To Free or Not to Free the Code in Question
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Part VI - Network maturity: GNU/Linux 1990-1992 "the last ITS machine shut down for good in 1990; the zealots no longer had a place to stand and mostly assimilated to the Unix culture with various degrees of grumbling.. Berkeley hackers liked to see themselves as rebels against soulless corporate empires. AT&T Unix never caught up with BSD/Sun in the marketplace, but it won the standards wars. By 1990, AT&T and BSD versions were becoming harder to tell apart, having adopted many of each others' innovations.." "In the early 1990s, several companies made a go at selling AT&T or BSD Unix ports for PC-class machines. Success was elusive, prices didn't come down much, and (worst of all) you didn't get modifiable and redistributable sources with your operating system. The traditional software-business model wasn't giving hackers what they wanted." "Neither was the Free Software Foundation. The development of HURD, RMS's long-promised free Unix kernel for hackers, got stalled for years and failed to produce anything like a usable kernel until 1996 (though by 1990 FSF supplied almost all the other difficult parts of a Unix-like operating system)." "Worse, by the early 1990s it was becoming clear that ten years of effort to commercialize proprietary Unix was ending in failure. Unix's promise of cross-platform portability got lost in bickering among half a dozen proprietary Unix versions. The proprietary-Unix players proved so ponderous, so blind, and so inept at marketing that Microsoft was able to grab away a large part of their market with the shockingly inferior technology of its Windows OS." "In early 1993, a hostile observer might have had grounds for thinking that the Unix story was almost played out.. In those days it was conventional wisdom that the era of individual techno-heroism was over, that the software industry and the nascent Internet would increasingly be dominated by colossi like Microsoft. The first generation of Unix hackers seemed to be getting old and tired (Berkeley's Computer Science Research group ran out of steam and lost its funding in 1994). It was a depressing time." [ESR A Brief History of Hackerdom in "Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution" O'Reilly Jan1999]. For public-licensed Unix, the US west-east, BSD-GNU, commercial-public division was irreconcilable. It would take programmers and events outside North America to bring the Unix potential back together as beneficial gain. CERN NeXT Web publishing 1990 In Switzerland, Tim Berners-Lee (born London; Physics grad Oxford 1976; Director, World Wide Web Consortium) was using the advanced Apple NeXT OS, and "invented the World Wide Web, defining HTML (hypertext markup language), HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) and URLs (Universal Resource Locators). Science, the Internet, and Unix development could now reach - as revolutionary publishing tools - their second level. [The History of the Internet about.com]. GNU/Linux GPL 1991 The home hobbyist computing tradition continued strong, and - merged with global programming's advanced guard - able to rival Macintosh in user base size: "Apple, in spite of its reputation as the machine of choice of scruffy, creative hacker types, had actually created a machine that discouraged hacking, while Microsoft, viewed as a technological laggard and copycat, had created a vast, disorderly parts bazaar - a primordial soup that eventually self-assembled into Linux ..one of many, many different concrete implementations of the abstract, Platonic ideal called Unix.. In trying to understand the Linux phenomenon, then, we have to look not to a single innovator but to a sort of bizarre Trinity: Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, and Bill Gates. Take away any of these three and Linux would not exist.. Linux per se is not a specific set of ones and zeroes, but a self-organizing Net subculture." The stalling around GNU's grand design was spontaneously short-circuited, by pent-up Unix demand. [Neal Stephenson In the Beginning was the Command Line 1999 & here]. In 1991 a Finnish student named Linus Torvalds bought a 386 PC, and started developing a light-weight OS for it. He used Minix as a roadmap, built his own kernel, and shared it on the Internet via File Transfer Protocol. Called Freax, this was renamed LINUX (Linus-miniX); Helsinki University of Technology technician Ari Lemmke had intervened, transmitting open shallowness in flattering the naive young man and belittling GNU support; was Ari a BSD user? ["The prime objective of Minix is education" Andy Tanenbaum]. Linus: "I thought it was unprofessional to name it after myself. It was going to be released as Freeaks[.] Free was for Free and also freaks for freaks. I didn't actually have a website of my own, this was before web sites. It was an FTP site. The guy who set it up didn't like the name Freeaks because he thought it was too unprofessional. I'm actually happy it was named Linux because it was unprofessional." Conclusion: the name chosen was, and is, still unprofessional. And badly so. It has a dumbing down, diseducation built into it, for no good reason. A kernel operating system is not a full Operating System, except where open shallowness prevails. [An Interview with Linus Torvalds The Maverick 8Jun2005]. A keyboard ace career had begun, but the Freax development log shows how great GNU's influence and contribution really is. Linus to comp.os.minix July 1991: "Gcc-1.40 compiles as-is on minix386.. Don't make the libs, use the old gnulib&libc.a." Again in August: "I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat". [GNU Compiler Collection GCC; Gcc-1.40 & a posix-question; What would you like to see most in minix?]. Linus stepped over the microkernel design debates of Minix and Gnu, and did for Unix what had made Bill Gates successful - focus on the cheap Intel x86 chip monolithic, and get on with distribution - like 386BSD. "Providing a usable, free platform that would run all sorts of widely available free software was a consideration, and one that appears to have been well met.. MINIX and Linux are two different systems with different purposes. One is a teaching tool (and a good one I think), the other is real UNIX for real hackers", whose major tools came from GNU. This higher qualification was repaid only in licensing, which without direct credit simply added insult to GNU Project injury. [David Miller 3Feb92 & Michael Haardt 6Feb92 Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution O'Reilly Jan99, Appendix A: The Tanenbaum-Torvalds Debate]. Five years later, Linus looked back on GNU/Linux's release: "..I am an avid promoter of free software, and GPL'd stuff in particular (because once it's GPL'd I _know_ it's going to stay free, so I don't have to worry about future releases). However, that doesn't mean that I'm opposed to commercial software.. the money-making aspects introduces some new incentives that aren't there for most free software.. to make a good distribution that is easy to use and that has all the packaging issues worked out - essentially everything is easily available.. commercialism doesn't exclude the availability of sources, so you get the best of both worlds.. I actually originally released Linux with complete sources under a non-GPL copyright that was actually much more restrictive than the GPL: it required that all sources always be available, and it also didn't allow any money to be exchanged for Linux at all (ie not only did I not try to make money off it myself, but I also forbid anybody else to do so). That original copyright was mainly a reaction against the operating system I had been trying to use before Linux: 'Minix'.. I changed the copyright to the GPL within roughly half a year: it quickly became evident that my original copyright was so restrictive that it prohibited some entirely valid uses (disk copying services etc - this was before CD-ROMs became really popular). And while I was nervous about the GPL at first, I also wanted to show my appreciation to the gcc C compiler that Linux depended on, which was obviously GPL'd. Making Linux GPL'd was definitely the best thing I ever did." [The Pragmatist of Free Software: Linus Torvalds Interview hotwired Hiroo Yamagata Aug97 GPL]. Linus here acknowledged the GPL to have been the economic rails onto which he placed his high-tech engine. Attaching commercial FOSS carriages could then complete his desktop telecommunications train, making for easier installs. Linus went on to deepen this later perspective on GNU, MicroSoft, and market competition: |
".. free software has been very successful for projects that are technically oriented, and where the most important part is the technical side. This obviously includes the Linux kernel, but also things like the GNU C compiler and various programming tools.. I never felt that the naming issue [GNU/Linux] was all that important, but I was obviously wrong judging by how many people felt very strongly about it. So these days I just tell people to call it just plain 'Linux' and nothing more.. I've always felt pressure about keeping Linux 'right'.. the non-technical side I don't personally worry all that much about.. I don't think Linux is _inherently_ better than FreeBSD or NetBSD. I just think that Linux is much more successful, partly because of better management.. it's a clean re-implementation that doesn't have any historical baggage, and the fact that there is one person who everybody agrees is in charge (me) allows me to do more radical decisions than most other projects can allow.. Mach, the microkernel the Hurd is based on, is not only bloated and slow, but also much too complex. I think the Hurd tried to be the 'perfect' operating system, and they chewed off more than they could handle. It tries to be too clever, too different, too radical. It doesn't try to be _practical_, which is the main goal with Linux.. I don't try to be a threat to MicroSoft, mainly because I don't really see MS as competition. Especially not Windows - the goals of Linux and Windows are simply so different.. In my opinion MS is a lot better at making money than it is at making good operating systems." [The Pragmatist of Free Software: Linus Torvalds Interview hotwired Hiroo Yamagata Aug97 GPL]. A number of points are made here. Linus is happy to be radical, but not 'too radical' - a strong parallel to Gates. But Linus sees zero need for planning his product to survive in a highly competitive marketplace; a head-in-the-sand view, it seems, given the following decade's M$-monopoly tactics. Linus was just as precise the following year: "I changed the Linux copyright license to be the GPL some time in the first half of 1992 (March or April, I think). Before that it had been a very strict license that essentially forbid any commercial distribution at all - mostly because I had hated the lack of a cheaply and easily available UNIX when I had looked for one a year before.. I don't think that there is anything fundamentally superior in the GPL as compared to the BSD license, for example. But the GPL is what _I_ want to program with, because unlike the BSD license it guarantees that anybody who works on the project in the future will also contribute their changes back to the community. And when I do programming in my free time and for my own enjoyment, I really want to have that kind of protection: knowing that when I improve a program those improvements will continue to be available to me and others in future versions of the program.. I'm simply too content doing what I _want_ to do to really have a very negative attitude towards MicroSoft. They make bad products - so what? I don't need to care". [Interview with Linus Torvalds Manuel Martinez, Linux Focus, March 1998]. This free Unix was far from stillborn, but started down the road to proprietisation by personalisation initiating a leadership cult that would keep development in private - though extraordinarily generous - hands. The Linux team approach remains benevolent dictatorship. Linus "works from home as a fellow for the Open Source Development Lab, a corporate-funded consortium created to foster improvements to Linux." But it was Linus's rapid adoption of GPL distribution - to enable trade and development, while entrenching open code and free use - that keeps air in free Linux's lungs. [Leader of the Free World Wired Magazine Nov2003]. It was not long before RMS supplied the requisite patch for the faulty OS/kernel brand: GNU/Linux. Open shallowness would block many clamouring ears, for years, however. A glittering goldmine subverts perspective. The brash hope of BSD's fight with proprietary UNIX romantically prejudices the major attempt, by far, to salvage its promise. It is indeed ironic that the Linux User Groups still so dominated by computer hobbyists put so much energy into defending the openly shallow desire of Linus himself to have a "professional" programming career. A foil was thus set, in the interests of commercial Unix and ultimately against the free Unix, in iconic form. The anti-democratic backlash flies the banner of Open Source. (GNU/)Linux has many selling points. The strongest is its ethical standpoint. So Linux® is a contradiction. It is simply unethical to continue selling a registered product brand, named after an individual, when the key tools for shaping and distributing it are borrowed and unattributed. Just because an opportunist mass follows on in M$-aping style in no way justifies it. Casual self-credit is the mark of Gatesian Open Shallowness, and not 'open-source' - open about sources - at all. It is a new height in career-aggrandising hypocrisy, an ongoing betrayal of freenix's ethical potential. Though unacknowledged directly, the Linux debt to GNU for its portability is explicit: "Linux has succeeded not because the original goal was to make it widely portable and widely available, but because it was based on good design principles and a good development model. This strong foundation made portability and availability easier to achieve.. Linux is a Unix-like operating system, but not a version of Unix.. not a port of Unix. It's a new operating system." "the kernel underwent a major rewrite.. motivated by how to work with a growing community of developers. ..The Alpha port started in 1993, and took about a year to complete. The port wasn't entirely done after a year, but the basics were there. While this first port was difficult, it established some design principles that Linux has followed since, and that have made other ports easier." "..Unix itself is a great success story in terms of portability. The Unix kernel, like many kernels, counts on the existence of C to give it the majority of the portability it needs. Likewise for Linux. For Unix the wide availability of C compilers on many architectures made it possible to port Unix to those architectures. So Unix underscores how important compilers are. The importance of compilers was one reason I chose to license Linux under the GNU Public License (GPL). The GPL was the license for the GCC compiler. I think that all the other projects from the GNU group are for Linux insignificant in comparison. GCC is the only one that I really care about. A number of them I hate with a passion; the Emacs editor is horrible, for example. While Linux is larger than Emacs, at least Linux has the excuse that it needs to be. But basically compilers are really a fundamental need." [Linus Torvalds The Linux Edge in "Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution" O'Reilly Jan1999] The GPL is not in effect a 'credit' for utilising GCC, but a distribution tool complementary to GCC. The contribution of both market mobility tools should be acknowledged, in making - and naming - GNU/Linux. The fact that it is not raises the question of how much ego and status are drivers of the programmer world: "the 'one smart programmer' approach common to Open Source projects"? [Paul Vixie Software Engineering in "Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution" O'Reilly Jan1999] The cauterisation of GPL effect was just as strong internal to Linux: "The GPL requires that works 'derived from' a work licensed under the GPL also be licensed under the GPL. Unfortunately what counts as a derived work can be a bit vague.. any program running on top of Linux would not be considered covered by the GPL.. commercial vendors can write programs for Linux without having to worry about the GPL." [Linus Torvalds The Linux Edge in "Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution" O'Reilly Jan1999] So working in every direction, the conservatising role of Linus's kernel was to supplant the GNU operating system in name, while coopting its public code-base legacy to a privatey branded, commercialising end. This was phase one of proprietary counterrevolution against GNU's freeness, even if unconsciously perpetrated. But Torvald's high intelligence belies his seemingly intentional, 'accidental [counter-]revolutionary' stance. At best, Linus has been responsible for some extremely woolley thinking around the subversion of the GNU tools and codebase, towards proprietary ends. One wonders where it will end up. BSD/386 Berkeley Software Design 1992 + Sun Solaris(SysV) [Draft 09Sep05 - to be cont'd..] |