lynx-dev FT on freeware (finally)

[Philip Webb]

[ FT seems to be deserting capitalism for anarchism
-- well, it's written by Oxford people, after all -- ;
a 2nd story today has accounts of GNU & Linux:
no mention of Lynx, but surely people will discover it too ]

Financial Times (London) 981020

SOFTWARE DISTRIBUTION: Roll up for free time -- Paul Talacko

Why would anyone want to develop software and then give it away free?
It is a question that has been brought into sharp focus by recent
announcements involving some of the big names in the IT industry.

Late last month, Netscape Communications, the internet software
company, and Intel, the computer chip manufacturer, said they were
buying into Red Hat Software, a big US distributor of the free Linux
operating system.

Earlier this year Netscape decided to make the source code for its
flagship internet browser product, Communicator, available free. The
move was unprecedented for a commercial business. Source code, the
written commands used to create a piece of software, is normally
treated as top secret by software companies.

It proved highly popular with the web site, registering some 200,000
downloads in the first two weeks after the March release date.

But Netscape's idea was not entirely original. In the early 1980s,
Richard Stallman, frustrated that the collegiate ideal of mutual
sharing and assistance disappeared as soon as his colleagues found
jobs in industry, created the Free Software Foundation and the GNU
free software project.

In the process, he drafted the GNU General Public Licence allowing
software to be copied, amended and incorporated into other products,
provided the new or amended product is also subject to the licence and
the source code is published. The aim is to allow software developers
to co-operate and share ideas.

Netscape published its source code under a similar licence. "This is a
very honest, open strategy," says Dushan Rnic, product marketing
manager at Netscape. But there is good commercial sense to Netscape's
departure from the norm. First, it will enable Netscape to provide a
superior product because it allows the whole development community of
the internet to suggest improvements to the code.

Second, because companies will be able to use Netscape's code to
incorporate into their own products, thus saving development time, the
technology will become a de facto standard, encouraging others to look
to Netscape for products for which the company charges.

Third, the Netscape browser will direct a user to the Netcenter
"portal", one of the internet sites to which users go as a first stop
when looking for information. The portal business, funded by
advertising, is very important to Netscape, says Mr Rnic.

Allowing others to copy and examine the source code also enables
Netscape to extend its grasp. Mr Rnic says that, having seen the
source code, some developers are amending it to create a Java program,
called Javigator, allowing it to be run on any computer anywhere.

Netscape's Communicator was not the first program to have its source
code openly published. There is a wide range of "free" or "open
source" products including the Apache server, noted for its stability
and used on about half of web sites, and the Perl programming
language.

But perhaps the most famous is the GNU/Linux operating system,
normally referred to simply as Linux. Although Mr Stallman's GNU
project was set up in the early 1980s, it was not until Linus
Torvalds, a Finnish university student, wrote an operating system
similar to his university's Unix system for his home PC, which he
called Linux, that knowledge of GNU became widespread.

"In 1992-93 Linux was totally unusable," says Jason Clifford, director
of Definite Linux Systems, which supplies Linux and consults on
installation. "But since then it has come along in leaps and bounds.
Now it is so stable and reliable that it is ideal for workstation and
server environments."

Supporters of "open source" software claim it works better than its
commercial counterparts. According to Mr Clifford, "it is typical for
a server running Microsoft's Windows NT to crash about once every two
months while a typical Linux server will run faultlessly for over a
year. Most internet service providers use Linux because of this
reliability."

The superior performance is attributed to the large number of people
examining the code. This means bugs can be fixed and code improved
faster and better than a commercial company, with a fixed number of
software developers, could hope to achieve.

As an example of how efficiently open source programs can be fixed, he
says that "a serious bug was discovered by someone looking through the
source code at 1am. That programmer e-mailed the person who had
written the code, who was working late. By 3.30am, it was re-released,
available around the world on the internet, with the bug fixed.

"Another advantage of Linux," he says, "is that because its source
code is available it has been adapted to run on virtually any computer
now on the market, from top of the range workstations to palmtops." He
acknowledges, however, that it is still harder to use than commercial
products from Microsoft and Apple.

Because Linux is free it is impossible to know exactly how many people
are using it. But with estimates ranging from 10m to 100m, large
computer companies are now taking notice, with Oracle, the database
company, Corel, the software company, and International Business
Machines planning products for it. There are also rumours that many IT
managers, tired of their companies' rigid adherence to Microsoft, are
sneaking Linux on to corporate systems.

Kudos partly explains why people should spend time working on software
that is given away. Mr Stallman says "pride in your work and knowing
you are helping others" is what motivates people.

There are indirect commercial attractions, however. If open source
software gives you a better product than a commercial alternative and
it is cheap, its use will become widespread. Then, as Mr Clifford
points out, profits can be made from subsidiary services.

Distributors, such as Definite, are allowed to recoup their expenses
plus a profit and both Definite and Mr Stallman, who refuses to use
commercial software as a matter of principle, make money from
consulting.

As for Netscape, Mr Rnic says that, with more than 100m copies of
Communicator in use and substantial growth expected, clients know
there will always be a Netscape product because the code will remain
available for anyone to use and redevelop. The free software genie
cannot be put back into the bottle.
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