Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Quentin Smith - Freedom to Open-Source

Most users of Linux are just glad to have an operating system that they downloaded for free. They probably don’t even know that it’s not just Linux that they’re running but GNU/Linux, the combination of the Linux kernel and components of the GNU system. For Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation, creator of the GNU General Public License, and inventor of the concept of “free software”, the distinction is an important one. Free software, he often says, is not about free beer but about free speech. A similar concept called open-source is a less politically-charged variant that leads to the same end result.

Richard Stallman was motivated to leave his position at MIT’s AI Lab and found the Free Software Foundation when one day, as he was working in the lab, he found a bug in the software for the lab’s printer. The printer manufacturer, however, refused to release the source code for the software, so Stallman was unable to fix the problem himself. Stallman invented free software and the “copyleft” paradigm to ensure that his and other like-minded developers’ software would be free to everyone.

Free software is derived from four freedoms that all users should have with software. Freedom zero is the freedom to run the program for any purpose. Though this seems basic, there are some developers who have restricted some people and groups from using their software. Freedom one is the freedom to study and modify the program. It is this freedom that the printer manufacturer withheld from Richard Stallman. Freedom two is the freedom to copy the program so you can help your neighbor. If a problem has already been solved, there’s no reason you can’t help apply that solution to another person’s similar problem. Finally, freedom three is the freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits. These freedoms establish the reasoning behind free software licenses, and especially Stallman’s own license, the GNU General Public License.

The label “open-source software” came out of a meeting in Palo Alto discussing Netscape’s decision to release the next generation of Netscape Navigator as free software. Free software proponents, including Eric S. Raymond, author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, realized that free software and the Free Software Foundation had become too political. Free software was concerned with ideological issues like freedom and liberty. Open-source was a term that didn’t clash so severely with the ideas of proprietary software. Open-source was a nicer way of marketing the same concept: that users should have access to the source code of the software they use and should have the ability to modify and redistribute that software.

It’s important to note that neither free software nor open-source implies that the software itself has zero cost. Publishers are free to charge for copies of their software; they are, however, obliged to make the source code available, and they cannot prevent the user from redistributing the software for any amount of money. Open-source software can be sold commercially, and in fact, some companies do just that. Red Hat sells copies of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and makes the source code freely available to its users.

The free software movement has come from humble beginnings to become a clear and well-functioning alternative to the world of proprietary software. Commons-based development results in products that can match and even surpass the quality of commercial software.

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