By Paul Ferris
Editor, Linux Today
On Tuesday night, the first night of the Bazaar in New York, I
attended a panel discussion between several Open Source and Free
Software community members. The discussion provided a chance to
allow community under-currents to surface in a public format where
open debate of the specifics was encouraged.
I have to add here that there are issues in the Free Software
and Open Source communities that are not clear to the uninitiated
new-comer. Unless you really understand some of these issues, you
would likely be baffled at what is really going on at an event like
this.
New-comers to GNU/Linux (further referred to as just plain
“Linux”) and the Free Software movement will likely be confused at
just what the differences are in the context of Open Source as
compared to Free Software.
The context to people that mildly understand the issues is
likely to seem trivial, while more passionate community members
will likely see these issues as having near religious meaning. The
overall pall cast by some people outside of the community is one of
group of people who are “fragmenting” politically.
But the panel discussion that I witnessed was really quite
civilized in a humorous kind of way. It’s clear that some of the
people on the panel don’t like and will not agree with others. Yet
there were no verbal fist-fights. It was a public debate and an
example of a democratic process.
If we have a strength, it is here. We are the new democracy. We
can get upset and exchange heated, sometimes dangerously so, words.
Yet things go on, and the movement is still a cohesive one in a
very functional way.
The panel discussion membership was made up of Rob Malda, Chris
DiBona, Jeff Bates, Eric Raymond, John (Mad Dog) Hall, as
moderator, Bruce Perens, Ken Coar and Richard Stallman.
Mad Dog began by asking all of the members to introduce
themselves and give a brief overview of what got them started with
Free Software.
Chris DiBona
Didn’t feel like using Sun workstations and instead used Linux on a
laptop, which made him happy. He came to California and joined the
silicon valley users group.
Jeff Bates
“Cute Little” (Rob Malda’s description) Jeff Bates, site admin for
Slashdot, was “infected” with Linux by Rob Malda.
Eric Raymond
A self-described “Wandering anthro philosophical trouble-maker”,
roving ambassador and author of Cathedral and the Bazaar.
Bruce Perens
Unix systems analyst, since 1981 and a Graphics specialist. Bruce
realized that working on Linux was more satisfying than working at
Pixar! This point was driven home for him when he realized that he
had stuff orbiting in the space shuttle for NASA.
John Mad Dog Hall
Chairman of Linux International. Started using it in May of 1994,
when Linus showed it to him.
Ken Coar
Head of the Apache group, the most widely used Web serving software
on the face of the planet.
Richard Stallman Founder of the Free Software Foundation.
Richard arrived late, causing a bit of stalling at the beginning
of the panel, as everyone was asking where he was. Finally, Mad Dog
was forced to start things without him. The introductions were in
mid-swing as he jumped up on the stage and said, “Glad I didn’t
cause a delay.”
Richard then proceeded to explain that his credentials were that
he founded the GNU system and developed the operating system that
most people call “Linux” — he was emphasizing the fact that
“Linux” is actually the kernel of the operating system, which is
built with GNU tools.
Unfortunately, this was greeted with more laughter than I
believe that Richard was prepared for.
Mad Dog then had everyone announce who they were and how they
got here. He explained that he had no questions for everybody,
because he didn’t think that they were needed. You have to be a bit
more intimately involved here to understand that there is a bit of
a rift in the political under-currents that represent the Linux
“Free Software” style of development.
Mad Dog then told everyone to explain where they thought Open
Source was today and where it was headed as far as they were
concerned.
Rob Malda started things off by warning that he wasn’t a public
speaker. He explained that now there were fewer hackers using Linux
than actual users. He didn’t think that this was a problem because
companies that wanted Linux to succeed were now involved and
helping out with the forward development of it.
Chris DiBona explained next that as the base of software gets
larger it would bring upon an exponential growth. He explained that
he has a lot of hope for GNOME and KDE in the object oriented area.
He finished by explaining that more people around using a product
helps in the bug checking area.
Jeff Bates pointed out that the people who are really hard-core
are outnumbered by PHB’s. He explained that it’s very difficult to
deal with non-cultured people from outside the open source
movement.
Jeff also expressed the belief that the desktop area would be
the next battleground. "I don't want to tech support my
mother"
[laughter]
"I know, I love her".
Jeff expressed a fear that a certain proprietary corporation is
making a lot of moves into the college arena and that this is an
important battleground. The protests that just took place in
Michigan are just the tip of the iceberg. He explained that this
will likely be a new area of focus and an important one.
Eric Raymond then explained that our community will not be
effected by money because anyone who can be distracted by money is
already gone.
He stated that we are not going to run out of new programmers
contributing to Linux and Open Source projects because most of the
bright people in the world don’t even have computers or telephones.
Microsoft is not going to be dominating the mainstream computing
landscape.
Eric then alluded to a paper he was working upon that has to do
with “The seven bullets that Microsoft has to dodge to survive the
next 18 months”.
He explained that the most severe problem that Microsoft is
facing is that they are pricing themselves out of their own
markets. He used Windows CE as an example, pointing out that it’s
so expensive that vendors of hand-held computers cannot make
money.
Eric expressed the belief that Microsoft cannot afford to lower
their prices because if they don’t keep their prices high their
employees will buy out.
"Microsoft is not a long term problem".
Bruce Perens was next in line. He started out by explaining that
he was not at first interested in the financial aspects of Free
Software. Recently, however, he has changed his tune.
He said that some big fights are ahead of us as a community. The
developers have established an ethos which is a very fundamental
part of Free Software and a lot of developers are coming on board
that want to make money. Some want to say something like “move over
kids, there are grownups involved now”.
But he said it was extremely important that we in the community
draw a line in the sand and say “Yes, you can make money, but lets
not forget our roots — what put us here”. He then explained that
he’s kind of prejudiced here because he’s now a capitalist — he’s
started a company to help fund Linux.
Bruce explained that there are some bad eggs out there that
don’t give much credence to Free Software. The other end of the
spectrum are the Open Source fair players. Unfortunately, there
appeared to be a wide spectrum between the two. Finally, he advised
people to help the good people involved and hinder the bad
ones.
Ken Coar explained that he was not trying to pretend to know the
future.
He went on to say that we don’t have anything to fear from the
failure to grow. As Eric pointed out there are just a lot of people
that just haven’t come to the table yet. And more will be coming
and adding to that. Sort of like a bacterial colony that just
continues to expand.
He doesn’t think that say 15 or 20 years from now the people
using software will call what they are using the same thing that we
are calling software today. With the access to the Internet being
given to the man on the street, what with millions of people coming
online there is no telling what is going to happen.
At this point there were some miscellaneous comments about
“Brain Farts” involving several notable panel members.
He thought that things will continue in acceptance and stabilize
in 5-7 years.
Richard Stallman’s views began in a confrontational manor. He
explained that unlike some of the speakers, he’s from the Free
Software movement instead of the open source movement.
As an example of what he was talking about, he explained that
these people (from the Open Source movement) were pointing out
benefits derived from the fact that you can use other people’s code
and mainly focusing on practical benefits instead of paying
attention to the way of life that Free Software brings to the
table.
Because of this, he’s motivated by political idealism, less by
artistic passion. He’s concerned with whether OS will continue
working on the goal of freedom, which was the original goal.
According to Richard we are now in danger of being slowly diverted
down a path toward non-free software.
The danger is that we will end up having a popular version of
GNU/Linux that has proprietary software on top of it. This will not
be a success to freedom because people will not know the
difference. That’s a big challenge, because most people will not
immediately appreciate the concepts that are being fought for.
We have to work harder at being more vocal, he explained. He
said that we should be more worried about the good eggs, rotting
slowly, as opposed to the obviously bad eggs that are easily
identifiable.
That ended, for the most part the introduction opinions.
John (Mad Dog) Hall then took over and shared that in the Fiji
islands at the University of the South Pacific he really got an
impact of what the FSF was having. They had a good department, but
had just heard about Linux, and only had a 1200 baud modem, so they
couldn’t download the software — a hurricane would interrupt
things eventually, for example.
He happened to have a copy of GNU/Linux, and he gave it to them.
And it was a powerful feeling, being able to give it to them, and
knowing that people who created it wanted it that way.
Bruce Perens said that this was like saying “Keep these
tablets”.
He explained that when he came back 2 years later and surprised
a local DEC (Hardware) salesman who didn’t think they were using
Linux at all. The salesman was flabbergasted at finding out that
they were still using that version because they didn’t have to ask
for his permission.
John had just came back from new Delhi, where they were asking
him “who’s going to be giving them the authority to use Linux”. He
began telling them that they didn’t need authority. If you look for
someone there will be no one to ask.
They realized that they could create their own distributions and
the feeling was amazing.
At this point John opened the panel up for general comments.
Things really broke down from here. There were a lot of jabs
going back and forth about Freedom and Open Source software.
Bruce Perens broke the volleys up by explaining that the Open
Source brand was created to get people interested in Free Software,
and that at some later date things would be more educated. He said
that now we need to move back to using the term “Free Software”
instead of “Open Source”.
Then Mad Dog opened up questions from the audience.
First question was relating to BSD licensing.
How does it fit in with the GPL?
Eric Raymond answered that multiple licenses exist to server
multiple purposes.
Richard Stallman said that the old license and new license for
BSD are different. He doesn’t think that the BSD license is evil.
With copy left you are fighting to defend other peoples rights,
where as BSD is saying something like saying “I’m not going to say
no to other peoples rights”.
The X11 license is different, as another example, and that’s
OK.
Bruce Perens said that as far as the BSD license is concerned
and the public domain licenses are just ways to make your software
a gift. When it’s that way people can use it any way they want.
As a contrast the GPL is sharing with rules and structured to
not let others take away freedoms that you can take away with the
old BSD licenses. But the new BSD license and X11 licenses are not
incompatible because they don’t add any restrictions.
He went on to explain that there seemed to be some kind of
dichotomy of BSD VS. GNU, which is more of a strategy aimed at what
we’re going to do with people that aren’t going to help us (the
people in the Free Software community).
Eric Raymond then explained that he’d like to see BSD’s
succeeding more than they are right now.
Given the issue of protecting the free exchange of
information, the corporate influence is really
irrelevant.
The Slashdot folks commented upon this. Chris DiBona had more to
say. “This is what we do regardless of corporate influence or
not.”
Jeff: “For a lot of people it’s more than a job, it’s a
love.”
Chris: “but the attention is fun!”
John Hall then explained that when asked why people code Free
Software that he explains it as follows:
If an artist takes a painting to an art show, they will show it
to people and then put it in a museum. These artists ask for
comments on technique and how they can improve the painting. This
makes their work better and lets people enjoy it.
He said that it is important for Linux to actually get used.
Minux (an academic operating system that was like a paired-down
Unix), for example, didn’t really ever get used. But Linux does,
and that makes it better. As an example he pointed out that a super
computer running Linux was being used in Brazil to help cure
cancer.
Bruce Perens then made a comment relating Free Software
development to sex.
A lot of people are not going to come out of computer
science, instead are going to learn about hacking from Linux. (This
was a comment)
Eric Raymond then mentioned his paper on how to be a hacker.
John explained that there are only 300 million general purpose
systems in the world, but as a contrast there are 6 Billion people
on the face of the planet right now. If you look at India for
example, they only got net access in 1995. However, the rate of
growth of the Internet is in triple digits, a tremendous pace. A
lot of countries are coming on line and skipping even phone wiring
— just going right on to using wireless access paradigms.
These countries are using Linux because they don’t have to ask
for permission.
Eric then commented that the true hackers will always find free
software because it’s where the action is.
Bruce then explained about an M.D. that he met that got a
computer science degree so he could develop software. Companies are
poised to own this mans work. And the Open Source community is
working to intervene so that the community that needs the software
will be the ones who own the technology.
At this point the queue line for the microphones was now quite
long.
The first questioner began by pointing out the huge explosion or
need for custom software.
“What worries me is that none of us are paying attention
to proprietary software in embedded applications for example. 20
years from now, everything that we’re doing is going to be fairly
standard” — and boring.
Eric Raymond stated that he didn’t care about this because the
community is growing regardless.
Jeff Bates commented that everything is going to continue to
expand outward and we will be working in more areas.
Next was a comment about obsolete hardware that was
thrown out because the school that got them as a donation didn’t
understand that they didn’t need money for the software to run the
computers.
Bruce Perens explained that this man and more like him needed to
become evangelists.
John “Mad Dog” Hall then related a story about a Chinese proverb
that had to do with doubling the grains of rice on each square of a
chess board. If you start with one grain of rice, the number of
grains of rice at the end square of the chess board is more rice
than there was in China.
He explained that advocacy was a contagious thing and that as we
worked at this we would gain similar effects.
There was a comments on companies that are “bad eggs” —
companies that want all of the benefits of Free Software, but only
if it means ignoring it so that they can make their own proprietary
extensions. How do you tell the difference?
Richard Stallman jumped in here explaining that we should judge
them simply by what they are offering. Are they offering a product
that respects freedom? Does their activity contribute to our
community? Are they advancing our community? A real advance will
increase the range of what the software will do, decreasing the
chances of proprietary software being used.
He explained that we should buy the stuff that fits and don’t
buy the stuff that doesn’t. But if you want to send these companies
a message then that’s OK as well.
Eric Raymond stated that if they are committed to shipping only
“Open Source Software”, then that’s a test.
Bruce Perens Mentioned one company in particular that is not
understanding. Several articles have been written about this
company, so it’s (the company’s future) not going to come to
anything.
He said that yet another company simply needs to get its
attorneys under control.
What Bruce was worried about was that the particular bad player
will poison the Linux well. Bruce hopes that people will take some
time to understand these issues.
Richard Stallman witnessed a presentation by a company called
“Scriptics” about a year and a half ago that showed off software
that was free, supposedly. But it turned out that the software they
were pushing, the main activity, was aimed at developing non-free
software that went with this free software.
He explained that if people didn’t understand things like this,
that things were going to go the route he was worried about
before.
Chris DiBona stated that when faced with any large movement
there is always going to be a group that is going to try and scam
people.
John then began to break things off, as it was 6:50, and the
free software awards were at 7:00. John announced that a beginners
SIG (Special Interest Group) was going to be going on in the next
room.
The next question was a potential problem example of a
“Bad Egg”. What if somebody decided to put put out a proprietary
version of Linux?
Bruce Perens Explained that our rich friends would help us out
should we need to sue some company that tried something stupid like
this. We have never had to go to court — public relations were
enforcement enough. Unfortunately there are no case examples of
this.
What about the schools like Michigan? Who’s going to
ensure the future usage of Linux in schools?
John “Mad Dog” Hall: There are Free Software based colleges
starting up all over. John talked about a project called the “Tree
of Knowledge”. An entire curriculum based upon the free exchange of
knowledge and information.
Unfortunately he had no URLs (web addresses) relating to the
project — yet. It’s still a fledgling idea.
“In bringing the message of Free Software to the masses,
is there any hope of there being an open source brand or trade
mark?”
Eric Raymond stated: “We’re working on it.”
“How come you don’t change free-ware to
“no-cost-ware”?
Almost everyone at this point said something like “Cost is not
the issue — we just want to raise the flag”.
John “Mad Dog” Hall stated something to the effect that there is
a cost associated with the software from the perspective of the
people working on it.
Eric Raymond explained that changing people’s languages is very
hard thing.
Chris DiBona said he was in favor of the term “Funky-Source”
himself.
Eric Raymond stated that he thought it was possible if you
didn’t challenge peoples existing categories.
Someone raised the issue of the impact of Free Software
in China.
Bruce Perens then raised the issue that he was worried about
China not respecting the GPL.
Richard Stallman had just returned from China and shared the
experience that he’d seen this as a problem in China and he’d
talked to the Turbo Linux people about possible enforcement.
Chris DiBona said that he felt that the Chinese are very well
poised to accept this new way of thinking. He didn’t think it would
be way out of hand to just get them to return the code changes.
At this point the panel session was over and John Hall broke
things off so that the session could proceed to the GNU community
awards.