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<title>Open Source Summit LG #28</title>
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<H4>
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"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
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<H1><font color="maroon">Open Source Summit Trip Report</font></H1>
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<H4>By <a href="mailto:guido@CNRI.Reston.Va.US">Guido van Rossum</a></H4>
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Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 <BR>
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This last Tuesday was the date for O'Reilly's Freeware Open Source
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summit and press conference. I promised a few people a trip report,
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and decided I might as well post it to the Python newsgroup. Warning:
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this is biased and may occasionally be mistaken where facts are
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concerned -- read at your own risk! It's also longer than I planned
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-- we did cover a lot...
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<P>
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<H4>Background</H4>
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<P>
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Tim O'Reilly realized that freely available software is much more
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important for the Internet than most people, especially many of the
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higher level decision makers and their informers (e.g. the press)
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think. The common perception is that the Internet is mostly built on
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proprietary software, e.g. Solaris, Netscape, and Microsoft products.
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But in fact, many crucial pieces of software are in fact not
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proprietary: sendmail delivers 80% of all email mail, BIND (the
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Berkeley Internet Name Daemon) does most of the name-to-IP-address
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translations, Apache is the #1 web server, the most popular encryption
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software is PGP, the three most commonly used scripting languages are
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Perl, Tcl and Python, and so on.
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All these great pieces of software are freely available in source
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form! What's going on here? Of course, we all know why this is --
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this is a great software development model. But corporate America is
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slow to discover this. The release of the Mozilla sources by Netscape
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was the first hint that this may be changing -- and once this was
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announced, O'Reilly started to receive calls from the press about this
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mysterious "freeware", and realized there was an opportunity to
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increase the press's awareness of open source software.
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<P>
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The meeting had two distinct parts: first, the invited software
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developers discussed the merits and problems of open source software,
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their plans, and so on. Second, at the end of the day we held a press
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conference. I'll report on both events separately.
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<P>
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<H4>The Summit</H4>
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<P>
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Basically, the gathered software developers talked amongst themselves
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from 9 till 5. It would have lasted all week if it weren't for Tim
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O'Reilly's talent as a moderator! Most participants were from the Bay
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Area; I flew in from Washington DC, and John Ousterhout (who normally
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also lives there) interrupted his vacation in Hawaii for a day.
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<P>
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We started off by a round where everyone was asked to mention their
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motivation and positive experiences: why did make source available,
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what worked well, what do you like about the process. In the end we
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agreed on two main reasons why the open source development model works
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so well. Most other reasons can be reduced to a special case of
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either of these.
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<P>
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One, from the developer's point of view, there's the advantage of
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*massive peer review* (also formulated as "debugging is
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parallellizable"). There is no other methodology for software
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development that yields software that is as reliable and robust as
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open source.
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<P>
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Two, from the user's point of view, the big advantage of open source
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flexibility. Linus Torvalds emphasized this with the following
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example: he is generally quite happy with Netscape's browser, but he
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has one wish: to disable animated GIFs, which are used almost
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exclusively for advertising. Without source, he couldn't do this!
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(Jamie Zawinski of Netscape called this "scratching itches." :-)
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<P>
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Other advantages of open source software development that were
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mentioned included low cost technology transfer, and the use of a
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reference implementation to help develop a standard.
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<P>
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As far as the initial motivation for making source available, a
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(surprising, to me!) large number of developers said their initial or
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ulterior motivation was moral/ethical: they believe that it is "the
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right thing to do" to make source available.
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<P>
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In the next round, we discussed our negative experiences -- what
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doesn't work, what are your biggest problems, and so on. Apart from
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some joke entries like "our biggest problem are stupid people",
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two problems were common.
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<P>
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One, as a package becomes more popular, the developer spends more time
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on helping users than on developing software. While there are ways to
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avoid this (e.g., don't answer email), it remains a problem -- without
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a support organization, you're it! This can be summarized as "you're
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crushed by your own success."
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<P>
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Two, it's often a problem to get the people who want to contribute to
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do so in a meaningful manner. The darkest picture was painted by John
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Ousterhout, who claims that a contributed patch saves him only 50% of
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the development time compared to writing it himself from scratch.
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Some agreed; others (like me) rebutted that it's a sliding scale --
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yes, for the core of the package, this may be true -- but there are
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many peripheral items where much contributed code can be accepted "as
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is" -- even if it doesn't work -- since the massive peer review /
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debugging once it is released will eventually fix it. Linus has an
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extreme but clear point of view: the *interfaces* need to be designed
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carefully by the main developer; the implementations may be buggy.
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For example, Linus doesn't mind at all if there are some buggy device
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drivers -- that only affects a small number of people, and only until
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they get fixed -- while a bad design will haunt you until the end of
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times. (This matches my own experience, but Linus said it clearer.)
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<P>
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This boils down to a matter of control. It was noted that almost all
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systems represented have a core that's kept under (relatively) tight
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control by the main developer, and a well-defined and flexible
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extension mechanism which is used by most contributors, where control
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is less important.
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<P>
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Other problems that were mentioned included the current intellectual
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property laws and the way the legal system is abused to enforce them
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in strange ways, and unfair "badmouthing" of open source software by
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competitors trying to peddle proprietary solutions. Also, the
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distribution model (revenue model) isn't ideal -- you can't buy most
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freeware packages at your local neighborhood software supermarket,
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even in Palo Alto. (You can buy Red Hat Linux there, though!) Code
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bloat was also mentioned (but the Netscape boys pointed out that this
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is not a unique problem of open source software :-).
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<P>
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After lunch, we discussed what to do about the problems.
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<P>
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We didn't say much more about the control issues, except to note that
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managing a distributed development team like the contributors to the
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average open source package is a bit like herding cats. (The first
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time this came up I heard "hurting cats", which I found a bit strange
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-- luckily Tim or other O'Reilly people made copious notes on a
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flip board. :-) The best contribution (for me) came from Eric Raymond
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and Cygnus' John Gilmore, who noted that it's possible to train your
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contributors, (e.g. through style guides, coding standards etc.), and
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that this is actually an effective way to improve the quality of the
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contributions. One way to go at it is simply saving scraps of
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"internal documentation" as you are producing them, e.g., in response
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to email questions from other developers, and in a couple of years,
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voila, an internals manual!
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<P>
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The rest of the time (and also interspersed throughout the rest of the
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day) we discussed various business models that may make open source a
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sustainable activity, rather than a hobby or a questionable skunkworks
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activity.
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<P>
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It turns out that almost everyone present was involved in an attempt
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to commercialize their software -- and *everyone* wanted to do so
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without making the sources proprietary. Everybody's situation is a
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little different though -- sometimes because of the user base of their
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software, sometimes because of the competition, sometimes for legal
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reasons, and sometimes simply because they have different motivation.
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<P>
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For example, John Gilmore told us how Cygnus is successful selling GCC
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ports to the embedded systems industry -- a small niche market that,
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before Cygnus came in, was monopolized by a small number of compiler
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companies who'd charge a million to retarget an existing compiler to a
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slightly different chip.
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<P>
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Another success story was told by Sameer Parekh of C2Net, who are
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selling Stronghold, a commercial, secure version of Apache. Because
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of the patent situation on encryption software, there is no free
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encryption code that can be used for commercial purposes, so companies
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in need of a web server with encryption have to pay *some* vendor.
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Note that C2Net provides their customers with the source for their
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version of Apache, but only with binaries of their encryption library.
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<P>
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Yet another story was told by Paul Vixie of the Internet Software
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Consortium, a non-profit that's maintaining BIND. Some big computer
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vendors paid the ISC a lot of money for Paul to further develop BIND,
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and didn't mind that Paul would make the sources available for free to
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others, as long as the work got done.
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<P>
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There were also those for whom it was too early to declare success (or
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failure): Larry Wall and Linus Torvalds aren't making any money
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directly off selling copies of Perl and Linux. Others are though, and
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of course O'Reilly makes a lot of money on the Perl books -- as are
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other publishers. Linus has an exciting non-Linux related job at
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Transmeta, and has no plans to personally commercialize Linux; Larry
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however is working for O'Reilly and there are some plans to
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commercialize at least the Windows port (which is done by an outside
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company with some kind of license agreement from O'Reilly).
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<P>
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John Ousterhout has just made the jump to the commercial world for
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Tcl/Tk with his new company Scriptics, formed after Sun canceled its
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plans for producing Tcl/Tk products. John is planning on a mixture of
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open source and proprietary software: Tcl and Tk themselves will
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remain open source forever, but Scriptics plans to make money off
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proprietary tools like a debugger and a source analyzer. One reason
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to keep Tcl/Tk free is to ensure that nobody has an incentive to "fork
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off" an incompatible version.
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<P>
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Eric Allman of Senmail, Inc told a similar story -- he had first hoped
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to create a consortium but found all doors closed, so in order to
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remain in control he quit his job and formed Sendmail, Inc. with Greg
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Olson. He promises that a free version will remain available, but
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seems to aim at licensing it to the big computer vendors.
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<P>
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While everybody's story is different, there's one common line:
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everybody is working on a *sustainable* business model that produces a
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sufficient revenue stream to pay for developers and a support
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organization, without giving up the advantages of open source
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software. As Netscape's freeing of the Mozilla source shows, this
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idea is even getting some attention amongst traditional proprietary
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software vendors!
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<P>
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<H4>Freeware, Open Source or Sourceware?</H4>
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<P>
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We spent some time discussing the terminology of choice. Tim took a
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straw poll. Free software or freeware got almost no positive votes
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the cutesy "freed software" even got many negative votes). The winner
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was a tie between open source software (favored by Eric Raymond) and
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sourceware (which has been used by Cygnus).
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<P>
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I've had some reservations about "open source", but I like it better
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than the too-cute sourceware, and I agree with the perception that
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freeware has a bad reputation -- and of course, much "freeware" comes
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without source, while the common factor of the software represented at
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the summit is the availability of source code.
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<P>
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Eric Raymond has trademarked the term "Open Source" (capitalized) and
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has a somewhat precise definition of what is or isn't Open Source on
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his web site (see below). I sometimes worry that this can become a
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limitation: what if I call my software Open Source, with his approval,
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and later I change the terms and conditions, or Eric changes his
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definition -- I could be sued by someone who says I have to stick to
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the Open Source rules. Eric believes that this won't happen, and
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besides says that everyone is free to use the "open source"
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(lowercase) without sticking to his definition. We'll see -- for now,
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I'm favorable to the concept, but we won't put "Open Source" on the
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Python web site yet. (Note that we don't use "freeware" either.)
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<P>
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<H4>Where next?</H4>
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<P>
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We briefly discussed how to approach the press and possible follow-up
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meetings. The general conclusion seems to be that the time is ripe to
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try and get the message to the next level of managers in companies
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that are already using the products of open source software
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development -- the CIOs who don't even know that their developers are
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using Perl or Python, and only listen to their peer CIOs, the Wall
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Street Journal, and the expensive consulting and market analysis firms
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that haven't discovered open source software yet either. How we're
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going to do that? Clearly the press conference is a step in the right
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direction, and O'Reilly will be following up to the press. Eric
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Raymond is very active in talking to corporate people. Sarah Daniels
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of Scriptics has some big ideas for a joint ad campaign (we'll
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see...).
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<P>
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What I got out of it? Lots -- more clarity about why open source
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software works so well, and how to make it work even better, as well
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as motivation to try and find a revenue stream.
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<P>
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<H4>The press conference</H4>
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<P>
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The press conference started around 5.30 and lasted until 7.30 or 8.00
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PM. All developers sat behind a long table behind name tags, with Tim
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O'Reilly in the middle. There were about 20-30 reporters; the first
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hour we had our pictures taken about twice a second. Tim O'Reilly
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gave a short introduction (see URLs below) and then let the press go
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loose. They mostly picked the better-known names, so I didn't get to
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say much (of course, much attention went to the two guys from
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Netscape).
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<P>
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As predicted, it was at times difficult to divert the subject away
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from "how are you taking on Microsoft" or "clearly this can't work".
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With some journalists, you can give a perfectly clear answer to the
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question, and all they do is give you a blank stare and ask the same
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question again with slightly different words. But most of them were
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really trying to understand the message (and some clearly had already
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gotten it before they came). Once the formal part of the press
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conference was over, everyone stuck around and many one-on-one or
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two-on-two interviews were carried out.
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<P>
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All in all it was an interesting and useful event; see below for the
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first results. Of course, we'll have to see if we really change the
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perception of the open source software development model as a fringe
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freak issue...
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<P>
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<H4>References</H4>
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<P>
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(These predate the summit.)
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<ul>
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<li><A HREF="http://www.oreilly.com/oreilly/press/freeware.html">
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O'Reilly's original press release</A>, listing some key participants.
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<li><A HREF="http://www.oreilly.com/oreilly/news/freeware.html">Tim
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O'Reilly's opinion of freeware</A>.
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<li><A HREF="http://www.earthspace.net/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/">
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Eric Raymond's paper</A> <I>The Cathedral and the Bazaar</I>.
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<li><A HREF="http://www.opensource.org/">Eric Raymond's Open Source web
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site</A>.
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</ul>
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<H4>Press coverage</H4>
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<P>
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(As forwarded to my by O'Reilly's PR team.)
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<P>
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Before the summit, Tom Abate wrote a column in the SF Chronicle,
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<A HREF="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1998/04/02/BU71924.DTL">
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"The Brains Behind Freeware to Meet."</A>
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<P>
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<A
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HREF="http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,20913,00.html?st.ne.fd.mdh">"Open
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source gurus convene"</A>
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<P>
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Wednesday's San Francisco Chronicle had a full page piece by Tom Abate
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on the Open Source story, containing interviews with (and pictures of)
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Larry Wall, Linus Torvalds, Paul Vixie, and Tom Paquin. The
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<A
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HREF="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1998/04/09/BU94387.DTL">
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on-line version</A>, sans pictures.
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<P>
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Also, NPR ran a long piece on Linux Wednesday evening. There's a
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<A HREF="http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/archives/1998/980408.atc.html">
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RealAudio version</A>
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<P>
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<A HREF="http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/1998/04/0802-netscape.html">
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Judy DeMocker's piece in Meckler's internetnews.com</A>.
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<P>
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John Markoff is planning on running his piece on the summit in next
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Monday's New York Times.
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<P>
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For even more information on this topic, see <A
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HREF="http://webreview.com/wr/pub/98/04/10">webreview</A>.
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<P>
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--Guido van Rossum (<A HREF="http://www.python.org/~guido/">home page</A>)
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<!--===================================================================-->
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<P> <hr> <P>
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<center><H5>Copyright © 1998, Guido van Rossum <BR>
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Published in Issue 28 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1998</H5></center>
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