Raymond’s 1997 Web manifesto, ““The Cathedral and the Bazaar,’’ made the case that open-source software–programs independently created and freely circulated by hackers for their own pleasure and the common good–can compete with, and even beat, the revenue machines in Redmond, Wash., and Silicon Valley. The prime contender is Linux, an operating system created in 1991 by a Finnish student, and now used by an estimated 10 million people, not all of whom sport pocket protectors. Linux wins accolades for its versatility and its stability, but generates passion by its ideology: a no-cost distribution model and accessible ““source code’’ (the arcane computer language that tells computers what to do). Raymond knows this, and charms the crowd with a two-hour talk, comparing the movement to the ““gift economy’’ of Kalahari tribesmen in Africa. One listener pipes up that Linux might work for his company, and the crowd erupts. ““You’ve seen the Source and it’s good!’’ someone shouts. ““Free the Source!’’ yells another. Inevitably, a third person calls out, ““Use the Source, Luke!''
To a surprising extent, people are already using it–and have been for years. Free software, with an explicit invitation to tinker with and improve its openly circulated source code was the rule in the early days of computing, before Bill Gates figured out how to make megabucks from the proprietary alternative–regarding code as the crown jewels, and calling unauthorized users thieves. Then came the Internet, built on open standards and an infrastructure owned by no one. Unasked, people created open-source programs like Sendmail, the dominant means of sending messages on the Net. In addition, the leading software used in Web-site servers is Apache, a free system where development is guided by a board of wizards apparently motivated more by altruism than a need for a warehouseful of Porsches. And last year Netscape created an open-source browser. ““When people ask me whether open source is credible,’’ says publisher and software maker Tim O’Reilly, ““I ask, “Do you believe in the Internet?’ ''
The current wave of source-oids embrace the idea of a sharing community, but also believe their software-building model is practical, and in many cases superior. Eric Raymond explains in his essay that companies like Microsoft are like painstakingly slow cathedral builders, while open-sourcers emulate the model of unfettered bazaars. Not only do ideas flourish there, but the teeming population, despite the apparent street chaos, self-organizes to provide people the goods they want. When it comes to fixing software bugs, the cathedral model fails–too few people are granted knowledge of the way the entire program is coded, so they can’t figure out the more subtle flaws. (Maybe that’s why the new versions of Windows are always way late.) In the bazaar, however, ““bugs turn shallow pretty quick when exposed to a thousand eager co-developers pounding on every release.’’ Open source’s poster child is Linux (rhymes with cynics). It’s the kernel (the central component) of an operating system, the big enchilada of programming. Its creator was Linus Torvalds, then a 21-year-old student at the University of Helsinki, who simply wanted something on his home computer that worked like the complicated UNIX system at his school. Still living with his parents, he hacked a version he wanted to show to friends. He posted it on the Internet. In a year, his user base grew from five to a hundred. He never considered charging for it, never thought of keeping the code secret. People started e-mailing him comments, and then, unsolicited, sent him software patches with corrections and new features. Eventually, Torvalds became captain of a growing team of unpaid developers that he now estimates at more than a thousand strong. He allows companies like Red Hat and Caldera to sell copies of the software (to those without the patience or know-how to download and install it for free), as long as they don’t restrict users from copying it or tinkering with it.
Torvalds says that if he were to drop off the face of the earth, Linux development would continue. In a sense the community owns it. Linux advocates celebrate this: ““There’s no company to screw it up,’’ says Sam Ockman, 24-year-old head of Penguin Computers (named after Tux, Linux’s official mascot). Software companies that do sell or support Linux can contribute to new versions while leaving the decisions about what finally goes in to the high holy masters (Torvalds and his trusted lieutenants) who make those judgments–based on technical criteria, not marketing ones. While naysayers like analyst Merv Adrian of the Giga Group contend Linux is still ““a cult product,’’ Torvalds wryly notes that his nerdy little system has grown pretty impressively for a hard-to-use product with few popular applications. ““It has scaled from one person to millions,’’ he says. ““If it scales just a few more orders of magnitude it will be on every person’s desktop in the world.''
Privately, Microsoft is fretting about this. In an internal memo company engineer Vinod Valloppillil warned that Linux and open source ““poses a direct, short-term revenue threat to Microsoft.’’ In the long run, he worried, the open-source model’s ““free exchange of ideas’’ could hurt the Redmondites even more. Publicly, though, Microsoft scoffs at the very idea of people writing software and neglecting to cash in on it. Vice president Ed Muth compares the Linux crowd to the merry men of Robin Hood–appealing rogues, perhaps, but not the sort you’d hire to baby-sit. ““No one was depending on Robin Hood to make the trains run on time, or provide automated transactions at their bank,’’ he says.
But thousands of people are depending on Linux to perform critical tasks–and generally claiming that they find that it doesn’t crash as often as Windows NT, Microsoft’s industrial-strength operating system. Linux helps make the trains run on time at places like NASA, Southwestern Bell and Boeing. The numbers can only increase as companies write versions of their software that run on the system, expanding the Linux’s range from corporate uses like servers to end-user tasks. Derek Burney, a VP at Corel, says his company will release the tools they’ve created to convert apps like WordPerfect to Linux: ““That’s why we’re confident that in a year’s time virtually any Windows application could conceivably be running on Linux.’’ This process will not only win new converts but allow Linux enthusiasts in the corporate world to spread the Source throughout their workplaces. ““When we announced our intention to deliver all our products on Linux, people suddenly were pointing to the Linux disks they had hidden under their desks,’’ says Mark Jarvis, a VP at database king Oracle.
Will this mark the passage of Linux from a geek delight to a tool of the common user? Will open source prevail and become, as Tim O’Reilly predicts, ““the Intel inside’’ of the next wave of software? Larry Augustin certainly thinks so. As a Stanford grad student in 1993, he stumbled across Linux. Impressed with its speed and economy, he began installing systems for friends, so much so that he abandoned his collaboration with two friends on an Internet start-up. Now he heads his own firm, VA Research, which builds Linux-powered workstations, and he doesn’t regret leaving his buddies. ““Our ramp has been slower,’’ he says, ““but I’m sure we’ll pass them.''
The name of the Internet start-up Augustin left? Yahoo, currently valued at around $34 billion. He must really believe that the Source is with him.
