The Virtual Lawyer - The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth

by David Crocker

Published 1999-04-01    Printer-friendly version

Every once in a while a really good idea comes along, an idea so good that the startle reflex takes over and we wonder why no one has thought of it before. Well, such is the case with the "open-source" movement. The reason why no one has thought of it is because it is not a new idea at all. Geeks have known about open-source all along and the geeks are now driving its revival. When you think geek, think of Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, the operating system now being popularized by Red Hat Software. Torvalds created Linux in 1989, hoping to exceed the capabilities of current Unix-based systems. When he created Linux, he may have also reinvigorated a movement by making his source code public. Netscape and Apache have since followed suit.

A New-Old Idea

Back in 1968, when dinosaurs ruled the earth, there was ARPANET, the Internet's forebear. As originally conceived, ARPANET was a defense project designed to create a network of networks that could survive the holes that a nuclear war would blow in it. The system was also created to permit researchers to share their source code and information on projects involving that code. Hence, open source was born and gathered further momentum when Unix was invented in 1969. Unix source code was distributed freely and as ARPANET evolved into the Internet in the late seventies, developers created a host of open-source software to control and expand the net's use. One such success story is "sendmail," used to this day to control nearly three-quarters of e-mail servers. The open source movement fell on hard times in the early eighties, however, when PCs hit the scene.

The PC Pucker

With the advent of PC mania, software development went retail. The law reflected this change in focus: Congress, under pressure from the emerging software industry, amended the Copyright Act to protect source code as a literary work. The proprietary rush was on and developers began writing software for MS-DOS at a feverish pace, hoping to find the killer app that would fund the retirement plan. At this point, developers stopped distributing source code, which became instead a closely-guarded trade secret. Software was distributed in object code form only. The only way a developer could see another's source code was through strict licensing. Microsoft led the way. After all, they controlled the OS and they weren't sharing their code.

How Does It Work?

Open-source works like this:

Official Releases. At measured intervals, the individuals or groups responsible for a piece of software designates some iteration as an official release. Linus Torvalds, for instance, recently released version 2.2.0 of the Linux kernel.

Licenses. Open-source software is not freeware. Like other software, it is distributed under license. The most common type of license is the General Public License (GPL), also known as "copylefting."Anyone may modify a GPL program, but the developer must also make his or her own work open-source under a similar license. In this way, all developers are duty-bound to share their work with others. Linux, for example, is distributed under a GPL license. Even commercial outfits like Caldera Systems and Red Hat Software make some of their Linux work available to other developers. Netscape and Sun both have their own versions of the GPL called, respectively, the Mozilla Public License and Community Software License.

Another form of open-source license is the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) license. Under a BSD license, anyone may modify the program and distribute it for a fee paid to the licensor. Unlike the GPL license, however, there is no requirement to give anything back. The FreeBSD and Apache Web Server programs are both distributed under the BSD license. Some developers gripe that the BSD license tempts folks to spin off their own proprietary stuff but in practice this seems not to have happened. Many developers decide in practice to turn at least some of their work back to the public anyway.

The Downside

Yes, open-source does have a few drawbacks. Here are a couple: First, if everyone is in charge of development, then no one is. Businesses using open-source software often don't have anyone in particular to blame when things don't go quite right. Second, and most important, much open-source software is difficult to use. It's good for back-end power geeks, but not for the average consumer.

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Clarion Magazine ISSN 1718-9942