“When the news of the Red Hat-Cygnus deal broke, one name
was conspicuously absent from the PR statements and press accounts:
Michael Tiemann, who co-founded open-source pioneer Cygnus
Solutions in 1989 and helped guide the company to success in the
ensuing decade. Also known to the hacker community for his
work on the GNU C compiler, the GNU C++ compiler (which he
authored), and the GDB debugger, Tiemann has long been a leading
figure in the world of free software. He spoke with us at length
and in depth about the Red Hat-Cygnus merger, forking Linux,
post-PC computing, why Red Hat!=Linux, and where he was when the
deal was announced – and revealed that a delegation of open-source
gurus (Tiemann included) is meeting with a group from Sun
Microsystems to discuss Sun’s position on open source and open
standards.”
“It’s been ten years since you started Cygnus. You were the
first to base a business on the Stallman model and the first to
succeed with it. After ten years, would you say the model
works?”
“Well, Stallman’s model is about software development. Stallman
doesn’t really have a business model per se. He would never say,
“This is how you should make money.” He would certainly provide
advice on how you should write software, and why you should write
free software. What I did was to see how Stallman’s model for
technical development could be applied successfully in a
capitalistic, competitive environment. In that sense, it’s been
very, very successful.”