Free Software and Proprietary Software a History of Free Software the FOSS Development Model FOSS Business Model Conclusion

Home , Alan Cox, Free as in Freedom, Free license, Free software movement

Free Software and Proprietary Software A History of Free Software The FOSS development model FOSS business model Conclusion

Josep M. Rib´o

Universitat de Lleida

January 22, 2009

Josep M. Rib´o Free Software Free Software and Proprietary Software A History of Free Software The FOSS development model FOSS business model Conclusion Outline

1 Free Software and Proprietary Software

2 A History of Free Software The ﬁrst years 1980s: The begining of the Free Software Movement 1990s: Linux 2000s: The present of FOSS

3 The FOSS development model The Bazaar Infrastructure for FOSS projects

4 FOSS business model A collection of FOSS business models Community projects vs. corporate projects

5 Conclusion

Josep M. Rib´o Free Software Free Software and Proprietary Software A History of Free Software The FOSS development model FOSS business model Conclusion You buy a brand new car..... Congratulations!!!!

But unfortunatelly, its hood is locked and the seller has not given you the key :-(

If you want to ﬁx some add-ons or if the car breaks down you have to pay a visit to the Oﬃcial Service (the only ones who have the key of the hood)

... and what will happen?

Josep M. Rib´o Free Software Free Software and Proprietary Software A History of Free Software The FOSS development model FOSS business model Conclusion The oﬃcial service

The price is guaranteed to be excessive There is no competition (monopoly) It hinders the development of a network of local garage workshops It prevents you from ﬁxing it yourself (provided you have mechanics knowledge) In a few years there will not be any maintenance for that car forcing you to buy a new one

Would you buy a product like this?

Well.... you probably have.... Take a look at the software that runs on your computer

Josep M. Rib´o Free Software Free Software and Proprietary Software A History of Free Software The FOSS development model FOSS business model Conclusion What Free Software is

Free Software deﬁnition It is software that comes packaged with several freedoms: Freedom to run it without any restriction Freedom to see its source code and to study it Freedom (and also encouragement) to redistribute it Freedom to modify it and to redistribute the modiﬁcations

Josep M. Rib´o Free Software Free Software and Proprietary Software A History of Free Software The FOSS development model FOSS business model Conclusion What Free Software is not Free software is not: Inexpensive software

In english Free = (1) Freedom (2) Free of charge

Free software refers to free as in freedom not as in free of charge

Freeware: Software which is distributed free of charge It is distributed only in binary format It may have restrictions to redistribute it Example: Microsoft Internet Explorer

Josep M. Rib´o Free Software Free Software and Proprietary Software A History of Free Software The FOSS development model FOSS business model Conclusion What free software is not

Shareware: Commercial software that is (usually) distributed free of charge for trial purposes before purchasing the software license It is distributed only in binary format And with limitations (it is not the full version or it only works for a limited period)

Careware: Software that is obtained usually for a fee, which is donated to some charity This type of software can be free software (e.g. vim)

Josep M. Rib´o Free Software Free Software and Proprietary Software A History of Free Software The FOSS development model FOSS business model Conclusion What free software is not

And, obviously, free software is not...

Proprietary software:

Software that is legally owned by a speciﬁc party, which regulates the particular terms of access, use and distribution by means of a usually restrictive license

Proprietary software usually has the opposite features to free software: Restrictions to use it Impossibility to study it (binary format) Prohibition to redistribute it Prohibition/Impossibility to modify it

Josep M. Rib´o Free Software Free Software and Proprietary Software A History of Free Software The FOSS development model FOSS business model Conclusion Creative commons and copyleft

It is not software all that glitters... Copyleft refers to a family of licenses for human works (software, documents, music, ﬁlms ...) which grants the user the freedom to reproduce, adapt and redistribute the work...... as long as the adapted work keeps the same license Creative commons licenses are licenses applied to human works (music, documents, software ...) that grant users certain rights The speciﬁc rights depend on the particular license Some rights: Attribution Non commercial use Non derivative work allowed Derivative work allowed (provided that the same license is kept in the derivative work). The same idea as in copyleft

Josep M. Rib´o Free Software Free Software and Proprietary Software The ﬁrst years A History of Free Software 1980s: The begining of the Free Software Movement The FOSS development model 1990s: Linux FOSS business model 2000s: The present of FOSS Conclusion Outline

1 Free Software and Proprietary Software

2 A History of Free Software The ﬁrst years 1980s: The begining of the Free Software Movement 1990s: Linux 2000s: The present of FOSS

3 The FOSS development model The Bazaar Infrastructure for FOSS projects

4 FOSS business model A collection of FOSS business models Community projects vs. corporate projects

5 Conclusion

In the 1960s IBM led the computer (i.e., mainframes) market with the IBM-360 The software (including the source code) to use those mainframes was sold together with the computers Communities of IBM/360 users (SHARE) and of DEC (DECUS) shared and distributed programs without any limitation

At those early years software was still free

In 1970 IBM started to sell some of their computer software separately from the computers themselves

In mid 70s, proprietary software was the dominant business model among companies: software was sold without the source code and without the right of modifying and redistributing it

In 70s proprietary software started its successful trip to become the dominant business model

Two brilliant individual initiatives oﬀer an alternative to the proprietary software dominant position: SPICE (Larry Nagel, 1973): A simulator program for integrated circuits (Electronic Research Laboratory in the California University, Berkeley).

TEX (Donald Knuth, 1978-1985): A text processor Donald Knuth

UNIX was ﬁrst developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T developers at Bell Laboratories

UNIX has always been a proprietary Operating System (Bell Laboratories and Novell),

However, in 1973-74, Universities had free access to Unix source code and contributed to it

1980s: Access to Unix source code was diﬃcult and expensive

Unix followed the dominant trend and chose to be entirely proprietary

1 Free Software and Proprietary Software

2 A History of Free Software The ﬁrst years 1980s: The begining of the Free Software Movement 1990s: Linux 2000s: The present of FOSS

3 The FOSS development model The Bazaar Infrastructure for FOSS projects

4 FOSS business model A collection of FOSS business models Community projects vs. corporate projects

5 Conclusion

At early 80s Richard Stallman was a hacker working at the AI laboratory at the MIT He shared with many other developers the so-called hacker culture which promoted the sharing, modiﬁcation and redistribution of software source Richard Stallman

However, in 1980 a big problem occurred:

The AI laboratory. at the MIT bought a new HP printer...

Stallman wanted to modify the controller software of the HP (as he had done with the previous printer) so that the controller sent a message to the user whose job was being printed

However, he was not able to do so, since the source code of the accompanying software was not distributed anymore...

And that was only the beginning....

New policies based on exclusivity and non-sharing were starting to be imposed in his work environment

As a result, in 1984, Richard Stallman abandoned the IA laboratory at MIT and created the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation

GNU = GNU’s Not Unix

The objective of the GNU project was to build a complete software system which was completely free (free, as in freedom)

GNU soon incorporated: TEX X Windows (GUI system developed at MIT) GCC (C compiler, developed by Stallman) Emacs (text editor, developed by Stallman)

However, the system kernel was not developed yet.....

(But it is not time to talk about this yet...)

The software of the GNU project was released under the GPL license This license, granted the rights to: Use the software without limitation Study the source code of the software Redistribute it Modify it and redistribute these modiﬁcations

And forces that the all software that used a GPL-licensed piece of software be GPL(compatible)-licensed too

For this reason GPL is a copyleft license

The Computer Science Research Group of the California University, Berkeley had been working for years in the development and improvement of the Unix operating system

However, in order to use the Unix software developed by this grup, it was necessary the Unix license distributed by AT&T, which was expensive

For this reason they released some pieces of software: 1989: Networking release 1 (Net-1) In 1989 the CSRG released their implementation of the TCP/IP protocol (which was a part of the Unix system) under a free license: The BSD license

1991: Networking release 2 (Net-2) The CSRG rewrote the remaining of the kernel code which still came from AT&T and released it with the BSD license: Networking release 2

1992: 386BSD A complete BSD-licensed Unix system was released: 386BSD But ...

1992: The lawsuit Although this release did not contain any of the original AT&T source code, a lawsuit was ﬁled by USL (part of AT&T) vs. University of California, Berkeley for intellectual property violation

As an immediate result of the lawsuit, some develpers and companies did not risk to use an Operating System that may have proved illegal

1994: The agreement The University of California, Berkeley and Novell (who had bought USL in 1993) reached a settlement and the University of California released 4.4BSD-Lite

But by then it was probably too late for the BSD Operating System ....

The original license of the Berkley Software Distribution has led to a family of permissive licenses that share the same spirit They usually provide unrestricted right to: Run the application Study the source code Redistribute it Modify it or be used in another application without any license restriction That is, without requiring that the new application keeps the same license (i.e., it may be a proprietary application)

BSD-like licenses are called permissive licenses (opposed to copyleft licenses, like GPL)

1 Free Software and Proprietary Software

2 A History of Free Software The ﬁrst years 1980s: The begining of the Free Software Movement 1990s: Linux 2000s: The present of FOSS

3 The FOSS development model The Bazaar Infrastructure for FOSS projects

4 FOSS business model A collection of FOSS business models Community projects vs. corporate projects

5 Conclusion

Early 90s: A Unix-like free Operating System still not available

Various initiatives were ongoing: Hurd: The GNU project to construct an operating system kernel However, this project does not reach the necessary maturity and stability BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) However, this OS was not appealing for there was a lawsuit of USL (AT&T) vs. University of California for intellectual property violation Minix (Unix-like OS written by Andrew S. Tannenbaum available since 1987) However, it was not free software. Restrictions for redistribution and modiﬁcations Not easily adaptable to 32 bits i386 architecture

1991: A young (21) Software Engineering student from the University of Helsinki writes the following email on a list of Minix users (comp.os.minix): Hello everybody out there using minix - I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I’d like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the ﬁle-system (due to practical reasons) among other things). Linus Torvalds (...) Linus ([email protected].ﬁ)

(...) Josep M. Rib´o Free Software Free Software and Proprietary Software The ﬁrst years A History of Free Software 1980s: The begining of the Free Software Movement The FOSS development model 1990s: Linux FOSS business model 2000s: The present of FOSS Conclusion 90’s: Some Linux milestones

1992: Linux is issued with the GNU-GPL license 1994: First stable Linux version (1.0) 1994 ...: A large community of hackers/developers get involved to integrate Linux with the remaining of the GNU applications and to improve and complete the system From Mid-late 90s: A bunch of Linux distributions are periodically issued SuSe, Debian (Ubuntu), RedHat (Fedora)...

Linux distribution A Linux distribution packages together Linux and other free software applications to make a Linux-based system ready to be used

Hundreds of hackers and developers have detected bugs, issued patches, contributed code to Linux

But Alan Cox contributed a great deal with the implementation of network aspects of Linux

For many years, he was the Alan Cox second in command in the Linux project

Without this massive collaboration of the Community Linux would have never become the stable, mature and widely used OS it is nowadays

Linux initiated a new way to produce software: To develop it in community

Andrew S. Tanenbaum (Minix’s author) considered Linux as badly designed and bet that it would not last more than two years

At late 90s Free Software was starting to be a mature technology

The GNU project oﬀered a complete working environment (including the O.S. kernel)

There existed a few successful Free Software projects that outperformed (or at least equated in quality) the corresponding proprietary ones (Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL...)

There were many ongoing Free Software projects with big community involvement

However, one step was still missing:

Many companies were reluctant to develop or even use free software because they were suspicious about the licenses and the business model

For those companies Stallman’s arguments concerning morality or ethics or freedom of software were worthless

They should be convinced that Free Software was good because it would be more proﬁtable for their business

1997: Netscape was badly beaten by Microsoft Internet Explorer Eric S. Raymond convinced Netscape that its only exit was to embrace Free Software 1997: Netscape changed its license to a Free Software license 1998: Eric S. Raymond and Bruce Perens founded the Open Source Initiative Eric S. Raymond

Goal of the OSI: Dump the moralizing and confrontational attitude that has been associated with free software and sell the idea on the same pragmatic business-case ground that had motivated netscape

Stallaman’s answer: We disagree in the basic principles but agree more or less in practical recommendations, so we can and do work together in many speciﬁc projects

Both terms may be used as synonims but have diﬀerent connotations:

Free Software Open Source Software (Richard Stallman and the Free (Eric Raymond and the Open Source Software Foundation) Initiative)

The term has moral and political The term has practical connotations: connotations: Open source has technical and Software, as all human knowledge, economic advantages should be distributed without any limitations This view has been adopted by parties which want to use free This view has been adopted by the software commercially hacker culture

Since, technically, both terms are synonims, often Free Software is referred to: Free-Open Source Software (FOSS)

Libre Software

Free-Libre-Open Source Software (FLOSS)

1 Free Software and Proprietary Software

2 A History of Free Software The ﬁrst years 1980s: The begining of the Free Software Movement 1990s: Linux 2000s: The present of FOSS

3 The FOSS development model The Bazaar Infrastructure for FOSS projects

4 FOSS business model A collection of FOSS business models Community projects vs. corporate projects

5 Conclusion

The list of successful and widely-used FOSS projects is impressive and continues to grow (take a look at the next slide −→)

Many important software and hardware companies are becoming more and more involved with Free Software (however, under the name of Open Source ;-) )

They adopt Linux and FOSS projects in their server and developments

Examples: PostgreSQL, MySQL, php, Python, Ruby, Java, Eclipse, Netbeans, Tomcat, Apache, SPring, JPA, Hibernate...

They fund free software projects economically and with developers work

Examples: IBM, HP, Novell...

Office applications: OpenOffice, thunderbird, evolution, koffice, xpdf, documentViewer, ghostview, evince ... Internet browsers: firefox, konqueror Server applications apache, tomcat, jboss, glassfish... DBMS MySql, PostgreSQL IDEs eclipse, netbeans, DevC++... Frameworks/ compilers GNU-C,Java, Mono, Spring, Struts, .. Mathematics calculation R, Maxima, Pari, GAP... Image viewers and manipul. imageViewer, gimp, kuickshow... Drawing tools: dia, xfig... Desktop managers: KDE, GNOME Media players Gnome-Mplayer, MPlayer, subtitleEditor... Peer-to-peer appl. amule, azureus...

This presentation has been prepared with: LATEX+ Beamer (LATEXmodule for presentations) Emacs (text editor) Evince (pdf reader) But I could have used: LATEX+ foils (another LATEXmodule for presentations) gedit (another text editor) xpdf (another pdf reader) Or I could have used simply: OpenOﬃce (impress)

After this history outline, at least 2 questions spring to my mind

Which software development model is used to develop FOSS projects?

Can FOSS be economically proﬁtable?

After this history outline, at least 2 questions spring to my mind

Which software development model is used to develop FOSS projects?

Can FOSS be economically proﬁtable?

After this history outline, at least 2 questions spring to my mind

Which software development model is used to develop FOSS projects?

Can FOSS be economically proﬁtable?

Josep M. Rib´o Free Software Free Software and Proprietary Software A History of Free Software The Bazaar The FOSS development model Infrastructure for FOSS projects FOSS business model Conclusion Outline

1 Free Software and Proprietary Software

2 A History of Free Software The ﬁrst years 1980s: The begining of the Free Software Movement 1990s: Linux 2000s: The present of FOSS

3 The FOSS development model The Bazaar Infrastructure for FOSS projects

4 FOSS business model A collection of FOSS business models Community projects vs. corporate projects

5 Conclusion

In 1999, Eric S. Raymond stated how diﬀerent the development of a FOSS project was with respect to that of a traditional project He called Bazaar to the development model followed by FOSS projects

Open software development model Open-source software [is] the process of systematically harnessing open development and decentralized peer review to lower costs and improve software quality. Eric S. Raymond (The Cathedral and the Baazar)

FOSS projects usually originate to scratch an itch That is, to solve a developer’s speciﬁc need or interest The project initiator creates an application’s prototype (usually on his/her own or with a reduced developers team) The prototype is released to the community and its development continues in community This is the Bazaar phase

The cathedral and the bazaar In traditional software projects, the developers must attend the Cathedral, listen to the Bishop’s (project manager) speech and act accordingly In FOSS projects, the developers join the discussions of a street Bazaar and act as the majority/more respected speakers suggest

A small group of core developers and a bigger community of users/contributors (volunteers)

Concurrent debugging and development by users/contributors

Peer review

Early and often releases

Organization based on a meritocracy and a benevolent dictator

Keep the modularity and simplicity in the design

1 Free Software and Proprietary Software

2 A History of Free Software The ﬁrst years 1980s: The begining of the Free Software Movement 1990s: Linux 2000s: The present of FOSS

3 The FOSS development model The Bazaar Infrastructure for FOSS projects

4 FOSS business model A collection of FOSS business models Community projects vs. corporate projects

5 Conclusion

In order to develop a FOSS project following the Bazaar model some infrastructure is paramount: Project repository

Version control software

Bug tracker

Communication channels

Documentation tool

A forge is a website (usually) where all the information of the FOSS project is kept

This information includes: Some general information about: The project goals, functionalities TODO list Contributors The project source code (under version control) The project documentation The project forums (user and technical) Binary downloads for diﬀerent architectures (not always)

The project repository is usually the meeting point of the community that contributes to that project

Two examples: Mozilla: http://www.mozilla.org/ Repository for Firefox and Thunderbird

Apache Tomcat: http://tomcat.apache.org/ Repository for Tomcat (an applications container)

1 Free Software and Proprietary Software

2 A History of Free Software The ﬁrst years 1980s: The begining of the Free Software Movement 1990s: Linux 2000s: The present of FOSS

3 The FOSS development model The Bazaar Infrastructure for FOSS projects

4 FOSS business model A collection of FOSS business models Community projects vs. corporate projects

5 Conclusion

FOSS licenses do not forbid selling FOSS applications

However, since FOSS licenses grant the right to redistribute the applications, to sell a FOSS product is not feasable most times (there will always be somebody that will oﬀer that same FOSS application free of charge)

As a result, most FOSS applications are distributed free of charge

How is it possible to oﬀer free of charge a software product which is worth thousands of euros?

There are many answers to this question. Each answer oﬀers a possible business model for FOSS

1. The possibility of “selling services” of integration and customization of open source software allows the creation of many small-medium companies that provide those services to their customers

2. Some FOSS projects are developed under fundations that raise funds to support these projects (example: Apache)

3. Not all software is sold: Most software developers work in software which is for their own company and which will never be sold In addition: A lot of proprietary software is also given for free in order to keep the market position of the producing company (.NET, Internet explorer)

4. Some organizations (for-proﬁt companies, Universities ...) provide developer time to develop FOSS projects which are of interest to them These projects provide prestige to the organization that has supported them

5. Sometimes a number of organizations with a common need support a join eﬀort to create some software product which is needed by all of them (example: Sakai, a FOSS virtual campus developed by many universities)

6. Some for-proﬁt organizations have created a FOSS project and sell the license (dual licensing), the support services and the training to their customers (example: MySQL, ZOPE, companies that package Linux distributions).

A type of license in which a piece of software is licensed with two diﬀerent licenses, each one for a diﬀerent purpose: With a copyleft license for non-commercial purposes With a proprietary license for commercial purposes

Parties that want to use that piece of software to build a derivative commercial application should buy the proprietary license Examples: MySQL, Mozilla ﬁrefox

7. Some companies are interested in having open-source applications with proprietary modules built upon (example: Sun sells StarOﬃce as a proprietary software which incorporates some modules on top of the FOSS OpenOﬃce)

8. Some for-proﬁt companies use a business model which is called software as a service According to this model, their clients access an application through internet and pay a subscription for its hosting and use The application can be a FOSS application

9. Some hardware companies are interested in developing open source drivers and applications that can run in their hardware devices

1 Free Software and Proprietary Software

2 A History of Free Software The ﬁrst years 1980s: The begining of the Free Software Movement 1990s: Linux 2000s: The present of FOSS

3 The FOSS development model The Bazaar Infrastructure for FOSS projects

4 FOSS business model A collection of FOSS business models Community projects vs. corporate projects

5 Conclusion

In some of the presented business models, software companies develop applications which are distributed under a FOSS license

This landing of software companies in FOSS has yielded a change in the FOSS development model: Some FOSS important projects are developed essentially by a company: Corporate projects

These new kind of projects have some diﬀerences with the traditional Community projects:

Josep M. Ribó Free Software Free Software and Proprietary Software A History of Free Software A collection of FOSS business models The FOSS development model Community projects vs. corporate projects FOSS business model Conclusion Community projects vs. corporate projects Corporate projects Community projects Code that was released by a The project is ruled by a significant private company and still is number of contributors. Decisions intertwined with it are taken democratically or by consensus of those contributors The majority of programmers are (sometimes a committee does company employees exist) Strategic decisions about the Contributions are thoroughly project are taken by the company reviewed by the contributors Difficult to participate actively in a Very active tools (mail lists, bug corporate project (formal process trackers...). of application, assignment of rights to the company...) Communities focus on recruitment to advance the project as much as External contributors tend to focus possible. on add-ons to the project and bug finding The Bazaar model is fully observed Dual licensing

Josep M. Rib´o Free Software Free Software and Proprietary Software A History of Free Software The FOSS development model FOSS business model Conclusion Conclusion. Why did I choose free instead of proprietary software??

FOSS promotes freedom in all software aspects FOSS promotes knowledge dissemination and enhancement FOSS makes the development of new software easier (since we can rely on already existing software) FOSS promotes a continuous software improvement and debugging Therefore, it promotes the quality of software FOSS promotes the use of open standards instead of proprietary/closed ones FOSS promotes community participation and involvement FOSS makes the users more involved with the software they use ???? FOSS promotes local software industry that supports local companies (vs. Microsoft-packaging industry) FOSS/creative commons model may help Third world development

In summary:

I chose free software and creative commons licenses because I strongly believe that all expression of culture and knowledge are Humanity’s heritage that contributes to its progress

Therefore, they should be made available as widely and freely as possible

And I also believe that this model is compatible with a fair retribution model for developers and creators

Josep M. Rib´o Free Software Free Software and Proprietary Software A History of Free Software The FOSS development model FOSS business model Conclusion License

This document is licensed under a Creative Commons License with the following conditions: Attribution

Redistribution for non commercial purposes

Derivative works subject to the same license

Josep M. Rib´o Free Software