Free as in Freedom | Page 9

printer, Microsoft, the company modern
hackers view as the most powerful force in the worldwide software industry, was still a
privately held startup. IBM, the company hackers used to regard as the most powerful
force in the worldwide software industry, had yet to to introduce its first personal
computer, thereby igniting the current low-cost PC market. Many of the technologies we
now take for granted-the World Wide Web, satellite television, 32-bit video-game
consoles-didn't even exist. The same goes for many of the companies that now fill the
upper echelons of the corporate establishment, companies like AOL, Sun Microsystems,
Amazon.com, Compaq, and Dell. The list goes on and on.
The fact that the high-technology marketplace has come so far in such little time is fuel
for both sides of the GPL debate. GPL-proponents point to the short lifespan of most
computer hardware platforms. Facing the risk of buying an obsolete product, consumers
tend to flock to companies with the best long-term survival. As a result, the software
marketplace has become a winner-take-all arena.See Shubha Ghosh, "Revealing the
Microsoft Windows Source Code," Gigalaw.com (January, 2000).
http://www.gigalaw.com/articles/ghosh-2000-01-p1.html The current, privately owned
software environment, GPL-proponents say, leads to monopoly abuse and stagnation.
Strong companies suck all the oxygen out of the marketplace for rival competitors and
innovative startups.
GPL-opponents argue just the opposite. Selling software is just as risky, if not more risky,
than buying software, they say. Without the legal guarantees provided by private software
licenses, not to mention the economic prospects of a privately owned "killer app" (i.e., a
breakthrough technology that launches an entirely new market),Killer apps don't have to
be proprietary. Witness, of course, the legendary Mosaic browser, a program whose
copyright permits noncommercial derivatives with certain restrictions. Still, I think the
reader gets the point: the software marketplace is like the lottery. The bigger the potential
payoff, the more people want to participate. For a good summary of the killer-app
phenomenon, see Philip Ben-David, "Whatever Happened to the `Killer App'?"
e-Commerce News (December 7, 2000). companies lose the incentive to participate.
Once again, the market stagnates and innovation declines. As Mundie himself noted in
his May 3 address on the same campus, the GPL's "viral" nature "poses a threat" to any
company that relies on the uniqueness of its software as a competitive asset. Added
Mundie: It also fundamentally undermines the independent commercial software sector
because it effectively makes it impossible to distribute software on a basis where
recipients pay for the product rather than just the cost of distributionSee Craig Mundie,
"The Commercial Software Model," senior vice president, Microsoft Corp. Excerpted
from an online transcript of Mundie's May 3,speech to the New York University Stern
School of Business.
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/5893.html 001,

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/craig/05-03sharedsource.asp The mutual
success of GNU/ LinuxThe acronym GNU stands for "GNU's not Unix." In another
portion of the May 29, 2001, NYU speech, Stallman summed up the acronym's origin:
We hackers always look for a funny or naughty name for a program, because naming a
program is half the fun of writing the program. We also had a tradition of recursive
acronyms, to say that the program that you're writing is similar to some existing
program . . . I looked for a recursive acronym for Something Is Not UNIX. And I tried all
26 letters and discovered that none of them was a word. I decided to make it a contraction.
That way I could have a three-letter acronym, for Something's Not UNIX. And I tried
letters, and I came across the word "GNU." That was it. Although a fan of puns, Stallman
recommends that software users pronounce the "g" at the beginning of the acronym (i.e.,
"gah-new"). Not only does this avoid confusion with the word "gnu," the name of the
African antelope, Connochaetes gnou , it also avoids confusion with the adjective "new."
"We've been working on it for 17 years now, so it is not exactly new any more," Stallman
says. Source: author notes and online transcript of "Free Software: Freedom and
Cooperation," Richard Stallman's May 29, 2001, speech at New York University.
http://www.gnu.org/events/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt , the amalgamated operating
system built around the GPL-protected Linux kernel, and Windows over the last 10 years
reveals the wisdom of both perspectives. Nevertheless, the battle for momentum is an
important one in the software industry. Even powerful vendors such as Microsoft rely on
the support of third-party software developers whose tools, programs, and computer
games make an underlying software platform such as Windows more attractive to the
mainstream consumer. Citing the rapid evolution of the technology marketplace over the
last 20 years, not to mention his own company's admirable track record during that period,
Mundie advised listeners to not get too carried away by the free software movement's
recent momentum: Two decades of experience have shown that an