October 5th marked the seventeenth year since GNU/Linux was first posted on the web. Long before Apple came long with its OS X operating system, Linux had begun to challenge the monopoly of Microsoft’s Windows operating system.
If it had not been for the work of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds and thousands of other software programmers volunteering their time and energy to the building of a powerful set of freely available software programs, the world as we know it today would not exist. Today, a free software product such as the popular Firefox web browser is more powerful than its counterpart produced by the most powerful software company in the world, Microsoft. Take a second to reflect this. It is probably unprecedented in history that loosely coordinated work, done by hundreds and thousands of volunteers, for no reason save their love for it, and with no monetary incentive, rivals, nay surpasses in some occasions, work produced by hundreds of highly coordinated, very well paid software engineers working for large, for-profit corporations. Software such as the web server Apache have a commanding lead over their commercial equivalents. Apple’s famed and admired OS X operating system is built on a solid foundation of free software programs, including the base operating system.
Started by the visionary Richard Stallman, free software was originally defined in terms of ethics and technical superiority. Consider a software program such as the popular application Microsoft Word. I must purchase a copy to use it. Once I purchase it, if there are any flaws in the program, I must either live with it or wait for Microsoft to release a fix for it, which may in some cases become available only in a subsequent release and actually cost me money to purchase the fix. I cannot loan the program for my father or a friend to use legally. Intuit, which makes the popular money management software Quicken, has designed the software such that every four years or so, you must buy a new copy to keep using the program. Stallman protests against these practices and restrictions on a user’s freedom. He advocates that every software program come with four basic freedoms: freedom to use in any way for any purpose, freedom to study and modify the software, freedom to copy the program so that you can loan it to a friend and freedom to release any modifications made back to the community so that others can benefit from the modifications. GNU/Linux is such a program. Stallman holds that it is ethically wrong for a person to withhold these four freedoms from others because each of us benefits and draws resources from the community at large.
After the success of GNU/Linux, other advocates came along who eschewed the ethical aspects of free software and insisted only on the technical superiority of the model of having a loosely coordinated set of volunteers writing software over the traditional corporate model. An influential paper called “The Cathedral And the Bazaar” defined the philosophy of these people, who banded together under the umbrella they called open source to separate themselves from the free software movement. There are frequent skirmishes between Stallman and his supporters and the open source proponents. I think Stallman is right. Everybody benefits when knowledge is freely shared. All the success in the scientific world has come about largely because of the free sharing of knowledge. The scientific method that relies on others independently verifying the results of experiments, rests on this freedom.
Unlike physical resources such as steel or wood, software is a commodity that is not diminished by sharing. If I share my copy of Firefox with you, its not that I have less of the software for myself. Stallman clarified that “free” in “free software” is “free as in free speech, not as in free beer”. There are lots of free software companies out there that are making money mostly by providing support and customer-specific customisations.
As a supporter of free software, I’ve almost exclusively used Linux on all my computers, starting way back in 1990 when Linux was still at version 0.99. I spent a few weekends at Bangalore’s Indian Institute of Science, downloading the Linux source code. It occupied 20 floppy disks. Shanthala wrote her MD thesis on a Linux machine. I have also contributed code to many free software projects such as Wireshark and ntop.
How can you help ? You can start by downloading and using free software such as Firefox and OpenOffice instead of their commercial counterparts. If a website you visit requires you to use Microsoft’s products only to access the site, write to the company and complain. Advocate the usage of free software products to your family, friends, and colleagues.
So on this day, when Linux is almost old enough to chug down some beer, I give thanks to the people behind the free software movement for empowering a whole generation of people around the world.
If it had not been for the work of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds and thousands of other software programmers volunteering their time and energy to the building of a powerful set of freely available software programs, the world as we know it today would not exist. Today, a free software product such as the popular Firefox web browser is more powerful than its counterpart produced by the most powerful software company in the world, Microsoft. Take a second to reflect this. It is probably unprecedented in history that loosely coordinated work, done by hundreds and thousands of volunteers, for no reason save their love for it, and with no monetary incentive, rivals, nay surpasses in some occasions, work produced by hundreds of highly coordinated, very well paid software engineers working for large, for-profit corporations. Software such as the web server Apache have a commanding lead over their commercial equivalents. Apple’s famed and admired OS X operating system is built on a solid foundation of free software programs, including the base operating system.
Started by the visionary Richard Stallman, free software was originally defined in terms of ethics and technical superiority. Consider a software program such as the popular application Microsoft Word. I must purchase a copy to use it. Once I purchase it, if there are any flaws in the program, I must either live with it or wait for Microsoft to release a fix for it, which may in some cases become available only in a subsequent release and actually cost me money to purchase the fix. I cannot loan the program for my father or a friend to use legally. Intuit, which makes the popular money management software Quicken, has designed the software such that every four years or so, you must buy a new copy to keep using the program. Stallman protests against these practices and restrictions on a user’s freedom. He advocates that every software program come with four basic freedoms: freedom to use in any way for any purpose, freedom to study and modify the software, freedom to copy the program so that you can loan it to a friend and freedom to release any modifications made back to the community so that others can benefit from the modifications. GNU/Linux is such a program. Stallman holds that it is ethically wrong for a person to withhold these four freedoms from others because each of us benefits and draws resources from the community at large.
After the success of GNU/Linux, other advocates came along who eschewed the ethical aspects of free software and insisted only on the technical superiority of the model of having a loosely coordinated set of volunteers writing software over the traditional corporate model. An influential paper called “The Cathedral And the Bazaar” defined the philosophy of these people, who banded together under the umbrella they called open source to separate themselves from the free software movement. There are frequent skirmishes between Stallman and his supporters and the open source proponents. I think Stallman is right. Everybody benefits when knowledge is freely shared. All the success in the scientific world has come about largely because of the free sharing of knowledge. The scientific method that relies on others independently verifying the results of experiments, rests on this freedom.
Unlike physical resources such as steel or wood, software is a commodity that is not diminished by sharing. If I share my copy of Firefox with you, its not that I have less of the software for myself. Stallman clarified that “free” in “free software” is “free as in free speech, not as in free beer”. There are lots of free software companies out there that are making money mostly by providing support and customer-specific customisations.
As a supporter of free software, I’ve almost exclusively used Linux on all my computers, starting way back in 1990 when Linux was still at version 0.99. I spent a few weekends at Bangalore’s Indian Institute of Science, downloading the Linux source code. It occupied 20 floppy disks. Shanthala wrote her MD thesis on a Linux machine. I have also contributed code to many free software projects such as Wireshark and ntop.
How can you help ? You can start by downloading and using free software such as Firefox and OpenOffice instead of their commercial counterparts. If a website you visit requires you to use Microsoft’s products only to access the site, write to the company and complain. Advocate the usage of free software products to your family, friends, and colleagues.
So on this day, when Linux is almost old enough to chug down some beer, I give thanks to the people behind the free software movement for empowering a whole generation of people around the world.
