Richard Firth, CEO of MIP Holdings, examines the roots of open source software, free software and shared source software.
The debate over the merits of open source software is one of the hottest topics in the world today. In order to arrive at a definition for open source software, free software and shared source software, you need to look at the beginnings of the software industry as we know it.
In his book "Open Sources," Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project, recounts how in 1971, when he worked as a programmer at the MIT Artificial Intelligence (AI) Lab, the notion of "free software," although not yet coined as a term, was in practice.
"Whenever other universities or companies wanted to port and use a program, AI staff would gladly let them. Likewise they readily shared the source code of various programs, read it, changed it, or cannibalised parts of it to make a new program," Stallman says.
In 1982, the AI Lab bought a new Digital PDP-10 mainframe and its administrators elected to use Digital`s "non-free" timesharing system instead of the incompatible timesharing system on which Stallman had been working.
"It was the beginning of the era of proprietary software," says Stallman. "Later computers such as the VAX or the 68020, all had their own operating systems, but none of them were free software: you had to sign a non-disclosure agreement even to get an executable copy." Stallman interpreted this as a direct insult to the programmers` creed of sharing with and helping each other. He determined to recreate the sharing environment of the AI Lab.
Resigning from AI Lab in January 1984, he used his skills as an operating system developer to write a free operating system compatible with Unix so it would be portable and so that Unix users could easily switch to it.
In true hacker tradition, he used a recursive acronym to name his new operating system GNU, for "GNU`s Not Unix." He also founded the Free Software Foundation, dedicated to eliminating restrictions on copying, redistribution, understanding, and modification of computer programs by promoting the development and use of free software in all areas of computing.
The Free Software Foundation developed the GNU General Public Licence (GPL) to help its members protect their work from poachers seeking to privatise or close sections of their programs in proprietary software. It coined the description "Copyleft" to describe its inverted form of copyright which uses copyright law, but flips it over to serve the opposite of its usual purpose: instead of a means of privatising software, it becomes a means of keeping software free.
By December 2000, the Free Software Foundation was able to report 10 million users worldwide of GNU/Linux systems such as Debian GNU/Linux and Red Hat Linux. FSF had become the beacon of the entire free software movement and Stallman`s simple definition: "Think free speech, not free beer," was widely quoted as the standard.
Yet, while Stallman preached the religion of pure freedom, free thinkers in the movement saw a way of bringing the business world into the fold by bending the rules to fit a more moderate definition. The catalyst was Netscape`s early 1998 announcement that it planned to give away the source code of its browser, Netscape Navigator. Free software guru Eric Raymond had been invited by Netscape to help it plan the release and follow-on actions.
In February 1998, a group of Free Software Foundation community leaders met for a strategy session in Palo Alto, California, to discuss the implications of Netscape`s move. Those present included Chris Peterson (of the Foresight Institute), John "Maddog" Hall and Larry Augustin (both of Linux International), Sam Ockman (of the Silicon Valley Linux Users Group), Raymond and Todd Anderson, another free software guru.
The group felt the Netscape announcement had created a window of time within which free software advocates might finally get the corporate world to listen to what they had to teach about the superiority of an open development process. All agreed it was time to dump the confrontational attitude associated with "free software" and instead adopt the same pragmatic, business-case grounds that motivated Netscape.
Peterson proposed the name "open source" and the group began publicising the launch of the Open Source Initiative (OSI).
The OSI has been a huge success. Organisations such as Corel, Sun Microsystems, Adaptec, IBM, Oracle, Informix, SCO, Intel, Netscape, Hewlett-Packard, SGI, SAP, Apple and Amiga have been among the first to announce some form of "open source" activity. And now the business press is also taking notice.
The term "open source" has been adopted as the term of choice by business and the media, while the term "free software" has been in reciprocal decline. Not surprisingly, Microsoft has been feeling the heat: As early as August 1998, it planned a campaign against free and open source software, including Linux, that ignited a furore in the US media.
Eventually it presented its "shared software" philosophy, in answer to open source and to appease its business partners, which have raised questions about their future prospects in the light of the growth of the open source movement.
Understanding the differences between the Open Source Initiative, the Free Software Foundation and Microsoft`s shared source is key to understanding the future of open source software, and this will be the subject of my next TechForum.
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