FOSSwire

Free Software Foundation chairman and all around computer freedom guru Richard Stallman has written an article for the BBC entitled 'It's not the Gates, it's the bars'.

But Gates didn't invent proprietary software, and thousands of other companies do the same thing. It's wrong, no matter who does it.

Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and the rest, offer you software that gives them power over you. A change in executives or companies is not important. What we need to change is this system.

That's what the free software movement is all about. "Free" refers to freedom: we write and publish software that users are free to share and modify.

We do this systematically, for freedom's sake; some of us paid, many as volunteers. We already have complete free operating systems, including GNU/Linux.

If you've read up on Stallman's views on the issue of proprietary software, most of that article simply reiterates the points he makes about the perils of proprietary software and how free software is meant to put the user back in control and give them freedom.

In a sense, it's just the same old mantra being regurgitated, but using Bill Gates' recent departure from an active role at Microsoft as a reason to bring up the issue.

I did think it was interesting, though, that Stallman has got an article on the BBC News Technology website. The overwhelming majority of computer users have no idea of the concept of free software (at least in the way that RMS means it) and using a reputable and very popular news source to get his message out.

If you're new to the FOSS world and haven't read Stallman's views on this issue, it's definitely worth a read to get his and the FSF's view. I don't for a minute expect everyone to agree on everything, and it obviously doesn't necessarily reflect the viewpoints of the whole community. There's a wide spectrum of differing views on whether proprietary software is a good thing and motivations for building and using free software.

For those of us who are familiar, I thought it would be interesting to point out the use of this channel to get the message out, as it's certainly something I don't remember seeing before.

[image source] in public domain

One feature of the free software/open source development model that is largely unique and differs from the proprietary model is sheer diversity.

For any one particular task, there might be several different implementations. Looking for a graphical email client? You've got Kmail, Evolution, Thunderbird; the list could go on. These programs might all bascially do the same thing, yet you've got three different projects with three different sets of developers, three different channels of distribution and so on.

One of the benefits of this, of course, is that you get a certain amount of 'survival of the fittest' within the FOSS world. Two different approaches to solve a problem can be developed in parallel and the strongest solution may win out and go on to become a fully-fledged software solution.

The second benefit is choice for the end user. Not everyone will want a particular bit of software to work in a particular way. When you have multiple solutions for a problem, the user gets to choose the one that works best for them. Variety and choice is most definitely a good thing in this case.

You could also argue that more diversity means more secure solutions as well.

A significant disadvantage of this diversity and fracturing, however, is duplicated work. Two developers working again in parallel on a single solution will end up implementing the same things twice between them. "Don't reinvent the wheel" programmers are told - but that's exactly what they will be doing.

Add in another complication - forking. Forking, for the uninitiated, is when a project splits into two (or more theoretically). The source code from the original is taken and becomes a new project.

In the case of a fork, it is often that the changes from a forked version will not end up propagating back to the original. Licence differences between the two projects can even legally prevent this, so again we get stuck with a high potential for duplicated work.

Also from a commercial viewpoint - having lots of choice and lots of diversity can make it more difficult to pick a solution, as you won't necessarily be able to guarantee the one you pick will remain in development and will 'win' over any competing solutions.

So what can we do to try and make the best of the diversity of FOSS, while minimising the likelihood of and impact of duplicated effort?

Getting developers to talk to each other is certainly a start. Where collaboration is possible, they can work together on common code.

This sort of collaboration is much easier to achieve when you're working with software libraries and frameworks - i.e. code that is mostly on the backend and is shared between applications. A good example of this working well is some of the coordination that Freedesktop does to achieve common standards between desktop environments like GNOME and KDE (although even that is far from perfect).

I think it's more about striking a balance between working together and letting things be done separately. Ultimately, there is no 'solution'. The FOSS model is a double-edged sword with both good and bad points - with unique advantages but also unique challenges.

ZDNet Australia are reporting that a Sun executive James Eagleton has accused Microsoft of 'patent terrorism' over their recent deals with, among other companies, Linspire, Novell and Xandros.

"What we're seeing though now can be loosely described as patent terrorism, where people are using their patent horde as a threat," said James Eagleton, systems product manager for Sun Microsystems. "It's almost like a cold war stand over tactic; where I have these patents and if you breach these patents, I'm going to come after you and sue you."

"That's totally, from Sun's point of view, going against the spirit of innovation around software. No one, certainly in the OS development community, wants to have these doubts lingering over them, especially users," he says. "No one [wants a situation] where you have to think, if I go and use this open source software, who knows who's going to come after me for damages and claims."

Sun are a strong proponent of the open source model and have contributed significant amounts of code to the community and have opened up a lot of their existing products as well.

It's nice to see Sun feel able to make a stand on this issue and are putting their weight behind the general consensus of the community.