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Project: FreeOS  Reviews
Book: Open Sources - Voices from the Open Source Revolution
By Madanmohan Rao <madanr@microland.net>
Posted: ( 2001-01-01 13:48:27 EST by )
Open Source needs no introduction. While the process may be known
to all, the ideology behind the Open Source movement might not
be. This book explores the various facets of the Open Source
movement through the eyes of some of the most prominent Open Source
advocates including Linus Torvalds, Eric Raymond, and many more.
Emacs, Perl, Linux, FreeBSD, Apache, Sendmail, Fetchmail, BIND, X
Windows, and indeed much of the foundation of the global Internet
owe their origins to a remarkable model of economic development
for software and platforms called Open Source. "Just as the early microcomputer pioneers set the stage for
today's industry, Open Source software has set the stage for the
drama that is just unfolding, and that will lead to a radical
re-shaping of the computer industry landscape over the next five
to ten years," predicts publisher Tim O'Reilly. The viewpoints and analyses of many of the visionary pioneers
behind this burgeoning paradigm are collectively presented in
this highly readable and fascinating volume, which is a must for
anyone interested in the future of software and Internet-based
infoware services. The editors are all active members of the Linux community, and
the contributors include Linux creator Linus Torvalds, Apache
co-founder Brian Behlendorf, IETF coordinator Scott Bradner,
Netscape vice president Jim Hamerly, publisher Tim O'Reilly, Open
Source evangelist Eric Steven Raymond, Free Software Movement
founder Richard Stallman, Perl author Larry Wall, and former Red
Hat CEO Robert Young. "Today, organic chemistry, molecular biology, and basic medical
research are not practiced as a craft by a small body of
practitioners, but pursued as an industry. Computer science, too,
must exist in an uneasy alliance with industry. Once new ideas
came primarily from academic computer scientists; now the
computer industry drives innovation forward," the editors begin. Eric Raymond, author of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar," traces
the growth, evolution and convergence between three streams of
programmers: those who worked on the DEC PDP-10s of the 1960s and
70s, the Unix and C hackers of the 1970s and 1980s, and the
microcomputer enthusiasts of the 1980s and 1990s. Online communities facilitated by bulletin board systems, Usenet,
and later the Internet helped form a critical mass of software
developers who preferred to cooperatively develop new platforms
and languages based on free and open sharing of the original
source code, spawning what would be later called the Open Source
movement. A license for open source software allows users to freely
re-distribute the source code, and modify it or include "patch
files" for changes. Variations in licenses arise over issues like
mixing with non-free software, private rendering of
modifications, and special privileges for original creators. Legendary MIT hacker Richard Stallman advocates the sharing of
software the way recipes are shared. "The idea that the
proprietary software social system - the system that says you are
not allowed to share or change software - is antisocial, that it
is unethical, that it is simply wrong, may come as a surprise to
some readers," says the controversial founder of the Free
Software Movement, who created the GNU operating system and GNU
Emacs editor. Open Source, which traces some of its roots to the Free Software
Movement, has built an image focusing more on features like
reliability of the new software model, and has also broadened its
discourse to include strategies of business viability. "Created from open source software, the Internet has become a
fantastic enabler for the development of new open-source
software," says Michael Tiemann, founder of Cygnus Solutions, a
leading provider of open-source embedded compilers and debuggers. The Internet's spectacular growth is a testament to the power of
this open standards model. Addressing the software engineering impact of this new paradigm
of open, collaborative, internationally distributed model of
software development, Paul Vixie - head architect of the most
popular DNS implementation BIND - says that open-source software
enjoys the "best system-level testing in the industry," driven by
"real-world experiences of real users." "An additional advantage enjoyed by open-source projects is the
peer review of dozens or hundreds of other programmers looking
for bugs by reading the source code rather than just by executing
packaged executables," according to Vixie. "Software is not software without source code," according to
NASA, which needs the perfect reliability possible with the Linux
OS. Larry Wall, author of the rn news reader for Unix as well as a
the Perl programming language (sometimes called the "duct tape of
the Internet"), identifies some of the seemingly contradictory
traits of open source developers: diligence, patience, and
humility as well as laziness, impatience and hubris. Linux began as an operating system for only one architecture -
the Intel 386 - but today has millions of users, thousands of
developers and a growing market, according to Linux creator Linus
Torvalds. "Linux has succeeded because it was based on good design
principles and a good development model," Torvalds says. And commercial ventures based on sales of open source software
and services will become successful provided they master the art
of brand management and market positioning as well, according to
Robert Young, head of Red Hat Software, which sells branded Linux
CDs for $50. In 1997 and 1998, the Open Source model began to attract
attention from industry analysts, executives and investors who
wanted to seriously understand if there was a repeatable and
commercially viable methodology for computer companies. Open
Source is now viewed not just as a culture but a new economic
model, based on thinking beyond conventional norms of work and
compensation. For newly emerging markets, with the right software development
support roles, and framed using the appropriate software license,
the open source model is indeed a reliable model for conducting
software development for commercial purposes, according to Brian
Behlendorf, co-founder of the Apache Group. Apache is the open
source Web server that runs on 53 per cent of the Web servers on
the public Internet. "There is a compelling argument for taking advantage of whatever
momentum an existing open-source package has in a category that
overlaps with your potential offering, by contributing your
additional code or enhancements to the project and then aiming
for a return in the form of higher-quality code overall,
marketing lead generation, or common platform establishment,"
advises Behlendorf. Eric Raymond, as "software culture anthropologist" for the open
source movement, helped articulate the position that open source
software could be made freely available while also providing for
lucrative commercial revenue streams in non-standard ways. As a consultant, Eric Raymond helped browser leader Netscape -
under a withering attack from Microsoft - develop a license to
give away their browser and server as free software in January
1998, an unprecedented move for a maker of proprietary software. Raymond refers to this historic development as the "shot heard
around the world of the open-source revolution." Linux is now
receiving support from Corel, IBM, Intel, Oracle, and Informix,
and is capturing the ISP and business data center markets. The open-source movement needs to evangelize its triumphs at the
level of CEOs/CTOs/CIOs (not just hackers), promote the Linux
base, target Fortune 500 companies, and win over the trade and
mainstream media, Raymond urges. Challenges being addressed by open source-based companies include
scalability of the service model, higher profitability, quality
consistency, and investibility. "We have tremendous improvements to make before Linux is ready
for the average person to use. The graphical user interface is an
obvious deficit," cautions Bruce Perens, former head of the
Debian Project for Linux. The proliferation of Web-based services in the Internet Age -
such as e-commerce site Amazon.com - represents an entirely new
breed of application called an "information application" or
perhaps "infoware," according to publisher Tim O'Reilly. "Traditional software embeds small amounts of information in a
lot of software; infoware embeds small amounts of software in a
lot of information," says O'Reilly. Infoware applications are
fundamentally different than software applications and require
different tools. "The easy cloning of Web sites built with HTML + CGI + Perl
combination meant that for the first time, powerful applications
could be created by non-programmers. As the new killer
applications emerge, the role of software will increasingly be as
an enabler for infoware," O'Reilly predicts. "Microsoft still doesn't realize - perhaps can't realize and
still be Microsoft - that software, as Microsoft has known it, is
no longer the central driver of value creation in the computer
business," according to O'Reilly. Numerous useful online resources are highlighted in the book,
such as SlashDot.org, OpenSource.org, Mozilla.org, NetBSD.org,
GNU.org, and FSF.org. Instead of seeing Open Source as a threat that could erode
intellectual property, software companies need to view it as an
opportunity to bring innovation to that intellectual property,
according to the editors. The computer industry needs the next
generation of ideas that will come from Open Source development.
O'Reilly Open Source Catalog
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
Other articles by Madanmohan Rao
Current Rating: [ 8 / 10 ]
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