to consumers that are funded by means such as advertising , affiliate marketing , or selling consumer data. One of
1530-480: The following summary: "Knowledge is open if anyone is free to access, use, modify, and share it—subject, at most, to measures that preserve provenance and openness". The previous version (1.0) stated that "A piece of content or data is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and redistribute it — subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and/or share-alike ." The new version makes it clear that using digital rights management (DRM) technology to reduce openness
1575-403: The load and reduce waste. The expectation for continuous service is so high that outages in SaaS software are often reported in the news. There are not specific software development practices that differentiate SaaS from other application development. SaaS products are often released early and often to take advantage of the flexibility of the SaaS delivery model. Agile software development
1620-428: The most popular models for Internet start-ups and mobile apps is freemium , where the company charges for continued use or a higher level of service. Even if the user never upgrades to the paid version, it helps the company capture a higher market share and displace customers from a rival. However, the company's hosting cost increases with the number of users, regardless of whether it is successful at enticing them to use
1665-619: The new Chief Executive Officer of the Open Knowledge Foundation in October 2021. From February 2019 to August 2020, Catherine Stihler served as CEO. She left the Open Knowledge Foundation to become the CEO of Creative Commons . Between 2015–2017 Pavel Richter took on the role of CEO of Open Knowledge Foundation. Pavel was formerly Executive Director of Wikimedia Deutschland . The Open Knowledge Foundation Advisory Council includes people from
1710-463: The next decade, timesharing became the main business model for computing, and cluster computing enabled multiple computers to work together. Cloud computing emerged in the late 1990s with companies like Amazon (1994), Salesforce (1999), and Concur (1993) offering Internet -based applications on a pay-per-use basis. All of these focused on a single product to seize a high market share . Beginning with Gmail in 2004, email services were some of
1755-605: The paid version. Another common model is where the free version only provides demonstration ( crippleware ). Online marketplaces may charge a fee on transactions to cover the SaaS provider costs. It used to be more common for SaaS products to be offered for a one-time cost, but this model is declining in popularity. A few SaaS products have open source code, called open SaaS. This model can provide advantages such as reduced deployment cost, less vendor commitment, and more portable applications. The most common SaaS revenue models involve subscription and pay for usage. For customers,
1800-406: The product from—such as a desktop computer, tablet, or smartphone—and supporting a wide range of devices is often an important concern for the front-end development team. Progressive web applications allow some functionality to be available even if the device is offline. SaaS applications predominantly offer integration protocols and application programming interfaces (APIs) that operate over
1845-522: The project infrastructure includes both technical and face-to-face aspects. The organisation hosts several dozen mailing lists for virtual discussion, utilises IRC for real-time communications and also hosts events. Open Knowledge Foundation is an active partner with organisations working in similar areas, such as open educational resources. Open Knowledge Foundation has produced the Open Knowledge Definition , an attempt to clarify some of
The Open Definition - Misplaced Pages Continue
1890-496: The software on their own hardware affects many aspects of the application's design and security features. In a multi-tenant architecture, many resources can be used by different tenants or shared between multiple tenants. The structure of a typical SaaS application can be separated into application and control planes. SaaS products differ in how these planes are separated, which might be closely integrated or loosely coupled in an event- or message-driven model. The control plane
1935-402: The software, and the seller benefits by reaching occasional users who would otherwise not buy the software. However, it can cause revenue uncertainty for the seller and increases the overhead for billing . The subscription model of SaaS offers a continuing and renewable revenue stream to the provider, although vulnerable to cancellation. If a significant number are cancelled, the viability of
1980-567: The user but instead leased from a cloud provider. As a result, infrastructure resources can be increased rapidly, instead of waiting weeks for computers to ship and set up. IaaS requires time and expertise to make use of the infrastructure in the form of operating systems and applications . Platform as a service (PaaS) includes the operating system and middleware , but not the applications. SaaS providers typically use PaaS or IaaS services to run their applications. Without IaaS, it would be extremely difficult to make an SaaS product scalable for
2025-569: Was the main form of software application deployment. SaaS is usually accessed via a web application . Unlike most self-hosted software products, only one version of the software exists and only one operating system and configuration is supported. SaaS products typically run on rented infrastructure as a service (IaaS) or platform as a service (PaaS) systems including hardware and sometimes operating systems and middleware , to accommodate rapid increases in usage while providing instant and continuous availability to customers. SaaS customers have
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