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 <esr@thyrsus.com>

----------
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 <esr@thyrsus.com>

----------
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 <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>

----------
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 <esr@thyrsus.com>

----------
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 <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>

----------
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 <esr@thyrsus.com>

----------
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 <esr@thyrsus.com>

----------
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 <esr@thyrsus.com>

----------
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 <esr@thyrsus.com>

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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 <esr@thyrsus.com>

----------
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 <esr@thyrsus.com>


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End of Document


