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<H4>
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"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
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<P> <HR> <P>
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<!--===================================================================-->
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<font color="navy">A <I>Linux Journal</I> Preview</font>:
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This article will appear in the November issue of <I>Linux Journal</I>.
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<P> <HR> <P>
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<H1 ALIGN=CENTER><FONT COLOR="#ff0000">Open Source's First Six Months</FONT></H1>
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<center>
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<H4>By <a href="mailto:esr@thyrsus.com">Eric Raymond</a></H4>
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</center>
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<P> <HR> <P>
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Six months ago yesterday as I write, Netscape announced their
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intention to release the source code of Navigator. In that time,
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we've seen once again that there are very few things as powerful as an
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idea whose time has come.<P>
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I'm reminded of this every time I surf the Web these days. The <A
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HREF="http://www.opensource.org">Open Source</A> meme is everywhere.
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It seems you can't open a technical or business magazine these days
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without tripping over an admiring article about Linux. Or an
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interview with Linus Torvalds. Or an interview with...er...me.<P>
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I've ended up near the center of the crazy and wonderful things
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happening now half by accident. When I composed <A
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HREF="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/">The
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Cathedral and the Bazaar</A> a bit more than a year ago, I was aiming
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to explain the Linux culture to itself, and explore some interesting
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and somewhat heterodox ideas about software development. If anybody
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had suggested to me then that the paper was going to motivate something
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like the Netscape source release, I would have wondered what drugs
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they'd been smoking.<P>
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But that's what happened, and I found myself thrust into the role of
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leading advocate and semi-official speaker-to-journalists for a hacker
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community suddenly feeling its oats. I decided to take that job
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seriously, because somebody needed to do it and I knew how and nobody
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else was really trying very hard. (I had the advantage of experience;
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I'd been in this role before, for lesser stakes, after the New
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Hacker's Dictionary came out in 1991.)<P>
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The point of all this personal stuff is that I've had an almost
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uniquely privileged view of the early days of the open-source
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revolution -- as an observer, as a theorist, as a communicator, and as
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an active player in helping shape some of the major events.<P>
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<H1><FONT COLOR="#ff0000">We've come a long way, baby...</FONT></H1>
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In this essay, I intend to do three things. One: celebrate the
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incredible victories of the last six months. Two: share my thinking
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about the battles being fought right now. And three: consider where
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we need to go in the future and what we need to do, to ensure that
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open source is no mere fad but a genuine transformative revolution
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that changes the rules of the software industry forever.<P>
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When you're living on Internet time, I know it can be hard to remember
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last week, let alone last year. But take a moment to think back to
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New Year's Day 1998. Before the <a
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href="http://www.netscape.com/newsref/pr/newsrelease558.html">Netscape
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announcement</a>. Before <a
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href="http://www.corelcomputer.com/products/announcement.htm">Corel</a>.
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Before IBM <a href="http://www.ibm.com/News/1998/06/223.phtml">got
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behind Apache</a>. Before Oracle and Informix and Interbase announced
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they'd be porting their flagship database projects to Linux. We've
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come a long way, baby!<P>
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In fact, we've come an astonishingly long way in a short time. Six
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months ago `free software' was barely a blip on the radar screens of
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the computer trade press and the corporate world -- and what they
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thought they knew, they didn't like. Today, `open source' is a hot
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topic not just in the trade press but in the most influential of the
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business-news magazines that shape corporate thinking.<P>
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The <a href="http://www.economist.com">Economist</a>'s July 10 article
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was a milestone; another is coming up August 10th, when I'm told <a
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href="http://www.forbes.com">Forbes</a> will run an explanation of the
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concept as their cover story.<P>
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The campaign also went after corporate endorsement of open-source
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software. We've got it, in spades. IBM -- <strong>IBM!</strong> --
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is in our corner now. The symbolism and the substance of that fact
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alone is astounding.<P>
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<H1><FONT COLOR="#ff0000">We haven't shot ourselves in the foot...</FONT></H1>
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The last six months are also notable for some things I feared early on
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that did <strong>not</strong> happen. Despite initially sharp debate
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and continuing objections in some quarters, the hacker community did
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<strong>not</strong> get bogged down in a loud and divisive factional
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fight over the new tactics and terminology. Bruce Perens and I and
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the other front-line participants in the Open Source campaign did not
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get publically savaged for trying to gently lead the community in a
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new direction. And nobody burnt us in effigy for actually
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succeeding!<P>
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The maturity and pragmatism with which the community backed our play
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made a critical difference. It has meant that <strong>the story
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stayed positive</strong>, that we have been able to present open
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source as the product of a coherent and effective engineering
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tradition, one able to sustain the momentum and meet the challenge of
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what the corporate word considers "real support". It has denied the
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would-be bashers and Gates-worshippers among the press the easy option
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to dismiss us all as a bunch of fractious flakes.<P>
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<strong>We've all done well</strong>. We've gotten our message out
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and we've kept our own house in order -- and all this while continuing
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to crank out key advances that undermine the case for closed software
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and increase our leverage, like <a
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href="http://www.transvirtual.com/">Kaffe 1.0</a>. What comes next?<P>
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<H1><FONT COLOR="#ff0000">Towards world domination...</FONT></H1>
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I see several challenges before us:<P>
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<strong>First:</strong> the press campaign isn't over by any means.
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When I first conceived it back in February, I already knew where I
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wanted to see positive stories about open source. The <em>Wall Street
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Journal</em>, the <em>Economist</em>, <em>Forbes</em>,
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<em>Barron</em>, and the <em>New York Times</em>.<P>
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Why those? Because if we <strong>truly desire</strong> world
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domination, we've got to get our LSD into the corporate elite's
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conceptual water supply and alter the beast's consciousness. That
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means we need to co-opt the media that shape decision-making at the
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highest corporate levels of the Fortune 500. Personally, all the
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press interviews and stuff I've done have been aimed towards the one
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goal of becoming visible enough to those guys that <strong>they would
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come to us</strong> wanting to know the open source community's
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story.<P>
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This has begun to happen (besides the Forbes interview, I was a
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background source for the <em>Economist</em> coverage) -- but it's
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nowhere near finished. It won't be finished until they have
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<strong>all</strong> gotten and spread the message, and the superior
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reliability/quality/cost advantages of open source have become
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diffused common knowledge among the CEOs, CTOs, and CIOs who read
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them.<P>
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<strong>Second</strong>: When I first wrote my analysis of <a
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href="http://www.opensource.org/for-suits.html">business models</a>, one of my conclusions was
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that we'd have our best short-term chances of converting established
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`name' vendors by pushing the clear advantages of <a
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href="http://www.opensource.org/for-suits.html#frosting">widget frosting</a>. Therefore my
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master plan included concerted attempts to persuade hardware makers to
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open up their software.<P>
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Though my personal approaches to a couple of vendors were
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unsuccessful, then-president of Corel Computer's speech at UniForum
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made it clear that CatB and the Netscape example had tipped them over
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the edge. Subsequently Leonard Zuboff scored big working from the
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inside with Adaptec (one of the companies I had originally targeted
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but never got to). So we know this path can be fruitful.<P>
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A lot more evangelizing remains to be done here. Any of you who work
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on with vendors of network cards, graphics cards, disk controllers and
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other peripherals should be helping us push from the inside. Write
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Bruce Perens or me about this if you think you might be positioned to
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help; combination Mister-Inside/Mister-Outside approaches are known to
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work well here.<P>
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<strong>Third</strong>: The Oracle/Informix/Interbase announcements
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and SGI's official backing for Samba open up another front. (Actually
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we're ahead of my projections here; I wasn't expecting the big
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database vendors to roll over for another three months or so.) That
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third front is the ability to get open-source software into large
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corporate networks and data centers in roles outside of its
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traditional territory in Internet sevices and development.<P>
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One of the biggest roadblocks in our way was the people who said ``OK,
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so maybe Linux is technically better, but we can't get real enterprise
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applications for it.'' Well, somehow I don't think we'll be hearing
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<strong>that</strong> song anymore! The big-database announcements
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should put the `no real apps' shibboleth permanently to rest.<P>
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So our next challenge is to actually get some Fortune 500 companies to
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cut over from NT to Linux or *BSD-based enterprise servers for their
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critical corporate databases, <strong>and go public about doing
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that</strong>.<P>
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Getting them to switch shouldn't be very hard, given the dog's-vomit
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reliability level of NT (waving a copy of <a
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href="http://www.kirch.net/unix-nt.html">John Kirch's white paper</a>
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at a techie should often be sufficient). In fact, I expect this will
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swiftly begin to happen even without any nudging from us.<P>
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But that will only be half the battle. Because the ugly political
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reality is this: The techies with day-to-day operational
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responsibility that are doing the actual switching are quite likely to
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feel pressure to <strong>hide</strong> the switch from their
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NT-brainwashed bosses. Samba is a huge win for these beleaguered
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techies; it enables open-source fans to stealth their Linux boxes so
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they look like Microsoft servers that somehow miraculously fail to
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suck.<P>
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There's a problem with this, however, that's almost serious enough to
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make me wish Samba didn't exist. While stealthing open-source boxes
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will solve a lot of individual problems, it won't give us what we need
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to counteract the attack marketing and FUD-mongering that we are going
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to start seeing big-time (count on it) as soon as Microsoft wakes up
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to the magnitude of the threat we actually pose. It won't be enough
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to have a presence; we'll need a <strong>visible</strong> presence,
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visibly succeeding.<P>
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So I have a challenge for anybody reading this with a job in a Fortune
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500 data-center; start laying the groundwork <strong>now</strong>.
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Pass around the <a href="http://www.kirch.net/unix-nt.html">Kirch
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paper</a> to your colleagues and bosses. Start whatever
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process you need to get an Oracle- or Informix- or
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Interbase-over-Linux pilot approved -- or get prepared to just go ahead
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and <strong>do it</strong> on the
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forgiveness-is-easier-than-permission principle. Some of these
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vendors say they're planning to offer cheap evaluation copies;
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grab them and <strong>go</strong>!<P>
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I and the other front-line participants in the Open Source campaign
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will be doing our damnedest to smooth your path, working the media
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to convince your bosses that everybody's doing it and it's a safe,
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soft option that will look good on their performance reports. This,
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of course, will be a self-fulfilling prophecy...<P>
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<strong>Fourth:</strong> Finally, of course, there's the battle for
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the desktop -- Linus's original focus in the master plan for world
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domination.<P>
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Yes, we still need to take the desktop. And the most fundamental
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thing we still need for that is a zero-administration desktop
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environment. Either GNOME or KDE will give us most of that; the other
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must-have, for the typical non-techie user, is absolutely painless
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setup of Ethernet, SLIP, and PPP connections.<P>
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Beyond that, we need a rock-solid office suite, integrated with the
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winning environment, that includes the Big Three applications --
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spreadsheet, light-duty database and a word processor. I guess
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Applix and StarOffice come close, but neither are GNOME- or KDE-aware yet.
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Corel's port of WordPerfect will certainly help.<P>
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Beyond repeating these obvious things there's not much else I'll say
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about this, because there's little the Open Source campaign can do to
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remedy the problem directly. Everybody knows that native office
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applications, well documented and usable by non-techies, are among the
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few things we're still missing. Looking around Sunsite, I'd say there
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might be a couple of promising candidates out there, like Maxwell and
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Xxl. What they mainly need, I'd guess, is documentation and testing.
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Would somebody with tech-writing please volunteer?<P>
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But this is probably getting into too much detail. The important
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thought I'd like to leave you with is this:
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<H1><FONT COLOR="#ff0000">We're winning!</FONT></H1>
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<strong>Yes, we're winning</strong>. We're on a roll. The Linux user
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base is doubling every year. The big software vendors are being
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forced to take notice by their customers. <a
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href="http://www.redhat.com/redhat/datapro.html">Datapro</a> even says
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Linux gets the best overall satisfaction ratings from managers and
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directors of information systems in large organizations. I guess that
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means not all of them are pointy-haired bosses...<P>
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The explosive growth of the Internet and the staggering complexity of
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modern software development have clearly revealed the
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<strong>fatal weaknesses of the closed-source model</strong>. The people
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who get paid big bucks to worry about these things for Fortune 500
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have understood for a while that something is deeply wrong with the
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conventional development process. They've seen the problem become
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acute as the complexity of software requirements has escalated. But
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they've been unable to imagine any alternative.<P>
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<strong>We are offering that alternative.</strong> I believe this is
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why the Open Source campaign has been able to make such remarkable
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progress in changing the terms of debate over the last six months.
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It's because we're moving into a conceptual vacuum with a simple but
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powerful demonstration -- that hierarchy and closure and secrecy are
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weak, losing strategies in a complex and rapidly-changing environment.
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The rising complexity of software requirements has reached a level
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such that only open source and peer review have any prayer of being
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effective tactics in the future.<P>
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The <em>Economist</em> article was titled ``Revenge of the Hackers'',
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and that's appropriate -- because we are now re-making the software
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industry in the image of the hacker culture. We are proving every day
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that <strong>we</strong> are the people with the drive and the vision
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that will lead the software industry into the next century.<P>
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<P>
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<ADDRESS>Eric S. Raymond <A HREF="mailto:esr@thyrsus.com"><esr@thyrsus.com></A></ADDRESS>
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<!--===================================================================-->
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<P> <hr> <P>
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<center><H5>Copyright © 1998, Eric Raymond <BR>
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Published in Issue 31 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, August 1998</H5></center>
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