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Frank Hayes

Frankly Blogging

No halo over open source

3 comments

IT TOPICS:Development, Open Source, Software

Has open source lost its halo, as Eric Lai's Computerworld article suggests? Is open-source still a grassroots social movement made up of idealistic underdogs trying to revolutionize an amoral industry?

Or is that a straw-man argument cooked up for a slow news day?

Maybe Eric Lai just has a vocabulary problem.

After all, "open source" is a term that was coined nine years ago specifically as an alternative to "free software," which is what Richard Stallman has called his software-capitalism-is-bad philosophy since 1985.

The soon-to-be-called-open-source crowd was looking for a name to describe something like Mozilla. In early 1998, Netscape had just announced it was releasing its browser source code. Nobody had any illusions that this was pure generosity on Netscape's part. Netscape Navigator had been flattened by the Microsoft's bundled-with-Windows Internet Explorer, and launching the Mozilla Project was a crass commercial attempt to use a free-software model to somehow support Netscape's proprietary Web-server software business.

So at a February 1998 meeting, a group met in Palo Alto and decided to push "open source" as alternative term to "free software" -- a name to indicate business-case pragmatism instead of ideological purity. That group included Christine Peterson (who suggested the term), Todd Anderson, Larry Augustin, John "maddog" Hall, Sam Ockman and Eric S. Raymond.

There aren't a lot of halos hanging over that group. At least two of its members became instant millionnaires when VA Software went public, so it's a little tough to argue they've got anything against capitalism -- or that they're more interested in ideological purity than making a buck from software.

And -- no surprise -- lots of money has been invested in and made from open source over the past nine years, by big companies and small, and without any special patina of morality or idealism. Actually, money was being made from "free software" before 1998 too. There just wasn't a clear name for using it for business advantage.

"Free software" has plenty of ideological baggage. "Open source" just isn't interested in that particular ivory tower.

It's worth getting that vocabulary right.

At least Eric Lai's article isn't as context-free as Justin Fox's Time essay last week. Fox seems to believe that the only two people thinking about open source are Yochai Benkler, a Yale law professor in love with Russian anarchism, and Nicholas "IT Doesn't Matter" Carr.

That's enough ivory to outshine any vocabulary mistake.

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Sigh - it is so frustrating

Submitted by Anonymous on February 20, 2007 - 1:38 P.M.

Sigh - it is so frustrating to continue to see people misquote software history.

Before the free software foundation was formed, many of us were written software whose source was freely passed around. Eventually, in those old days, journalists got around to calling it public domain software.

Note that I'm not talking about people stealing software. I'm talking about the mid-70s (and earlier), where people were writing code for Apple IIs, Comodore PETs, Radio Shack TRS-80, as well as the bigger machines, like PDP-8s, etc.

There was an entire industry back then of magazines and newsletters which published BASIC and assembler (and, later, Pascal) source code, which people laboriously retyped into their computers to get the latest game, etc. There were also bulletin boards (the predecessors to web forums), where people writing code would discuss the problems, and look for solutions. Even Compuserve (before it was Compuserve...) had online forums where people could ask questions and discuss code. And of course, USENET (and the unix community) were writing programs and posting the source code for anyone who wanting them.

And for that matter, this kind of thing continues to go on, in many cases having NOTHING to do with philosophical agendas.
Check out http://wiki.tcl.tk/ , where people contribute programs, solutions to problems, etc. on a regular basis - for no other reason other than helping others (and the occasional kick out of being recognized).

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You're closer than the Eric

Submitted by Anonymous on February 20, 2007 - 12:43 P.M.

You're closer than the Eric Lai but you're view on the orign of "Open Source" is also inacurate.

Neither Free Software or Open Source were EVER against makeing money. What actually happend was that Free Software people like RMS believed that Freedom was the important thing.

Open Source people are more pragmatic about this, they believe the development method was the important thing, not because of freedom but because _it produced better code_

True Open Source was more buissness friendly, the ideology was offputting to buisness as was the word "free". And this was a motive too but you're article didn't mention the first motive.

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Frank- glad to see you write

Submitted by alan shimel on February 20, 2007 - 8:28 A.M.

Frank- glad to see you write to follow up on this. I think open source purists have a naive take on software business. Today's open source companies are taking care of the community, while still driving successful commercial ventures. I have written more on this at my blog here

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