Communism or Common Sense
[2008-06-06]Steve Ballmer has likened Linux to communism, and he has as much affection for open source proponents as President McCarthy had for communists.
Proprietary software is to free software as magic is to science. Software is a form of knowledge, and as anyone who has opened a book will know, knowledge develops faster when shared. The history of magic, and the history of science are fascinating. Most people aren't aware that it is only relatively recently that the scientific method has provided us with more technology than our older way of inventing things; trial and error.
With software, the shift from withholding knowledge because it provides power to a company, to sharing knowledge because it provides benefit to a society, has happened faster.
Steve Ballmer, who works for a big software company you'll probably have heard of before but which I'll call The Magi, has likened Linux to communism, and he has as much affection for open source proponents as President McCarthy had for communists.
Communism and open source software differ in one very important aspect: Ownership. Communism doesn't have private ownership. But with open source software you can't copy and paste program code into your own software, hide it and then sell it, because that code doesn't belong to you. That code can be used by you as long as you abide by the rules that the owner stipulates, and usually those rules are that if you want to use their code in your software, then your software must also be open source. Even Steve Ballmer must admit that is a lot more freedom than The Magi offer. They don't give you their code. Steve thinks that their secret source is their power, like what differentiates Colonel Sanders from ... uh ... Jamie Oliver.
A lot of people who know about Linux talk about Linux vs Windows. I think the picture is bigger than that. GNU/Linux is the most popular open source operating system for PCs, but it is not the only one. Others include the BSD family; FreeBSD, OpenBSD, i.a.. There is OpenSolaris, and Plan 9, and some younger ones, like Syllable, HelenOS, and Haiku. There is FreeDOS which is more useful than you might think, and some niche operating systems like KolibriOS, Visopsys. And there's more.
My point is not the number of competitors of Windows. Although their adoption might grow, I don't imagine that they will all be competitors. My point is that software freedom results in the kind of breadth and depth of diversity found in a jungle. For example, with each new version of Windows comes a new look and feel, generally more appealing than the last. However with many of the open source operating systems you can choose from a multitude of "window managers" that offer different levels of functionality and performance. There is Gnome and KDE, and XFCE and IceWM, Fluxbox and Enlightenment. You can use combinations of them, and even throw a compositor on top like Compiz Fusion, which is like a superset of Windows Vista's Aero. So not only are there lots of different kinds of similar animals in the software freedom jungle, there is a whole ecosystem; many animals filling every niche, and evolving with each other. (GNU/Linux is available in different "distributions", where combinations of software are packaged together to make things simple and convenient for the user, effectively turning the jungle into the kind of friendly, Eden-like garden you might find pictures of in Jehovah's Witness publications.)
There is another likeness between magic versus science, and proprietary software versus free software, and that is its reason for existing. Magic (which I will define by its etymology) originally existed to promote the goals of a Median tribe called the Magi. Similarly the primary objective of a publicly listed company is to maximise shareholder return on investment. That is not a bad thing. Companies are important, and software companies usually achieve shareholder return on investment by creating software that consumers will want to use. Science, on the other hand, is usually advanced because people want to know more, and then share their knowledge. Similarly open source software comes about because people write it to scratch their own itch, and then share their knowledge. In both cases the primary objective is to satisfy the scientist or the end user. Considering I am not a shareholder in The Magi, but I am an end user, you can see which of the two models suits me better.
What's more, in the long run it may suit The Magi better too. I know Steve would argue with me until he's blue in the face and I would have to concede that in terms of running billion dollar multinationals he definitely has the more impressive track record. But I seldom withhold my opinion, no matter how unfounded. And I suspect that his secret source isn't as precious as he thinks, considering the open source development model would allow him to retain both ownership and control. When companies like IBM and Novell start to put Linux PCs on the desktops of their corporate customers, and governments, schools and universities start to work with and teach on Linux, and when OpenOffice.org integrates seamlessly with Google Docs and as a result The Magi's two flagship software products have been commoditised, then the benefits of contributing to the growing multitude of open source developers will outweigh the costs.
The Magi know that they have a big challenge turning their company to move in a new direction, in an environment where their traditional competitive advantage is now a commodity, and consumers pay for a service or associated offerings instead of the software that the service uses. I imagine that the open source movement can help them with that. In fact, they might be the only thing that can really help them with that. And I think that Steve might want to rethink the attitude over the next few years.
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