Here is a compilation of information about the open-source movement in software development. I think it has particular benefits for accessibility including the following: affordable solutions for people who are often economically poor; testing by consumer partners in a variety of environments; increased use of common-denominator technology standards; and substantial labor volunteered by people with disabilities in the development of software which reliably meets our needs. Regards, Jamal ---------- From the web site http://www.opensource.org The Open Source Page Open Source: the Future is Here Open-source software is an idea whose time has finally come. For twenty years it has been building momentum in the technical cultures that built the Internet and the World Wide Web. Now it's breaking out into the commercial world, and that's changing all the rules. Are you ready? This site offers several complementary views of the open-source phenomenon. You can read a brief introduction, a techie/hacker's case, a businessperson's case, and a customer's case. Still not convinced? Then read some third-party case studies. Those of you who regard Microsoft products as the acme of computing can even read the Halloween Documents, two annotated Microsoft internal white papers on open source. The phrase `open source' has been registered as a certification mark. You can examine the Open Source Definition that sets the conditions for use of this mark. You can read about software that qualifies and our branding program. We've created an Open Source Wire Service for the press. To subscribe, send email to wire-service@opensource.org with the e-mail address you want subscribed, and a sentence explaining who you write for. This address will only be used for press releases. If you aren't writing for the press, don't worry! You'll be able to see our announcements on Usenet newsgroups and elsewhere, and we'll have an announcement list server up for you soon! You can read a brief history of the open-source concept, and browse links to other open-source-related resources. We also maintain a page answering Frequently Asked Questions. You can see what's new on this site. We're looking for an open-source logo. You can submit yours on the contest page. This site is still evolving as we think through the implications of open source in the commercial world. We don't claim to have all the answers yet, so mail us with your thoughts and criticisms. Also, please send us URLs of articles and papers on commercial trials of the open-source model, Linux, and related topics. Eric S. Raymond ---------- Introduction to Open Source The basic idea behind open source is very simple. When programmers on the Internet can read, redistribute, and modify the source for a piece of software, it evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, people fix bugs. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional software development, seems astonishing. We in the open-source community have learned that this rapid evolutionary process produces better software than the traditional closed model, in which only a very few programmers can see source and everybody else must blindly use an opaque block of bits. The Open Source pages exist to make this case to the commercial world. Eric S. Raymond ---------- The Case for Open Source: Hackers' Version (Note: if you're a non-techie reading this, you may have some negative and wrong ideas about what the term `hacker' means. Do your homework and come back.) The Technical Case - a No-Brainer Internet and Unix hackers, as a rule, already understand the technical case for open source quite well. It's a central part of our engineering tradition, part of our working method almost by instinct. It's how we made the Internet work. This case has been formalized in The Cathedral and the Bazaar. This paper was behind Netscape's pioneering decision to take its client software open-source. But, to us, the paper wasn't necessary to make the case. We all know how astonishingly reliable the running gears of the Internet are relative to their nearest commercial equivalents. TCP/IP, DNS, sendmail, Perl, Apache...replacing these with closed software would barely be even conceivable, let alone feasible. Developers from other traditions should start with the paper, read the business case, and proceed to the Frequently Asked Questions list. The Economic Case - Why You Won't Starve A lot of hackers who already know that open-source is better than closed are reluctant to push the idea because they're afraid they might lose their paying jobs. Fortunately, there are excellent reasons to believe that this fear is groundless. Read them here. The Marketing Case - New Territory for Techies The case that needs to be made to most techies isn't about the concept of open source, but the name. Why not call it, as we traditionally have, free software? One direct reason is that the term ``free software'' is horribly ambiguous in ways that lead to conflict. You can read an extended discussion of this problem. But the real reason for the re-labeling is a marketing one. We're trying to pitch our concept to the corporate world now. We have a winning product, but our positioning, in the past, has been awful. The term ``free software'' has a load of fatal baggage; to a businessperson, it's too redolent of fanaticism and flakiness and strident anti-commercialism. Mainstream corporate CEOs and CTOs will never buy ``free software'', manifestos and clenched fists and all. But if we take the very same tradition, the same people, and the same free-software licenses and change the label to ``open source'' - that, they'll buy. Some hackers find this hard to believe, but that's because they're techies who think in concrete, substantial terms and don't understand how important image is when you're selling something. In marketing appearance is reality. The appearance that we're willing to climb down off the barricades and work with the corporate world counts for as much as the reality of our behavior, our convictions, and our software. You can read some practical marketing advice written for hackers, and an excellent article on how to write press releases. Eric S. Raymond ---------- The Business Case for Open Source The open-source model has a lot to offer the business world. It's a way to build open standards as actual software, rather than paper documents. It's a way that many companies and individuals can collaborate on a product that none of them could achieve alone. It's the rapid bug-fixes and the changes that the user asks for, done to the user's own schedule. The open-source model also means increased security; because code is in the public view it will be exposed to extreme scrutiny, with problems being found and fixed instead of being kept secret until the wrong person discovers them. And last but not least, it's a way that the little guys can get together and have a good chance at beating a monopoly. Of all these benefits, the most fundamental is increased reliability. And if that's too abstract for you, you should think about how closed sources make the Year 2000 problem worse and why they might very well kill your business. The Reliability Problem Gerald P. Weinberg once famously observed that "If builders built houses the way programmers built programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization". He was right. Up to now, the reliability of most software has been atrociously bad. The foundation of the business case for open-source is high reliability. Open-source software is peer-reviewed software; it is more reliable than closed, proprietary software. Mature open-source code is as bulletproof as software ever gets. This is a radical idea to many businesspeople. Many have a belief that open-source software is necessarily not `professional', that it is shoddily made and more prone to fail than closed software. The Internet's infrastructure makes the best possible refutation. Consider DNS, sendmail, the various open-source TCP/IP stacks and utility suites, and the open-source scripting languages such as Perl that are behind most `live' content on the Web. These are the running gears of the Internet. ( Read this for a look at what would happen if they disappeared). These open-source programs have demonstrated a level of reliability and robustness under rapidly changing conditions (including a huge and rapid increase in the Internet's size) that, considered against the performance record of even the best closed commercial software, is nothing short of astonishing. You can read an extended technical argument for the superior reliability of general open-source software in The Cathedral and the Bazaar. This paper was behind Netscape's pioneering decision to take its client software open-source. It describes a bazaar style of managing software development that depends on open source and leads to high reliability and quality. The business implication of this technical case is clear. Eventually, bazaar-mode peer review will come to be considered a necessary condition for highest quality. In many market niches, software that has not been peer-reviewed simply won't be perceived as good enough to compete. The Payoff for Software Producers Bazaar-mode development seems to reverse our normal expectations about software development; more programmers are better (at least, as long as the capacity of the project leader or project core group to handle integration isn't exceeded). Even a small open-source project can muster more brains to improve a piece of software than most development shops can possibly afford. You'll see the following gains under the open-source model whether you're producing software for internal use or for resale. Advantage: Development Speed It follows that commercial developers leveraging the bazaar mode should be able to grab, and keep, a substantial initiative advantage over those that don't. But there's more; the first commercial developer in a given market niche to switch to this mode may gain substantial advantages over later ones. Why? Because the pool of talent available for bazaar recruitment is limited. The first bazaar project in a given niche is more likely to attract the best co-developers to invest time in it. Because they've invested the time, they're more likely to stick with it. Advantage: Lower Overhead Switching to the open-source model should also be good for a significant overhead reduction in per-project software production costs. The open-source model allows software shops to (in effect) outsource some of their work, paying for it in values less tangible than money. (But perhaps not less economically significant; the increased speed with which an outside co-developer can have a needed bug fix will often translate into a substantial opportunity gain for that customer.) This means smaller shops will be able to handle bigger projects. The Payoff for Software Merchants If you produce software for sale, you'll see two more advantages: Advantage: Closeness to the Customer One of the most often-repeated pieces of management advice is ``Stay close to the customer.'' In today's fast-moving, short-product-cycle business climate it's more important than ever to do that - to understand almost as soon as they do what the customers want and be able to rapidly respond to those needs. If you sell software, what better way to do this than by co-opting your customers' engineers to help your development? It's worth pointing out that the open-source, bazaar method resembles the way many successful Japanese companies have done consumer product development; get a product to market that works but is not perfect, and iterate quickly based upon customer feedback to reach the combination of features that the customers need and want. This has turned out to be especially valuable for high technology products (laptops, personal assistants, cellphones, etc) that people don't know they need, or what features they need. Advantage: Broader Market An important side-effect of the open-source model will be a much wider platform range for your product. Open-source authors frequently find themselves receving, for free, port changes for operating systems and environments they barely know exist and can't afford developers to support. Each such port, of course, widens the market appeal of the product. Four Ways To Win Now for a higher-level, investor's point of view. There are at least four known business models for making money with open source: * Support Sellers In this model, you (effectively) give away the software product, but sell distribution, branding, and after-sale service. This is what (for example) Red Hat and Cygnus are doing. * Loss Leader In this model, you give away open-source as a loss-leader and market positioner for closed software. This is what Netscape is doing. * Widget Frosting In this model, a hardware company (for which software is a necessary adjunct but strictly a cost rather than profit center) goes open-source in order to get better drivers and interface tools cheaper. * Accessorizing Selling accessories -- books, compatible hardware, complete systems with open-source software pre-installed. It's easy to trivialize this (open-source T-shirts, coffee mugs, Linux penguin dolls) but at least the books and hardware underly some clear successes: O'Reilly Associates, SSC, and VA Research are among them. The open-source culture's exemplars of commercial success have, so far, been service sellers or loss leaders. Nevertheless, there is good reason to believe that the clearest near-term gains in open-source will be in widget frosting. For widget-makers (such as semiconductor or peripheral-card manufacturers), interface software is not even potentially a revenue source. Therefore the downside of moving to open source is minimal. (Frank Hecker of Netscape proposes more models and discusses them in detail in his paper Setting Up Shop.) There are even, as it turns out, people willing to argue that the open-source model could work well economically for hardware design (and here's another proposal along similar lines). But that's a separate question for another day. Standard Objections There are a couple of standard business objections to the open-source model that deserve to be exploded. We cover these on the Frequently Asked Questions list. Eric S. Raymond ---------- The Customer Case for Open Source Beyond all the reliability and quality gains we've discussed elsewhere, the open-source model has one overwhelming advantage for the software customer: you aren't a prisoner. Because you can get access to source, you can survive the collapse of your vendor. You're no longer totally at the mercy of unfixed bugs. You're not shackled to every strategic decision your vendor makes. And if your vendor's support fees become exorbitant, you can buy support from elsewhere. For this reason alone, every software customer should absolutely demand open source and refuse to deal with software vendors who close and shroud their code. It's a matter of controlling your own destiny. (And yes, we'll say the M-word...don't you want to be out from under Microsoft's thumb?) You Are Your Developers' Customer! This customer case for open source may apply even if the software you're concerned about was developed internally and never for sale on the open market. We hear of one case, for example, in which a few employees at a large Internet-equipment manufacture developed a distributed printing spooler that is very important for company use, but completely unrelated to the company's normal expertise or line of business. Now...what happens when those employees leave? Under the closed model, this large company would be stuck...with decaying software or an expensive retraining job. But now imagine that the company released the spooler as open source and helped it find an interest community on the Internet. Now, when the developers leave, someone else might step in at no monetary cost to take over the software. At the very least, there's a known pool of people with an interest from which the company might hire replacements. Open source empowers the customer, even when the producer and customer are part of the same firm. Freedom from Legal Entanglements Using most commercial software involves software licenses, and tracking software copies and usage. This demands record keeping, and legal exposure. Both raise costs. Thus, juggling software licenses and copies is a source of costs to businesses, and legal risk to businesses and individuals. In many (most? all?) businesses, such tracking is imperfect, sometimes intentionally, usually not. Any such imperfection exposes the guilty party to legal actions (fines, litigation, arrest) due to breaking laws and violating copyrights; an intellectual property quagmire. Most/all open source software can be freely copied and used. There are no licenses to track and thus no related costs, or legal risks. Standard Objections There are a couple of standard customer objections to the open-source model that deserve to be exploded. We cover these on the Frequently Asked Questions list. You probably also want to look at the business case for open source for discussion of the reliability gains from this model. Eric S. Raymond ---------- Case Studies and Press Coverage Here you can learn what third parties have to say about the power of the open-source model. Much of this material discusses Linux, but the lessons are not specific to Linux; they apply to open source in general. White Papers In Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 versus UNIX, a Microsoft Certified Professional makes an extremely powerful reliability, features, and cost-of-ownership case for Unix over NT, focusing on Linux and other open-source Unixes. The paper concludes with an interesting list of Fortune 500 deployments. You can also read the Halloween Document, an annotated version of an internal Microsoft white paper on Linux and open source that attempts to define Microsoft's competitive response. In the process it makes some rather astonishing concessions... Case Studies and Trials Replacing Windows NT Server with Linux: Quinn Coldiron of the University of Nebraska Press explains what he learned when they replaced a Novell Netware server with NT, why NT was impossible to live with, and how Linux saved the day. Must-read for anyone planning a departmental or enterprise network. In 1995, at United Railway Signal Group, Inc., Novell Netware and Windows NT and Corel SCSI were interacting to produce a system administrator's nightmare. Progressive Computer Concepts replaced all that with a Linux enterprise network that works, and proved that Linux Means Business. Jazznet: a case study of a networked cluster of Linux PCs used as a poor man's supercomputer at NIST. The study highlights the high performance, high stability, and excellent cost-effectiveness of the Linux solution relative to a more traditional configuration. Must-read for anyone managing scientific or engineering computing. This letter to TechWeb described a rather typical history of a Chief Technology officer, badly burned by NT, who found a rescue with Linux. Many, many more examples of Linux in business are collected on the Linux Business Applications page. Yahoo! and FreeBSD: a co-founder of Yahoo! explains why they gave up on closed Internet platforms and made Yahoo! a success with FreeBSD. We welcome references to other case studies and trials. Market Analysis A major market analysis by Datapro find Linux has the highest satisfaction rating among IT managers, and is the only OS other than NT growing in market share. SRI consulting's `Business Intelligence Program' takes a look at The World After Microsoft -- and sees open source. Press Coverage FocusOn Freeware InfoWorld's roundup of its many stories on the Open Source phenomenon. Linux: Not Just For Geeks And College Kids Anymore (Smart Reseller, 11 Feb 1998): General introduction to Linux from a bottom-line perspective. 1997 Best Technical Support Award: InfoWorld explains why open-source users make a better technical-support resource than most vendors. 1997 Best Network Operating System: InfoWorld zeroes in on the power of open source. Freed Software Winning Support, Making Waves (Wired, 30 Jan 1998). Bonk! A New Windows Security Hole (Wired, 9 Jan 1998): Excellent explanation of the superior security of open-source OSs. NT? `No Thanks,' say pro-Linux rank-and-file The 35th Design Automation conference in June 1998 reveals a strong groundswell of support for Unix among engineers. Engineers Speak Out: Linux vs. Windows NT, Part 1 More news from the Engineering Design Automation world, revealing that many Linux-loving engineers would rather quit their job than switch. The Value of Free Software (Byte, Dec 1997) Linux Focus: The Borg takes on NASA multi-processing Explains how and why a university in England opted to replace their Cray supercomputer with a Linux-based system of networked PCs. Web Review's roundup of its open-source stories, including not just current developments but the history and personalities behind them. Eric S. Raymond ---------- The Open Source Definition (Version 1.0) Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of an open-source program must comply with the following criteria: 1. Free Redistribution The license may not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license may not require a royalty or other fee for such sale. (rationale) 2. Source Code The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of downloading the source code, without charge, via the Internet. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed. (rationale) 3. Derived Works The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software. (rationale) 4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code. The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution of "patch files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software. (rationale) 5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups. The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons. (rationale) 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor. The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research. (rationale) 7. Distribution of License. The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties. (rationale) 8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product. The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program's being part of a particular software distribution. If the program is extracted from that distribution and used or distributed within the terms of the program's license, all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the original software distribution. (rationale) 9. License Must Not Contaminate Other Software. The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software. (rationale) 10. Example Licenses. The GNU GPL, BSD, X Consortium, and Artistic licenses are examples of licenses that we consider conformant to the Open Source Definition. So is the MPL. Bruce Perens wrote the first draft of this document as `The Debian Free Software Guidelines', and refined it using the comments of the Debian developers in a month-long e-mail conference in June, 1997. He removed the Debian-specific references from the document to create the `Open Source Definition'. Eric S. Raymond ---------- Open Source Products The Internet is full of open-source software in heavy commercial use. Our favorite examples, discussed elsewhere, include * Apache, which runs over 50% of the world's web servers * Perl, which is the engine behind most of the `live content' on the World Wide Web. * BIND, the software that provides the DNS (domain name service) for the entire Internet. * sendmail, the most important and widely used email transport software on the Internet. DNS and sendmail are especially interesting because they're `category killers'; not only are they extremely capable and robust, they're so good that no commercial competition has ever been successfulat replacing them as the most widely used product on their respective categories. On this page, though, we focus on a narrower category; we list the vendors who are actually selling open-source-based solutions successfully, or have committed to doing so in the near future. If you know of one that ought to be added, tell us. IBM In mid-June 1998, IBM chose the open-source Apache webserver to support and bundle with its WebSphere suite. Cygnus Solutions, Inc. One of the pioneers in commercial support for open-source software, with particularly strong offerings in security software and development tools. Cyclades, Inc. Cyclades manufactures multiport-serial and networking cards. They have a long history of cooperating with the open-source world. Their drivers for Linux, freeBSD, BSD/OS, and DOS are open-source. Linux Mall Linux Mall is a clearinghouse where Linux users and commercial software developers can find each other. The breadth of the Mall's product line and its sales volume have been skyrocketing since the company's inception. The Mall's sales suggest that Linux is already the number two operating system in the world, and their sales projections show Linux's user base rivalling Microsoft's within a few years. Red Hat Software An extremely successful Linux vendor. They expect to ship 400,000 paid copies of Red Hat Linux in 1998, and believe this may represent as little as 10% of their total volume, meaning there could be as many as four million copies installed before 1999. Their sales have doubled every year since 1995. Riverace Corporation Riverace sells support for an open-source product, Adaptive Communications Environment (ACE), a powerful C++ class library and communications software framework. This product is used by several thousand people developing communications software and embedded systems. Paid support licensees include Lucent Technologies and Sandia National Laboratories. The source and documentation for this library is publicly available on the Riverace web site. C2Net Software, Inc. C2Net Software uses two popular Open Source packages in its commercial product line, Apache and SSLeay. Its Stronghold product, based on both Apache and SSLeay is the number one secure webserver worldwide -- it has greater marketshare than either Netscape or Microsoft's offerings, and the company does more than a million dollars a year worth of business. C2Net also sells cryptography-specific products based on SSLeay. Netscape Communications, Inc. On January 22 1998, Netscape announced its intention to release its client software, including Netscape Communicator and Netscape Navigator, as open source. Netscape is, of course, a Fortune 500 corporation and widely recognized as one of the leading companies in the Internet and software sector. Walnut Creek Software Walnut Creek has built a flourishing business around publishing open-source software. They offer a broad line of CD-ROMS featuring Linux and FreeBSD, graphics and design software, Web tools, programming and development code, desktop-publishing software, and much more. Cobalt Microserver, Inc. Cobalt Microserver makes an extremely capable, low-cost, small-form-factor Web server appliance called the Cobalt Qube. These things are apparently selling like hotcakes. Cobalt has announced full support for the Open Source model and released its Linux port for the MIPS chip to the net. This product won the PC Magazine's Editors' Choice Award for workgroup servers. Whistle Communications, Inc. Whistle Communications builds an all-in-one Internet Appliance called the InterJet; it won PC Computing's 1997 Most Valuable Product Best Networking Hardware award. The concept for the InterJet is that it provides everything a small office needs to get up and productive on the Internet--including full networking and firewall functionality integrated with mail, web and file service. The InterJet combines some of the high end capabilities from various Open Source projects with a system design that delivers on ease of use and administration by non-technical users. The InterJet is based on FreeBSD, Apache, Samba and NetATalk, and Whistle has used and contributed to several Open Source projects since 1996. Caldera, Inc. (To be added.) Open Source Branding We intend to develop a branding program, with an open-source logo, that will grant privileges to vendors who adopt the open-source model. This work is in progress. Eric S. Raymond ---------- History of the Open Source effort The prehistory of the Open Source campaign includes the entire history of Unix, Internet free software, and the hacker culture. The `open source' label itself came out of a strategy session held on February 3rd 1998 in Palo Alto, California. The people present included Todd Anderson, Chris Peterson (of the Foresight Institute), John `maddog' Hall and Larry Augustin (both of Linux International), Sam Ockman (of the Silicon Valley Linux User's Group), and Eric Raymond. We were reacting to the Netscape's announcement that it planned to give away the source of its browser. One of us (Raymond) had been invited out by Netscape to help them plan the release and followon actions. We realized that the Netscape announcement had created a precious window of time within which we might finally be able to get the corporate world to listen to what we have to teach about the superiority of an open development process. We realized it was time to dump the confrontational attitude that has been associated with `free software' in the past and sell the idea strictly on the same pragmatic, business-case grounds that motivated Netscape. We brainstormed about tactics and a new label. `Open source', contributed by Chris Peterson, was the best thing we came up with. Over the next week we worked on spreading the word. Linus Torvalds gave us an all-important imprimatur :-) the following day. Bruce Perens got involved early, offering to trademark `open source' and host this web site. Phil Hughes offered us a pulpit in Linux Journal. Richard Stallman flirted with adopting the term, then changed his mind. The Open Source definition is derived from the Debian Free Software Guidelines. Bruce Perens composed the original draft; it was refined using suggestions of the Debian GNU/Linux Distribution developers in e-mail conference during most of June, 1997. They then voted to approve it as Debian's publicly stated policy. It was revised somewhat and Debian-specific references were removed at the origination of the Open Source Program in February 1998. This story is continuing... 22 Jan 1998: Netscape announces it will release the source code for Navigator. 5 Feb 1998: Palo Alto brainstorming session coins the term `open source'. During the following week, Bruce Perens and ESR launch www.opensource.org and apply for the `Open Source' certification mark. Early February: Spirited debate within the hacker community: `open source' vs. `free software'. This terminological debate is understood by all parties to be a proxy for wider issues about the community's relationship to the business world. Meanwhile, the term begins to show up in trade-press articles relating to Linux and the upcoming Netscape release. 23 Feb 1998: Netscape's February 23 press release referred to `open source', and the same day O'Reilly associates agreed to use the term in their press releases and on their web page. 1 Apr 1998: Navigator source is released. Within hours, fixes and enhancements begin pouring in off the net. 7 Apr 1998: Tim O'Reilly's "Freeware Summit Conference" brings together 18 of the movement's leaders. The term `open source' and accompanying economics- and self-interest-based arguments are endorsed by a vote. 14 April 1998: Salon magazine interviews ESR on open source. The message is starting to get out to the mainstream (non-technical) press. April 1998: References to `open source' begin to fly thick and fast in the trade press, with positive spin (see the graph below). Within the hacker community itself the terminological (and underlying ideological) debate winds down, with `open source' emerging as a clear majority choice. Use of the term `free software' begins a reciprocal decline. 7 May 1998: Corel Computer Corporation announces the Netwinder, an inexpensive network computer that uses Linux as its production OS. This is the first major, conscious adoption of the widget frosting model by an established business. 11 May 1998: Corel, parent company of Corel Computer Corporation and publisher of Word Perfect, announces plans to port WordPerfect and its other office software to Linux. 28 May 1998: Sun Microsystems and Adaptec join Linux International -- the first two large established OS and hardware vendors to do so. 22 Jun 1998: IBM announces that it will sell and support Apache as part of its WebSphere suite. The trade press hails this as a breakthrough for open-source software. 10 July 1998: The Economist takes editorial notice of Linux, reporting Datapro's positive findings. The message is beginning to get out in the financial press. 13 July 1998: Computerworld, perhaps the most influential of today's MIS magazines, publishes an interview with ESR on open source. 17 July 1998 Oracle and Informix announce that they will port their databases to Linux. (This follows similar, lower-profile announcements from Computer Associates and Interbase.) August 1998: The Forbes magazine issue with this date (actually out in late July) featured a major article on open source, with Linus Torvalds on the cover. The truly big-time capitalists are beginning to wake up! 10 Aug 1998: Sun Microsystems, clearly feeling the pressure from open source, makes Solaris available under a free license to individual users, also to educational/non-profit/research institutions. 11 Aug 1998: Revision 1.0 of the VinodV memorandum on open source (annotated here as the Halloween Document), is circulated inside Microsoft. 24 Aug 1998: SCO reveals that it is making UnixWare 7 Linux-binary-compatible. This means a proprietary Unix vendor has judged the leading open-source OS a significant source of native applications! 26 Aug 1998: Steve Ballmer, new president of Microsoft, admits "Sure, we're worried." about Apache and Linux -- and says Microsoft is considering disclosing more Windows source. 29 September 1998: Red Hat announces that Intel and Netscape have acquired a minority stake in the leading Linux distributor. Wall Street notices. Much speculation that not all is well between Intel and Microsoft ensues. 14 October 1998: Microsoft issues a statement adducing Linux's existence as evidence that Microsoft does not in fact have an OS monopoly. Eric Rauch has done Lexis-Nexis searches to track the number of references to `open source' (coupled with `netscape', `software', or `linux' to avoid false hits) in American newspapers and magazines. You can see his plot, which shows a steady rise from zero in January 1998 (with a spike in April doubtless due to the April 1 Netscape release). (Unfortunately, Lexis/Nexis rearranged its libraries in August, so later figures won't be comparable to those above.) Eric S. Raymond ---------- Resource Links and Sponsoring Organizations The open-source campaign is supported by the following organizations: Novare provides the home system for Open Source, its net connection, and its support. VA Research provides our main web server. SSC, publisher of Linux Journal, paid for the domain registrations. Linux International was involved early; two board members helped define the Open Source campaign. Netscape Communications is officially cooperating with us in or effort to get `open source' (both term and concept) accepted in the industry. O'Reilly Associates is likewise officially cooperating with us. Other Links * The Free Software Foundation pioneered the concept of free software. * The Cathedral and the Bazaar, the research paper that persuaded Netscape to go open-source. (There's also a sequel, Homesteading the Noosphere) * The Linux Documentation Project is a good way to learn about the most popular open-source operating system. Eric S. Raymond ---------- Frequently Asked Questions about Open Source Isn't it hard to get reliable support for open-source software? Absolutely not! InfoWorld's 1997 `Best Product of the Year' roundup should have demolished this myth once and for all. Read the article to see their analysis, including this quote: ...readers who are using Linux in a business environment said they found the support they received to be far more impressive than what they were used to with commercial software. Linux is not an exception. In fact, business users will generally find that mature open-source products are far more reliable to begin with, and that when support is needed it is dramatically cheaper and easier to get than from closed vendors. But there aren't any real applications for open-source operating systems, are there? Do the Oracle, Informix, and InterBase databases count? How about Word Perfect and the Corel office suite? Have you checked out the ApplixWare and StarOffice suites? We've got all of these and more. We're building and porting more and better applications all the time at a pace closed developers cannot match. Go to the Linux Mall, for example, to learn about the wide selection of office suites and productivity tools now available under Linux. The Linux Business Solutions Project maintains a list of mainstream business applications available under Linux. There's a widespread belief that the population of technical people who have written and maintained most open source up to now don't have the motivation or competence to write `real' office-type applications with user-friendly GUI interfaces. There's some good evidence this belief is false (such as the GIMP, KDE, and Gnome projects). More importantly, there's no good reason to think it's true. Fifteen years ago people were saying "The free software people build some nice toys and demos, but they haven't got what it takes to build real tools". The FSF proved them wrong. Five years ago the same people said "OK, GNU is a nifty programmer's toolkit but they'll never build a viable operating system." Linux proved them wrong again. Now they're saying "OK, so Linux is a nice sandbox for hackers and it does Internet pretty well, but they'll never build decent end-user applications." If the naysayers are right this time, it will be a first. Doesn't closed source help protect against crack attacks? This is exactly backwards, as any cryptographer will tell you. Security through obscurity just does not work. The reason it doesn't work is that security-breakers are a lot more motivated and persistent than good guys (who have lots of other things to worry about). The bad guys will find the holes whether source is open or closed (for a perfect recent example of this see The Tao of Windows NT Buffer Overflow). Closed sources do three bad things. One: they create a false sense of security. Two: they mean that the good guys will not find holes and fix them. Three: they make it harder to distribute trustworthy fixes when a hole is revealed. In fact, open-source operating systems and applications are generally much more security-safe than their closed-source counterparts. When the "Ping o'Death" exploit was revealed in 1997 (for example) Linux had fix patches within hours. Closed-source OSs didn't plug the hole for months. Are you guys opposed to intellectual property rights? The Open Source campaign does not have a position on whether ideas can be owned, whether patents are good or bad, or any of the related controversies. We think the economic self-interest arguments for Open Source are strong enough that nobody needs to go on any moral crusades about it. What's the relationship between open source and Linux? Linux is an open-source operating system, and to date the most dramatically successful open-source platform. It's believed to have somewhere between 4 and 27 million users, with best estimates towards the upper end of that range. Linux is very popular in education, Internet service applications, software development shops, and (increasingly) in small businesses. Several successful companies market Linux and Linux applications. Linux isn't the whole open-source story, however. There are many other open-source operating systems and applications available, including Netscape's Navigator and Communicator client line of Web browsers. How is `open source' related to `free software'? Open Source is a marketing program for free software. It's a pitch for `free software' on solid pragmatic grounds rather than ideological tub-thumping. The winning substance has not changed, the losing attitude and symbolism have. See the discussion of marketing for hackers for more. So that it is clear what kind of software we are talking about, we publish a definition and have made Open Source a `certification mark (a special form of trademark) to be applied only to software that meets that definition. Isn't there another entity called `open source' or `Open Source'? There are several. The term `open source' has a technical meaning in the intelligence community; it refers to publicly accessible intelligence sources such as newspapers. One is a company that distributes the text of large contracts. One is a defunct supplier for NeXT systems. Fortunately, they are all in different trademark categories. How do I use the term `open source'? The phrase `open source' standing by itself is a mass noun. In compounds that use the phrase as an adjectival noun, such as `open-source software', follow normal English usage and hyphenate. It isn't necessary to capitalize the phrase unless referring to the certification mark itself or to the Open Source campaign. Once per document (on or near first citation) it should be noted that Open Source is a trademark. Can you give me some Open Source sound bites to use? The one-sentence version: Open source promotes software reliability and quality by supporting independent peer review and rapid evolution of source code. The one-paragraph version: Open source promotes software reliability and quality by supporting independent peer review and rapid evolution of source code. To be certified as open source, the license of a program must guarantee the right to read, redistribute, modify, and use it freely. For more information, visit the web site, http://www.opensource.org. The full-orchestration, five-part harmony version is this whole site. Eric S. Raymond ---------- End of Document