Opening Code on the Net

But this balance is changing. From the beginning the trend to enclose code on the Internet has bothered many—some because they believe closed code is less efficient than open code, others because they believe closed code interferes with important values of the Internet.

Richard Stallman is in the latter camp. In 1985 Stallman began the Free Software Foundation, with the aim of fueling the growth of open and free software on the Net. A MacArthur Fellow who gave up his career to commit himself to the cause, Stallman has devoted his life to “free” software. In 1984, years before the Net really took off, he began developing an open source operating system. GNU was to be the basis of an open code world where, from the operating system on up, code was open.

Despite its many admirers, GNU was a bit ahead of its time. In the world before easy Internet access, it was hard to coordinate a major project, such as developing an operating system. Early in the 1990s, after an injury had slowed Stallman’s progress, a different project, devoted to similar ideals, overtook GNU.

In 1991, an undergraduate at the University of Helsinki posted on the Internet the kernel of an operating system. This undergraduate was Linus Torvalds; his kernel was the first step in producing Linux. He posted his kernel and invited the world to experiment with it. That experiment would soon become an operating system — a free and open operating system that would come with its source code bundled alongside.¹

People took up the challenge, and slowly, through the early 1990s, they built this kernel into an operating system. They did it in part by marrying Linux's kernel to Stallman’s GNU software (which is why it may be most accurate to call it GNU/Linux).  But whatever its genealogy, by 1998 it had become apparent to all that Linux was going to be an important competitor to the Microsoft operating system. Microsoft may have imagined in 1995 that by 2000 there would be no other server operating system available except Windows NT, but when 2000 came around, there was GNU/Linux, presenting a serious threat to Microsoft in the server market. Now in 2005, Linux-based web servers continue to gain marketshare at the expense of Microsoft systems.⁰

GNU/Linux is amazing in many ways. It is amazing first because it is theoretically imperfect but practically superior. Linus Torvalds rejected what computer science told him was the ideal operating system design,² and instead built an operating system that was designed for a single processor (an Intel 386) and not cross-platform-compatible. Its creative development, and the energy it inspired, slowly turned GNU/Linux into an extraordinarily powerful system. As of this writing, linux has been ported to at least twelve different computer architecture platforms - from the orignal Intel processors, to Apple's PowerPC chip, to Sun SPARC chips, and mobile devices using ARM processors.  Creative hackers have even ported linux to squeeze onto Apple's iPod and old Atari systems. Although initially designed to speak only one language, GNU/Linux has become the lingua franca of open source operating systems.

What makes a system open source is a commitment among its developers to keep its core code public—to keep the hood of the car unlocked. That commitment is not just a wish. Stallman encoded it in a contract that sets the terms that control the future use of much open source software. At the top of each and every source code document in GNU/Linux lies a human-readable block of text dicating the terms under which the software may be used and copied. This is the Free Software Foundation’s General Public License (GPL), which requires that any code licensed with GPL (as Linux is) keep its source free. GNU/Linux was developed by an extraordinary collection of hackers worldwide only because its code was open for others to work on.

Its code, in other words, sits in the commons.³ Anyone can take it and use it as she wishes. Anyone can take it and come to understand how it works. The code of GNU/Linux is like a research program whose results are always published for others to see. Everything is public; anyone, without having to seek the permission of anyone else, may join the project.

Although the GNU/Linux project is arguably the most important element in the future of open code on the Internet, it is not the only one. Another critical example is the Mozilla Firefox browser which grew out of Netscape's development efforts.  Netscape opened its browser code to the public in 1998 by creating an ad-hoc group called Mozilla.org. The Mozilla developers then, without any further blessing or permission from Netscape, created entirely new products, such as Mozilla Firefox.  Anyone can now download the Firefox source code from Mozilla.org, and Firefox is now the base from which Netscape's browser is built; anyone can take it and improve it or extend it.  Although Netscape no longer directly funds Mozilla.org's efforts, the success of the Firefox browser and the support of companies like IBM and Novell for Linux indicate that the near future of application space code on the Internet will in important ways be open source.⁴

Footnotes

⁰ Netcraft, "March 2005 Web Server Survey Finds 60 Million Sites," March 1, 2005. Available at http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/03/01/march_2005_web_server_survey_finds_60_million_sites.html (visited March 17, 2005).
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¹ For more on the history of Linux, see Glyn Moody, Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution. (Cambridge: Perseus, 2002). Edit Delete

² At the time Linux was developed, the dominant thinking among computer scientists was against a monolithic operating system operating out of a single kernel and in favor of a “microkernel”-based system. MINIX, a microkernel system, was the primary competitor at the time. Torvalds consciously rejected this “modern” thinking and adopted the “traditional” model for Linux; see “The Tanenbaum-Torvalds Debate,” in Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution, edited by Chris DiBona et al. (Sebastopol, Calif.: O’Reilly & Associates, 1999), 221–52. Edit Delete

³ Technically, it does not sit in the public domain. Code from these open source projects is licensed. GNU/Linux is licensed under the GNU GPL, which limits the possible use you can make of Linux; essentially, you cannot take the public part and close it, and you cannot integrate the open part with the closed; see Bruce Perens, “The Open Source Definition,” in DiBona et al., Open Sources, 181–82. But for purposes of future open source development, the code sits in the commons. On the idea and values of the commons, see, for example, Michael A. Heller, “The Tragedy of the Anticommons: Property in the Transition from Marx to Markets,” Harvard Law Review 111 (1998): 621; Stephen M. McJohn, “Fair Use and Privatization in Copyright,” San Diego Law Review 35 (1998): 61; Mark A. Lemley, “The Economics of Improvement in Intellectual Property Law,” Texas Law Review 75 (1997): 989; Mark A. Lemley, “Romantic Authorship and the Rhetoric of Property,” Texas Law Review 75 (1997): 873; Jessica Litman, “The Public Domain,” Emory Law Journal 39 (1990): 965; Carol M. Rose, “The Several Futures of Property: Of Cyberspace and Folk Tales, Emission Trades and Ecosystems,” Minnesota Law Review 83 (1998): 129. Edit Delete

⁴ See, for example, Stephen Shankland, “Big Blue Gives Green Light to Linux,” CNET News.com, February 16, 1999, available at http://news.com.com/2100-1001-221739.html?legacy=cnet; Stephen Shankland, “Big Blue Latches onto Linux,” CNET News.com, February 18, 1999, available at http://news.com.com/2100-1001-221830.html?legacy=cnet. Edit Delete