“The development of the kernel has changed, and Linux is just getting better and better. However, with a community as large and fractured as the Linux community, it can sometimes be hard to get a big picture overview of where Linux is going: what’s happening with kernel version 2.6? Will there be a version 3.0? What has Linus been up to lately? What does he get up to in his spare time?
I had the opportunity to chat with the original creator of the Linux kernel, Linus Torvalds, in a number of email exchanges.”
In the interview, Torvalds writes:
“I dislike the frothing-at-the-mouth ideology (to me, ideology should be something personal, not something you push on other people) and I think it’s much more interesting to see how Open Source actually generates a better process for doing complex technology, than push the ‘freedom’ angle and push an ideology.”
The community is essentially divided between this issue: is corporate involvement good for open source projects like Linux? One side of the community believes that corporate involvement fundamentally violates the basic principles of free software; these people are called “frothing-at-the-mouth” ideologues. The other extreme of the community believes open source is just an another development model that should ultimately be used for the private sector. I think most members of the community are somewhere in between: we appreciate the open source model and wish to protect its tenets while welcoming companies that spend money to improve open source projects.
There is no clear-cut evidence that corporate involvement is bad for Linux. So I feel the future can go in two ways:
1) Private influence impedes proper development of Linux. The community will eventually be split along the idealogical line stated above.
2) Private influence, as it has been so far, continues to improve Linux. The “frothing-at-the-mouth” ideologues cannot prove the validity of their claims, and thus the question stated above is resolved.
>One side of the community believes that corporate involvement fundamentally violates the basic principles of free software; these people are called “frothing-at-the-mouth” ideologues. The other extreme of the community believes open source is just an another development model that should ultimately be used for the private sector.
I don’t know about which “sides of the community” you are talking. Because you are using the two terms “Free Software” and “Open Source” it seems like you mean those two sides.
I also agree that there are differences but i can’t see the differences you describe.
The Free Software “side” is quite happy about every company which develop, improve or sell Free Software.
And as far as I know the Open Source side doesn’t restrict them self only to the private sector.
Edited 2007-08-22 19:36
Most FLOSS users do not belong to one camp or the other. They relish the idea of a completely free operating system, but realize that sometimes compromises must be struck. Only those standing outside the community or those wishing to instill a sense of divisiveness on the hope that repeating the same nonsense ad-infinitum will really divide us in the future are talking about open source and free software as if they were some hugely different animals.
Hell, even RMS has consistently said that running SOME free software on Windows is better than running none at all. Baby steps, training wheels and all of that.
Those of us that have been around for a long time have worked to make sure the FLOSS community is a force that is increasingly heard. Precisely at a time when we are going from strength to strength, it is nothing but a waste of time to engage in endless and pointless debates about whether we are in it because we have found a superior software development methodology or because we believe that sharing ideas is a better way to build a healthier society.
Guess what, it’s both and I’ll have some ice-cream with that cake.
Edited 2007-08-22 20:36
You stated:
I stated:
I believe you proved my point.
actually, its alot more structured then you described. There is a real lack of understanding in the community of the difference between Free and Open source software. All Free software is open, but not all Open software is Free. To really understand the difference, a bit of a history lesson is in order.
Basically, it goes like this. Way back in the day when software began to get commercialized, there was an academic named Richard Stallman, who believed that restricting access to what was essentially an academic pursuit was unethical. He decided he was going to do something about it, and founded the Free Software Foundation as a non-profit organization. The purpose of the FSF was to promote Stallmans’ views on the ethical nature of software, and attracted a few followers on campuses, but made next to no headway outside of the academic setting. As virtually everything became commercial, the FSF decided to make their own operating system that was completely Free from the ground up, first of all for their own use, secondly as a vehicle to promote their philosophy. This was named GNU, and while they did manage to accomplish a few big things (GCC, Emacs), they were never able to get their kernel to the point of even being usable, let alone fully functional.
While the FSF were busy doing their thing, a young guy called Linus decided to roll his own kernel for the fun of it. He banged out a really basic, poorly coded development version, and was well on his way to complete obscurity when he decided he was going to get other enthusiasts in on it. He posted his source code on some newsgroups, and asked people for help. Very quickly, Linux started developing a community, and began improving exponentially. Linus had a natural knack of dealing with the kind of people who would consider hacking on a kernel to be fun, and managed to manage this community of enthusiasts from all over the world quite efficiently. Very soon, he had a usable kernel. But the kernel, while being the most complex part, is not the only thing you need to run an operating system. Since Linus had no real desire to write high level code, he went looking for something he could put his kernel on.
It was pretty much a match made in heaven. GNU, with no Kernel, and Linux, with no userland. Linus looked over the GPL, and while he didn’t buy into the philosophy behind it, liked the whole idea of having it be open to everyone who wants to play fair. With a usable userland around, Linux seriously started picking up steam, and began to come onto the radar of all the old UNIX hackers who never switched to apple or windows. Pretty soon, all sorts of people were working on various projects to improve on what was becoming not only a real decent UNIX, but also an incredably fun one to be a part of.
The defining moment was when one hacker with an interest in sociology, Eric Raymond, decided to start a project called fetchmail. He was fascinated by the community development that was going on, and really analyzed what was going on while he took his project from the start to being a category killer. Eventually, he wrote a paper on it called the Cathedral and the Bazaar, which basically layed out in detail the rules and style of management that Linus had inadvertently created when he brought help in to develop Linux. CatB was huge, as it became a virtual manual for creating a successful community around your project.
The final step was when Netscape contacted Eric and told him they wanted to move their development into more Bazaar style, and wanted his help. In the early brainstorming sessions with what was to become Mozilla, the idea of branding this development methodology came up, and Open Source was the name they came up with. Virtually overnight, all kinds of projects that had been calling themselves Free Software, started to identify themselves as Open Source.
Now, Stallman was pissed. Not only was Linux the resounding success he had always hoped GNU to be, but people were using his code, but not his ideology. Linus has no time for religion when it comes to technology, and Eric had created a methodology with none of the moral points that were so close to Stallmans heart. So the FSF went on a crusade to start to win the hearts and minds of the community back from the open source camp. This initiative is where the GNU/Linux, and FOSS (Free/Open Source Software) monikers came from.
For the most part, people use the two words interchangably, and while they will buy in somewhat to the five freedoms and all that, when you really explain the free software philosophy to them, they will side more with the practical then the religious side of things.
As it stands, the FSF is still pretty much ignored by the people who matter in the Linux community. Stallman believes that intellectual property is morally wrong, and has even gone so far as to say that people should pirate commercial software, since businesses should not get compensation for their ill gotten gains. Corporate involvement and the Free Software religion really do not mix, as they view the world in completely different ways. The open source methodology however, mixes wonderfully with corporate involvement, to the point where massive pillers of the industry like IBM, SUN, Novell, and Apple are all following the principals Eric Raymond published in his CatB papers.
Anyways, sorry for the long post, but I wanted to hit all the main points so I can link to this in future threads. Getting tired of writing out bits of it all the time. As you can probably tell, I am a huge fan of open source, but have very little time for the FSF. I believe that with so many things going on in the world, to devote your life to something as trivial as this is kind of sick. Not only that, but saying that software has freedoms just like people demeans the whole idea of what freedom is.
>Way back in the day when software began to get commercialized,
It doesn’t become commercialized, it become proprietary.
Stallman has nothing against commercial software.
>and attracted a few followers on campuses, but made next to no headway outside of the academic setting.
In the 80s GNU was really famous, especially in the proprietary Unix world. Almost everyone installed this great and free GNU software on top of their proprietary Unix.
>they were never able to get their kernel to the point of even being usable, let alone fully functional.
They choosed a far more complex architecture for their kernel so that Linux was faster ready to use. With Linux beeing ready to use there was no need for another kernel so that the GNU kernel become the lowest possible priority and the GNU project focused on other missing parts.
>Eventually, he wrote a paper on it called the Cathedral and the Bazaar, which basically layed out in detail the rules and style of management that Linus had inadvertently created when he brought help in to develop Linux.
It was not only Linux, other projects used the same development strategy. It is also interesting to know that the first releases of this paper spoke about Free Software. Also Netscape was inspired by a version of this paper which spoke about Free Software.
>Virtually overnight, all kinds of projects that had been calling themselves Free Software, started to identify themselves as Open Source.
I can’t see that. The largest part of the base system comes from GNU and all this projects call themselves as Free Software and not as Open Source. Also other important projects like KDE and many more call themselves Free Software.
>For the most part, people use the two words interchangably, and while they will buy in somewhat to the five freedoms and all that,
its 4 freedoms!
>when you really explain the free software philosophy to them, they will side more with the practical then the religious side of things.
I have made a different experience. Most people don’t care about how you develop software but they understand the role of computers and software in today’s world and the ethical questions which arise out of them.
>As it stands, the FSF is still pretty much ignored by the people who matter in the Linux community. [..] The open source methodology however, mixes wonderfully with corporate involvement, to the point where massive pillers of the industry like IBM, SUN, Novell, and Apple are all following the principals Eric Raymond published in his CatB papers.
I disagree. A lot of the important projects are GNU projects. And other projects like KDE also federalize themselves with the FSF. The same is true for companies. Just look at the list of supporters of FSF and the other Free Software Foundations there you will find names like Google, HP, IBM, Nokia, Intel, JBoss, Nec, Cisco, Samsung, MySQL, Sun,…
>Not only that, but saying that software has freedoms just like people demeans the whole idea of what freedom is.
Not the software should have freedom. But people should have freedom who depend more and more on computers and software to participate in the digital society/culture, to learn, to work, to communicate, etc. Also government and economy should have freedom by controlling their IT infrastructure. That’s the important point!
PS: Because you said that Free Software and the FSF is pretty much ignored by important people in the GNU/Linux world I can’t resist in citing a important person of the Linux (the kernel) world, Alan Cox (said to Eric Raymond): “That would be because we believe in Free Software and doing the right thing (a practice you appear to have given up on). Maybe it is time the term ‘open source’ also did the decent thing and died out with you.”
Edited 2007-08-22 21:41
Thanks for the edits. I really wrote the whole thing off the top of my head, so some parts weren’t completely accurate.
You are right, although a bit pedantic. I was describing the process that took place, which was commerce taking over what had before that been almost entirely academic.
The thing is, by the 80s, UNIX geeks were already a breed apart. I lumped them in with the academic crowd there which isn’t accurate. The point I was trying to make is that while the FSF were approaching businesses and institutions, they were pretty much getting laughed out the of the building. But you are right, GNU did have a following, especially emacs which was the de-facto coding tool on unix environments for a very long time.
IMHO, this is a cop-out. HURD itself has been in development for almost 20 years now with no usable version in sight, and it was the second try for a GNU kernel. While a micro-kernel is more difficult then a monolithic one, it isnt THAT much more difficult.
If read all the CatB stuff (I forget exactly which essay he talks about it), ESR says that the open source methodology was started in linux, and others who used it successfully were unconsciously copying things that Linus did. What happened with CatB is that it moved from the unconscious to the conscious. If you really want me to find the exact quote I will, but I am basing that statement on what he wrote.
KDE calls itself Free NOW, but that is because of all the Qt drama when it started. GNOME was specifically started as a Free alternative to KDE, and had strong times to GNU. And of course GNU is free, it is the OS made by the FSF. What I am referring to is what ESR said when he was describing the whole birth of Mozilla thing. He said a few weeks after the term Open Source hit the wild, so web searching showed far more adoption then he had anticipated. I was into mucking with Apples back then, so I can’t say from personal experience.
Now there’s some egg on my face 😉 Like I said, I wrote that off the top of my head, and it has been a real long time since I was reading through the FSF materials.
Well, quite honestly, most people don’t care about either, and use linux because it is a cool way to “stick it to the man”, and is free as in beer. These people are more or less leeches, but they make up a nice percentage of the user base. Typically, when someone around me is using Free and Open interchangeably, I try to briefly describe the difference between philosophy and methodology. The people I run into lean more towards the practical, but it could be where I live and who I talk to.
You see, I didn’t even know that.
I will point out though that while they may say they support the FSF, they do not follow their principals. Most of those companies do not completely Free all their assets, which is what the FSF says is right. Most of what you listed release source code where it makes sense, and keep the “crown jewels” closed, as ESR describes in The Magic Cauldron. That and while I have been in business meetings where people are discussing open source, the only context I have ever heard FSF morality preached to me is in forums like these (or LUGs, which is sort of the same thing)
It amounts to the same thing, a corruption of the word Freedom. Freedom for a guy to hack on a program in his basement is not the same thing as the charter of human rights. It doesn’t even remotely come close.
There is a huge difference for a government to say “we demand open formats and protocols for our infrastructure so we will not be reliant on a single business” to saying all source code not given away is wrong. Free software works for stuff like transport protocols or server software, but it falls apart for real commercial applications. The vast majority of advancements in digital image creation and manipulation have been done by adobe, which would simply not exist in a Free Software world. Same thing with sound, DAWs would be at an even lower level then they are in Linux if it weren’t for proprietary software. Games would be at the zork level.
What I am saying is that when you bring morality into what is essentially a discussion about practical issues, you end up painting everything black or white. Like it or not, corporate innovation deals with things that academic innovation would never really consider a priority, and by removing commercial incentive, you are basically killing the software industry. And while there is a difference between commercial and free, removing any ability for a company to protect their investment in R&D makes it amount to virtually the same thing. The only way for it to be worthwhile is for software to be used to sell something else, which still means there is no software industry.
>You are right, although a bit pedantic. I was describing the process that took place, which was commerce taking over what had before that been almost entirely academic.
You made the same mistake again. Stallman had no problem with “commerce taking over what had before that been almost entirely academic” he had a problem with making software proprietary.
That’s not pedantic, that’s an important difference.
Being Free Software or proprietary software is a question of licensing. Being commercial is a question of development environment.
Free Software can be commercial (RedHat, Sun, IBM,…) and non commercial (Debian, KDE,…). Proprietary software can be commercial (Windows, MacOS,..) and non-commercial (all the freeware).
Stallman has something against proprietary software whether it is commercial or non-commercial and he accept all Free Software whether it is commercial or non-commercial.
>HURD itself has been in development for almost 20 years now with no usable version in sight, and it was the second try for a GNU kernel. While a micro-kernel is more difficult then a monolithic one, it isnt THAT much more difficult.
But it has a low priority since about 15 years because a lot of good free kernel already exists.
That’s one of the advantages of Free Software, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel again and again. If you have a wheel use it and go on doing something different.
>KDE calls itself Free NOW, but that is because of all the Qt drama when it started.
During the “Qt drama” it was neither complete Free Software nor complete Open Source so it make no sense to talk about this time.
>Well, quite honestly, most people don’t care about either, and use linux because it is a cool way to “stick it to the man”, and is free as in beer.
I talk a lot to computer users most of them don’t use GNU/Linux at all. And while they don’t care about any development strategy they understand quite well the dependency of society, economy and government on software and the question who should have control over this cultural technique (fyi it was Bill Gates who called software a cultural technique and he is right!)
>I will point out though that while they may say they support the FSF, they do not follow their principals. Most of those companies do not completely Free all their assets, which is what the FSF says is right.
They don’t do it because their main interest is in making the most money. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t move into the right direction (e.g. look at sun, it is just great to see them moving). Also if they would agree to your rating of the FSF they wouldn’t support them.
>It amounts to the same thing, a corruption of the word Freedom. Freedom for a guy to hack on a program in his basement is not the same thing as the charter of human rights.
But the freedom to participate equally in humans (digital) culture, the freedom to learn, study and work. To have control over your daily life/business which depends more and more on software. etc.
But we disagree completely on this topic and i have no interest in getting into this topic again and again. At least in the form of comments on a news portal.
>Like it or not, corporate innovation deals with things that academic innovation would never really consider a priority, and by removing commercial incentive, you are basically killing the software industry.
You make again the mistake creating the “commercial vs. academic” argument which is neither my argument nor the argument of Stallman or the FSF.
Software is needed everywhere and as long as software is needed we have customers and as long as we have customers you will find someone who take the job. Free Software could even boost the software industry because we wouldn’t have a market with few large monopolies but a real free market.
PS: It is also interesting to read what Bruce Perens (one of the founder of the Open Source term and the OSI) said 1 year after starting the “Open Source” term: http://groups.google.de/group/muc.lists.debian.user/msg/c8001c56bdf…
Edited 2007-08-22 23:06
I don’t think FSF is saying that software has freedoms. It’s about users / us / people freedom. Freedom to use, modify and share (or sell) softwares.
“Not only that, but saying that software has freedoms just like people demeans the whole idea of what freedom is.”
Thank you for your historical notes. I very much appreciate them. However I disagree with your assumption that free software is trivial compared to other issues facing the world. Initially I agreed with you, but here is a counter-example:
A friend has been working on a program that does protein interaction and gene expression analysis to determine the characteristics of breast cancer. This program requires computational statistics. Matlab provided the required routines to do the calculations, but the program needs to be able to run on computers without Matlab installed. The friend looked at the source code of R, figured out how the calculations were done, and included them in her program.
In this case, free AND open source software benefited science; perhaps in the future it might improve the lives of others. That’s a clear-cut example.
EDIT: I improved the explanation of the example.
Edited 2007-08-23 03:43
Basically, it goes like this. Way back in the day when software began to get commercialized, there was an academic named Richard Stallman, who believed…
While the FSF were busy doing their thing, a young guy called Linus…
It was pretty much a match made in heaven…
Now, Stallman was pissed. Not only was Linux the resounding success he had always hoped GNU to be…
As it stands, the FSF is still pretty much ignored by the people who matter in the Linux community…
Nice “War of the Roses” narrative. It evokes the journalistic integrity of Wolf Blitzer on The Situation Room. You grab onto this Stallman/Linus antagonistic framework and use it to pry apart a diverse collective that is working toward the same goals for different reasons.
I apologize for the upcoming Americanisms, but it’s a useful analogy. Think of the social freedom crowd as the progressive Democrats, the alliance of big business and the economic freedom crowd as the conservative Republicans, and the small group of pro-business pundits of the ESR ilk as the DLC and their bluedogs.
Ultimately, we’re all after the same thing: getting the products and services we need at a price we can afford. Both sides appreciate the efficiency of the private sector in making this happen. But while the conservatives are willing to let business operate as they wish, progressives favor modest regulations to prevent abuses.
What separates progressives from conservatives is their belief that a consolidation of power and wealth in the business class is threatening freedom. The conservatives believe that business success will ultimately trickle down to their employees. Normally, the shear size of the working class would allow them to exert influence over the tiny business elite.
However, the progressive majority in the working class has been tricked by the DLC into supporting bluedogs. These are essentially conservatives that campaign as Democrats. They tell people that Democrats don’t stand a chance unless they let business get whatever they want. Then they throw in some socially-oriented wedge issue that has little to do with anything.
The result is that a Democratic majority ends up rubber-stamping conservative policy. Or more generally, the progressive world-view is marginalized and vastly underrepresented.
Progressives think something is wrong when the top 1% has more money than the bottom 95% while the highest tax bracket has dropped from 87% to 28% in the past 20 years and the White House spokesperson insists that this “isn’t a very interesting story.” New York City has the same distribution of wealth as Namibia, the most unequal nation in the entire world. That’s an interesting story.
Obviously where the analogy falls apart is the lack of any major inequality in the FOSS ecosystem. That is because while the progressive FSF agenda is marginalized and often ridiculed, it is not underrepresented by any means. The GPL is a dominant license in the FOSS world. We observe that while commercial contributors would probably rather use a less restrictive license if they could, they are still profiting from their participation in the Linux community.
Equality is working. Business is good, and users are enjoying unparalleled freedom. Yet people like ESR still stress the fact that business is not in it for freedom. Of course they’re not! They’re in it for profit, and it’s working. We don’t need to pander to business any more than we do now. They get profit, we get freedom, and the developers get participation. We’re working toward the same goals for different reasons.
So before you go bashing the FSF because business isn’t buying the freedom aspect of the GPL, consider the balance that the GPL has brought to the greater FOSS community. Whether you’re in it for profit, freedom, or collaboration, the GPL delivers. It’s not pro-business. It’s a compromise that business can live with. It favors users because there’s way more of us than there are of them, and I think that’s fair.
If only we could have the same level of balance in politics. I don’t care if I’m ridiculed for my beliefs. I just think that ordinary people should get their way more often then not because there’s more of us. We don’t need to let big business walk all over us while they smugly promise to trickle down whatever they choose not to keep for themselves. They’ll survive a little progressive regulation, and maybe we can once again feel as free as our leaders insist we are.
Well, you are right in that I did not represent middle ground too well in my story, but like it or not, a world ruled by geeks is a world run by big egos and touchy personalities. More often then not, the FOSS world erupts in what can only be described as High Drama. Personally, I wouldn’t have it any other way, as not only is it better then any soap opera, but more often then not people simply do not stand for something they don’t believe is right, and when the dust settles, you end up with two alternatives competing on technical merit.
There are a great many people who fall into your analogy, but Linus and RMS are not two of them. RMS has repeatedly called Linus “Just an engineer”, and Linus’ remarks in this interview about “Frothing at the mouth ideologues” are fairly common. While both camps work together, there is still frustration on both sides.
I am sorry if I came off “pro-business”, because I really love both the ideas behind open source, and what has already been accomplished. I am only pro-business in that I believe that abolishing intellectual property in the software industry, or any other industry would result in a drop in innovation due to a lack of financial incentive for businesses to put the money they do into these things. There has been a balance between academic innovation for scientific curiosity, and commercial market driven innovation for a very long time now, and it has been working pretty damn well so far. Academic innovation has given us stuff like TCP/IP and the web, Commercial innovation has given us stuff like Photoshop and Pro Tools. You need both, because both tackle different spheres more efficiently.
Now, you can say that free software businesses can/do exist. But the fact of the matter is that these make up a very small amount of the market, and they only really succeed by using software as a vehicle to sell something else. Red Hat doesnt really sell linux, they sell their certifications and support. IBM doesnt really sell linux, they use it as a way to reduce the cost of their “eSolutions”. Palm isn’t going to be selling linux, they will be selling their palmtop computers.
I’m not saying this way of doing business is bad, but it is the only viable way of turning a profit when you take out the factor of IP protection. How will people like Adobe exist? How about gaming companies? Id or Unreal really exists because of their engine liscences, you take that away from them and they have no real incentive to deliver. What about apple? Who would buy over-priced hardware in a pretty box if stuff like Quartz and all their nifty APIs got ported into free desktops?
There needs to be a mix of both. The OSI allows for this, the FSF is not only opposed, but they say I am morally wrong for suggesting such a notion.
Last point, if you read stuff by guys like Larry Lessig (the Creative Commons guy), he will tell you that things like copyright and patents were fantastic ideas, but have become corrupted by the shift in governament legislation from its constituants to corporate lobby groups. Having a limited monopoly on things you come up with has been driving north american innovation for centuries now, and been quite successful at it. You are right that we should not let companies walk all over us, but we need reform, not abolishment.
but we need reform, not abolishment.
It depends on which end you are.
The current goverment policy and the iraqi war is pretty harsh for the economic climate at the middle and lower end. By the way did you know $28 is being charged to the goverment for every meal that is being served to the soldiers. Whose war is it?
Hundreds of billions of tax money that could easily be spend in the USA itself. Or do we need another war to feed the economy?
Edited 2007-08-23 05:38
RMS has repeatedly called Linus “Just an engineer”, and Linus’ remarks in this interview about “Frothing at the mouth ideologues” are fairly common.
Well, I have to disagree with RMS here. Linus is not “just an engineer”, he’s “frothing at the mouth engineer”. 😉
I agree with a lot of what you say here, but some comments:
a world ruled by geeks is a world run by big egos and touchy personalities.
All world rulers have big egos and touchy personalities. Think about the world’s leaders for a moment. There’s hardly a normal, well-adjusted human being in the bunch.
I think that part of the human condition is that we seek ambitious leaders with very strong beliefs. We want our leaders to sell us the idea of a better tomorrow. We’ll pay top dollar to be told a great story about who we are and what we’re doing on this big rock. We want a fanatic whose personal utopian or dystopian fantasy we can use as a framework for understanding ourselves and the world around us.
I suppose this is a good argument for why we shouldn’t get to choose our leaders. But it’s obviously a better argument for why we have to be able to choose our leaders. There should be many leaders and a certain balance of power between them.
I suppose that all organizations work this way. But they vary greatly in how the leaders get chosen and how the power is distributed. In the free software community, anybody can be a leader, everybody gets to select their own leaders, and nobody has power over anybody else. If that isn’t the definition of freedom, I don’t what what is.
There are a great many people who fall into your analogy, but Linus and RMS are not two of them.
Yes they are. Ultimately, politics is about selling competing interpretations of reality. Linus and RMS would agree that Linux is succeeding in part because of it’s distinctive development and distribution model based on the GPL. Where they disagree is why this model is important and why it works. Same reality, competing interpretations.
In American politics, we play it a bit fast and loose, making it up as we go along. We have competing realities, often for the same interpretation. It’s a modern innovation of electoral politics intended prevent facts and outcomes from influencing elections. Look, we don’t agree on what we’re doing, and we don’t agree on whether it’s working. So just pick the one you want to see on TV landing on an aircraft carrier.
I believe that abolishing intellectual property in the software industry, or any other industry would result in a drop in innovation
I don’t believe in abolishing intellectual property. I believe in eliminating patents on creative works, facts of nature or things found in nature, and anything intended to prevent, cure, treat or otherwise mitigate illnesses and disabilities.
Like RMS, I believe in three categories of creative works that should have different limits on protection under copyright law:
Works that are used to do something, make something, or convey facts should be modifiable and redistributable for noncommercial use. This way we do more stuff, make more stuff, and know more stuff. This category includes most software, hard news, references, scholarly works, and educational materials.
The next category is works that express ideas or opinions. These should be redistributable in unmodified form with attribution for noncommercial use. This includes op-eds, analysis, comments on OSNews, and nonfiction literature.
The final category is works that are meant to be enjoyed. These should be presentable in unmodified form with attribution for noncommercial use. This includes fiction, graphics, music, movies, and anything that’s generally considered art. If software contains artwork or storylines, they fall in this category as long as they’re separable from the rest of the software.
Of course, copyright owners can grant more rights to the recipients of their work, but these should be the minimum requirements.
Software is the most tinkerable, extensible, and modular stuff that we use. There’s more way more value in the ability to innovate through modification than in the ability to monopolize an innovation. Software patents and proprietary software make innovation more profitable, but also more difficult. Society will ultimately benefit from more innovation through collaboration than through exclusivity.
There are innumerable reasons to invest in software development other than to sell software. As you note, “Linux” vendors don’t really sell Linux. But they invest in Linux, and they profit from their investment. Very few vendors are successful selling software anyway. Microsoft and Adobe are the exceptions, and do we honestly want more vendors like them?
How about gaming companies?
Companies like Id and Unreal should work more like Trolltech. Their engines should be free software for noncommercial use only. Commercial game developers would still have to pay. Games would be mostly free software, but downstream distributors would need to make a completely different game out of it, devoid of any art or plot elements from the original.
Commercial innovation has given us stuff like Photoshop and Pro Tools.
This is a historically accurate argument, but I’m not sure that proprietary software vendors are continuing to innovate in ways that free software doesn’t. Most of the biggest software innovations of the past few years have come out of the free software community. The biggest issue facing GIMP and Ardour is that they aren’t Photoshop and Pro Tools. I think that content creation is a viable market for free software. It’s content consumption that poses more a challenge.
The bottom line is that intellectual property is a good idea that’s often used in cases where it’s not in the best interest of the public. We don’t need to incentivize innovation in software. The existence of free software is proof. Software is very useful. There are many ways of capitalizing on the value of software without restricting our ability to improve and share it, which is arguably more valuable than the software itself.
>Companies like Id and Unreal should work more like Trolltech. Their engines should be free software for noncommercial use only. Commercial game developers would still have to pay. Games would be mostly free software, but downstream distributors would need to make a completely different game out of it, devoid of any art or plot elements from the original.
Think about the term freedom you’re using several times in your saying. **Freedom**! Companies like ID and Unreal have got their freedom to do as they want to do it. Freedom is not about ensuring or enforcing it, freedom is about to live even with misuse. You have to have courage to “ensure” **real freedom**. You’re acting like a coward if you hide behind some copyleft.
So before making a mockery out of the term freedom, many people in history died for real freedom, call it just GPL, a license according to RMS or FSF. Thanks.
Edited 2007-08-23 13:35
You’re acting like a coward if you hide behind some copyleft.
I could just as easily argue that proprietary software developers are cowards for hiding behind secrets. They’re scared that they won’t be able to measure up out in the open. Cowardice is continuing to rely on good ideas you’ve had in the past. Confidence is putting yourself out there, daring your competitors to keep pace.
Free software has a “bring it on!” mentality, whereas proprietary software is more like “run and hide”.
Real freedom doesn’t work in the absence of real choice. We don’t have real choice, because big business used real freedom to eliminate real choice. My philosophy is to only limit freedom enough so that we are guaranteed real choice. I think that real choice is more important than real freedom. That’s the difference between you and I.
So before you go making a mockery out of the soldiers and civilians that are dying for your supposed real freedom, let us remember whose freedom they’re dying for: Halliburton, Blackwater, Carlyle Group, and ExxonMobil. I tell myself they’re not dying in vain, that they’re dying so that the rest of us can see our corrupt political machine for what it is. Maybe we’ll learn to stick up for ourselves. Eventually.
“””
“””
By that, I am assuming that you mean copylefted software, usable in projects with a compatible license, commercial or not. With a proprietary license available for a substantial fee for those entities which prefer not to use a compatible license.
They wouldn’t be giving up any licensing money if they went that way. But divulging their trade secrets would still be a big problem. The only thing they’d have left to protect their trade secrets would be to patent the ideas.
I am assuming that you mean copylefted software
I’m not sure that the term copyleft has any meaning once we’re talking about a hypothetical world where copyright protection is automatically limited for software. Just suffice it to say that the software is modifiable and redistributable for noncommercial use by any recipient, regardless of from whom it was received.
But divulging their trade secrets would still be a big problem.
How do the trade secrets benefit you or anyone that wants to develop a game or a game engine?
What I’m trying to get at in this thread is that everybody keeps thinking first about the company’s right to monopolize or hide their technology in order to maximize profits. The vendor’s code would be protected by copyright from unlicensed commercial use. The vendor and its paying customers are the only parties that can profit from the code. That seems fair to me.
Other vendors can create their own original implementations of the technology, and I’m fine with that. Hopefully the vendor will be driven to invent more technologies to maintain their market leadership. The result will be better software all around and more incentive for innovation. Isn’t that what the goal was in the first place?
Despite the paranoid fantasies, open code simply doesn’t get reimplemented very often or very quickly in real life. Qt is completely open, yet its ideas aren’t winding up in competing toolkits. The lack of any trade secrets doesn’t seem to be preventing Trolltech from maintaining market leadership.
My whole point is that businesses want consumers to make sacrifices in order to preserve their business models, and we go along with it for some reason. Let’s worry about protecting our own interests, as users, and let the vendors adjust their business models accordingly. I’m sick and tired of people being scared into protecting revenue streams that don’t make any sense anymore.
Have you considered proposing this to John Carmack? I imagine that you could write it up in a way that would be likely to get a response. And I’m sure such a response would be extremely interesting. He’s brilliant, understands the gaming industry, proprietary software, and open source software. He has experience with releasing previously proprietary game engine code as OSS, and has seen what people do… and don’t do with it. Id Software has been a casual friend to Linux and OSS since the early 1990s.
Perhaps you could write him, and maybe share what you find out with the rest of us?
Would you mind linking me something where RMS holds that kind of opinion? I’m not saying you are lying, I just have honestly never heard that kind of thing come out of him. What you are saying sounds alot more like the EFF then the FSF.
What I have heard fairly consistently is that “information wants to be free”, that basically all forms of copyright are wrong, and the GPL is basically a trick to use the system against itself (hence the name, “copyleft”). Maybe he has become more moderate in his old age.
The reason that trolltech exists is that there are very very few cross platform cpp toolkits out there. I don’t know if that model would work so well in the world of video game engines, where it takes an incredable amount of talent to become king of the hill, but when you do the payoff is huge.
I havn’t used ardour in a year or two now, so it may have changed, but last time I used it, it was quite painful. To be fair, sound in general on linux is quite painful, even something like audacity gives way too much latency to be usable in linux for multi-track recording, while on windows it works fine for home mucking around type stuff on the same machine. So maybe DAWs arent that great an example.
The Gimp and Inkscape however, are. Both are way more then fine for hobby stuff, but if you know any serious illustrators, sit one down in front of the equivalent of their favorite tool. All it usually takes is a stroke with the pen tool, and they will say this isn’t usable. Even everaldo (the redhat artist) still uses the adobe stuff, and he is a big believer and supporter of everything open source.
IMHO, the gimp and inkscape wouldn’t even be where they are today if it wasn’t for the adobe products to emulate. Another thing to keep in mind is that even though Adobe has a virtual monopoly on high end digital publishing, it is a benevolent monopoly, where they still deliver things that people want and improve in ways people never thought of. CS3 just came out, and I have heard nothing but great things. When you think how old some of these products are, it is impressive that they are still able to bring new things to the table.
There are many situations where IP is abused, and reform is definately important. The whole patent system should never have been applied to software in the first place, and copyright should go back to lasting 30 years, not be implicit and last for eternity.
I don’t know, free software doesn’t show that to me at all. There is definitely innovation in free software, but where it shines is low level stuff. I don’t believe the GIMP will ever surpass adobe, unless adobe totally drops the ball and starts putting out garbage, and that holds true for most of what are industry standards (with programming tools being the exception). For the most part, what exists are clones of existing products which do not really innovate, just copy what has already been done, only a few generations behind.
Would you mind linking me something where RMS holds that kind of opinion?
http://www.osnews.com/story.php/18302
It’s a big video, but I think it’s useful to watch RMS speak rather than read a transcript or (much worse) a blogger’s interpretation. He’s less unreasonable than a lot of people think.
He doesn’t want special rights for software. What he wants is to eliminate the special restrictions that we’ve come to accept for software but don’t make sense in the context of comparable products.
I havn’t used ardour in a year or two now, so it may have changed
It has. I recently helped produce a full-length chamber-pop album (arty cheesy catchy) with Ardour, VST plugins, Ubuntu, and Ingo’s realtime-preempt kernel patchset. Shameless plug (gratis streaming):
http://stevegoldbergmusic.com/the-music.php
Yes, those are all real instruments (a whole lot of them). We had the Carnegie Mellon school of music at our disposal. That’s me on piano, harpsichord, and seven other pitched percussion instruments. This was by far the most fun project I’ve ever worked on. It might have cost a quarter million to do this in the real world.
“All Free software is open, but not all Open software is Free. ”
So, how do you explain this? :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Public_License
“Free Software” and “Open Source” are two concepts that, as a logician may put it, are extensionally (almost) identical but intensionally distinct. It’s very difficult to find a license that is “Free Sofware” and not “Open Source” or the other way around, and when it happens it’s usually because those two labels are granted by different institutions who decide independently. The main difference is the motivation behind each concept: ethical/political in “Free Software”, factual/technical in “Open Source”. That’s why “FOSS” is a useful concept.
The four freedoms of software are
* The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
* The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
* The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
* The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
Code that abides by those four freedoms is considered Free. Code that abides by freedom 1 is considered to be Open.
“Code that abides by those four freedoms is considered Free. Code that abides by freedom 1 is considered to be Open.”
That’s a common mistake. The kind of license you are thinking of is what MS calls “shared source”, NOT “Open Source” as defined by the OSI (and AFAIK no other organization has a different official definition of “open source”. That would be a serious attempt to mislead the public).
OPen Source Definition from the OSI (http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd):
1. Free Redistribution
2. Source Code
3. Derived Works
The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.
4. Integrity of The Author’s Source Code
The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution of “patch files” with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software.
5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
7. Distribution of License
The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties.
8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product
9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software
10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral
“There is no clear-cut evidence that corporate involvement is bad for Linux.”
You left out patents and patent-deals from your list. To bow down to unsubstantiated copyright threats is the same as removing the word Free from FOSS.
There are three distros that are “involved” heavily now in this sector via Microsoft deals. This turned ugly very quickly and continues to get uglier so long as Microsoft continues to call the shots in regard to Linux.
“Funnily enough, the only distributions I tend to refuse to touch are the “technical” ones, so I’ve never run Debian, because as far as I’m concerned, the whole and only point of a distribution is to make it easy to install (so that I can then get to the part I care about, namely the kernel), so Debian or one of the “compile everything by hand” ones simply weren’t interesting to me.”
That doesn’t sound like any Debian I’ve known. It doesn’t get easier than apt-get. Perhaps he confused it with something else?
indeed he does, maybe he was thinking about Gentoo ? but whatever he was thinking about, he’ll emerge out of this article just fine 🙂
Debian has had a reputation of being hard to install for many years. Other distributions had nice graphical installers with good hardware detection, X auto-configuration, etc…, while in Debian things had to be done manually.
I guess that’s why Linus said that, even if nowadays Debian is quite easy to install.
I think he means “out of the box” functionality…aka click install and have ready to use OS in 10-20 minutes.
having to apt-get 3/4 of the OS is not “out of the box” functionality.
you haven’t used debian recently, haven’t you?
The default install gives you a full blown gnome desktop.
> default install gives you a full blown gnome
> desktop.
That’s it, then. Linus is well known to prefer KDE.
>That’s it, then. Linus is well known to prefer KDE.
Than just pick the debian-40r0-i386-kde-CD-1.iso, install it and be happy.
Or use the standard (GNOME) CDs and enter “tasks=”standard, kde-desktop”” in grub while booting the install CD.
Edited 2007-08-22 20:45
I’m running Etch at home, and almost everything worked right out of the box, all I had to install was some codecs. Perhaps your knowledge of Debian is a little out of date.
I was about to say the same thing. Maybe he meant gentoo, or he’s only used older versions of debian which were harder to install than the current release.
Edited 2007-08-22 20:42
he sounds like a newbie to linux !
maybe he just got off windows vista , and tried linux for the first time and hasnt tried debian yet !!
OR MAYBE … he is mentioning debian a few years back that were very dificult to install , and god forbid if he doesnt try every distro every 6 months !
Excuse me, do you have a great problem reading the sentence, he said:
Notice the *OR* – they aren’t linked – read the sentence and interpret it as he intended.
“Funnily enough, the only distributions I tend to refuse to touch are the “technical” ones, so I’ve never run Debian, because as far as I’m concerned, the whole and only point of a distribution is to make it easy to install (so that I can then get to the part I care about, namely the kernel), so Debian”
Perhaps you should re-read what I wrote because I never said anything about compiling or Gentoo. He referenced Debian as being technical and somehow difficult to install. I’m well aware of the OR and realize he waan’t saying you had to compile anything.
I guess some people are so inclined to defend precious leader that they resort to attacks without thinking.
I find that humorous given that I don’t run Linux. Less attacks on the messenger, more attacks on the messages please.
I did .. in the paragraph directly above what you quoted.
Let’s re-cap: He referred to Debian as being overly technical and somehow hard to install. I simply pointed out that this wasn’t my expierence. I did not mention Gentoo or any other source based distro.
I find this greatly amusing considering the first sentence; http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=18496&comment_id=265174
Edited 2007-08-25 08:05
And instead of debating you try and silence me by deducting points off – in clear violation of the moderation policy.
nice 1.
“APC: Do you use a specific distribution of Linux at home or work?
LT: A “specific” one? No. I have changed distributions over the years, and it tends to really end up depending on various random circumstances, like just when I switch machines around and what happens to be convenient.
So right now I happen to run Fedora on my machines, which largely came about from me running on POWER for a few years, and Fedora supported it pretty well (and since I actually don’t care that deeply about the distribution, I tend to prefer running the same thing on everything, just to keep any distro issues away).”
what’s with people saying this? sure, there isn’t a mouse driven GUI install, but its dead easy. been easy for years now. Or is my definition of easy different?
Browser: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 95; PalmSource; Blazer 3.0) 16;160×160
The last time I tried debian, sound wasn’t enabled in the default kernel.
If I didn’t read sites like this every day, I probably would think that debian is still a pain to install and configure too.
what’s with people saying this? sure, there isn’t a mouse driven GUI install, but its dead easy. been easy for years now.
Actually, Debian does have a mouse driven GUI install — you just need to type “installgui” at the very first prompt when you start the installer. I agree that Debian is quite easy to install nowadays.
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/GUI
“Actually, Debian does have a mouse driven GUI install — you just need to type “installgui” at the very first prompt when you start the installer”
This sort of only help prove Linus’ point… lots of “you just have to”, and that’s what he is not interested in.
Edited 2007-08-22 22:30
wow, I never noticed that…
Interesting… I’ll stick with the text mode installer though
whats with these comments of ppl that think that debian equals ubuntu , and ubuntu is easy to install , so linus is confused ?
maybe you should pick some 10 years version debian and try to install it !
and just because you werent using linux 10 years ago , i am pretty sure linus was
sure , debian is much easier to install nowadays , but heck , even more easier are other distros !
You often hear that the kernels from HP-UX, IRIX and Solaris are more robust and resilient than the Linux kernel. My only wish is that Linux catches up to all these so we can finally put HP-UX and AIX out to pasture and reach complete feature parity with the SunOS kernel.
I am running Linux on all my hardware (x86, MIPS, SPARC) now and it runs fine but there is always room for improvement. Closed source applications and operating systems can run under emulation if necessary.
I’ve worked on both free and proprietary *nix kernels, and I find that the perceived difference in robustness is 80% business model and only 20% technical. When a big customers says he wants a robust OS, he means he wants to be able to yell at an actual kernel engineer over the phone when something goes wrong. He wants an emergency team working in shifts around the clock to produce a custom fix to address the problem. He wants compensatory damages if his downtime exceeds a contractual limit.
Part of the difference is testing. Traditional UNIX systems are put through rigorous in-house testing for functional verification, stability, application compatibility, and performance regressions. These test environments can consist of thousands of machines and hundreds of thousands of test cases.
In fact, I would say that until recently, robustness was almost entirely a feature of marketing, service, and quality assurance rather than of the software itself. It was only when Linux began to exert upward pressure from the bottom the traditional UNIX market that big UNIX vendors began to allocate RAS line items for the development teams.
There are definitely areas where Linux is trailing technically. For example, until very recently Linux didn’t have a viable kernel crash dump capability. However, the kdump approach, based on kexec and kernel relocation, is a considerably more advanced design than any of the traditional UNIX implementations. It could even be used to implement (quite elegantly) the very latest ideas in kernel data capture, such as the Live Dump capability in AIX 6.
Tracing is another area where Linux is behind, but this is definitely a development hot-spot. Linux, Solaris, and other free software systems have an inherent advantage in tracing. AIX has a me-too implementation of dynamic tracing for AIX 6 called ProbeVue which isn’t very useful if you don’t have access to the kernel sources. It’s like using a debugger without the source code. Where do you set breakpoints? Where do you insert probes? It’s a black box.
The biggest challenge of all for proprietary UNIX implementations like AIX and HP-UX is the lack of lead user adoption. The typical users of these platforms are very conservative. They often trail development by 1-3 years. Features that work in the test environment often blow up in more diverse configurations in the field. Developers may only start to see external bug reports from features introduced in release N while they are working on release N+3. It’s hard to maintain quality with such a lag in customer feedback.
The most powerful aspect of the modern Linux development model is that commercial vendors invest in the most valuable features. That means that RAS capabilities receive large contributions from big enterprise vendors. For example, IBM is a leading contributor to both kdump and SystemTap. And mobile capabilities are getting huge boosts from companies like Intel.
Linus is there to babysit his creation, which has taken on a life of it’s own. It’s hard to name a major computer-related vendor that doesn’t have some sort of vested interest in Linux. Even Microsoft realizes that they need to get in on the Linux game. Linux has become an “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” proposition for even the most reluctant companies. It’s would be very difficult to argue that the golden age of Linux is behind us. The best days are yet to come.
Or as GregKH would joke, world domination is proceeding according to plan.
Debian is NOT still easy to use out of the gates. Linus obviously opts for a different user experience than Debian provides and to get to work, not “You just have to do…”
Debian is not ready to go out of the box and it does not have the most complete hardware recognition. Every time I try to do a new install, I compile and try both Debian and Slackware just to see how far they have come, in the hopes that the old school fellas have come along…(Yeah I have that much time on my weekends.) I just tried both Debian and Slackware on my laptop 2 weeks ago…they just don’t deliver a great user experience.
I am not knocking Debian or the individual promoting it; I just wanted to make the observation that Debian’s niche is obviously not the niche Linus falls into…he just wants to install, have his stuff there, and tweak his desktop ASAP…the two of you are just different niches…
Which, by the way, I tink is the coolest thing in the world about Linux…
Edited 2007-08-22 21:32
>Debian is not ready to go out of the box and it does not have the most complete hardware recognition.
Debian supports every hardware out-of-the-box quite well which works with free drivers.
And since Linus uses Fedora he shouldn’t have a problem with it, because Fedora is 100% Free Software too.
Linus Torvalds is a “Kernel Developer”, It’s clear that’s his passion, he probably has no interest in the distributions that build upon his kernel – He just wants a functional environment to work on low level functionality of the system.
How is that hard to understand? who cares if he doesn’t know how “easy” some specific distribution is now? perhaps it wasn’t when he last checked it out..
Just because he works on the kernel, doesn’t mean he keeps track of every distribution.
Edited 2007-08-22 22:23
APC: Out of curiosity, do you have anything to say to hardware manufacturers who refuse to release datasheets or specifications about the functioning of their hardware so it could operate with the Linux kernel?
Linus: Is “I hope you all die a painful death” too strong?
You just have to love Linus for his direct and honest attitude, even if it isn’t particularly helpful…