Free Software
Freedom and Cooperation
written By MHD Tareq Shaheen
Introduction
You’ve probably had the experience of getting a copy of a recipe from a friend who’s sharing it. And you’ve probably also had the experience of changing a recipe. You can leave out some ingredients. Add some mushrooms. Put in less salt. And you cook it for your friends, and they like it. One of your friends might say, “Hey, could I have the recipe?” And then, what do you do? You could write down your modified version of the recipe and make a copy for your friend. These are the natural things to do with functionally useful recipes of any kind A computer program’s a lot like a recipe: a series of steps to be carried out to get some result that you want. So it’s just as natural to do those same things with computer programs — hand a copy to your friend. Make changes to it. that’s likely to be useful for other people. So they ask, “Hey, can I have a copy?” Of course, if you’re a nice person,
you’re going to give a copy
Pivotal moments in Free Software history
- Richard M. Stallman and the printer
In the late 1970s, Richard M. Stallman (RMS) was a staff programmer at MIT. His department, like those at many universities at the time, shared a PDP-10 computer and a single printer. One problem they encountered was that paper would regularly jam in the printer, causing a string of print jobs to pile up in a queue until someone fixed the jam. To get around this problem, the MIT staff came up with a nice social hack: They wrote code for the printer driver so that when it jammed, a message would be sent to everyone who was currently waiting for a print job: “The printer is jammed, please fix it.” This way, it was never stuck for long.
In 1980, the lab accepted a donation of a brand-new laser printer. When Stallman asked for the source code for the printer driver, however, so he could reimplement the social hack to have the system notify users of a paper jam, he was told that this was proprietary information. Which Stallman took as a betrayal of the hacker culture. The late ’70s and early ’80s represented an era where the best programmers were hired to work on private development projects where they could no longer share or collaborate. As a reaction to this, Stallman resolved that he would create a complete operating system that would not deprive users of the freedom to understand how it worked and would allow them to make changes if they wished. It was the birth of the free software movement - Creation of GNU
By late 1983, Stallman was ready to announce his project and recruit supporters and helpers. In September 1983, he announced the creation of the GNU project (GNU stands for GNU’s Not Unix — a recursive acronym). The goal of the project was to clone the Unix operating system to create a system that would give complete freedom to users. In January 1984, he started working full-time on the project, first creating a compiler
system (GCC) and various operating system utilities. Early in 1985, he published “The GNU Manifesto,” which was a call to arms for programmers to join the effort - The writing of the GPL
The first version of the GNU General Public License was released in 1989 and encapsulated the values of copyleft (the opposite of copyright) You may use, copy distribute, and modify the software covered by the license, but if you make changes, you must share the modified source code alongside the modified binaries. This simple requirement to share modified software, in combination with the advent of the internet in the 1990s, is what enabled the decentralized, collaborative development model of the free software movement to flourish. By the mid-1990s, Linux was starting to take off, and free software had become more mainstream. The Linux kernel was being developed in a way that was completely different from anything people had seen before and was very successful in doing it. Out of the chaos of the kernel, the community came order and a fast-moving project. - Giant companies with Free Software projects
in February 1986, Richard M. Stallman launched the Free Software Foundation in order to accept donations to support the work. This document is the founding charter of the free software movement. And after Netscape released the source code for Mozilla in 1998, a group of people gathered in Palo Alto to discuss a term. The term was “Open Source” and The Open Source Institute was later founded by Bruce Perens and Eric Raymond. The fundamental difference with proprietary software was the availability of the source code, and so this was what should be put forward first in the branding. The combined effect of massive Silicon Valley funding of free software projects, the attention of Wall Street for young companies built around free software, and the market credibility that tech giants like IBM and Sun Microsystems brought had combined to create the massive adoption of free software, and the embrace of the open development model that helped it thrive have led to the dominance of Linux and free software in the tech industry today.
Potential benefits of Free Software
- The power of the crowd
Many hands can deliver powerful outcomes. The collective power of a
community of talented individuals working in concert delivers not only more ideas but quicker development and troubleshooting when issues arise. - Transparency
Free software code means just that — you get full visibility into the code base, as well as all discussions about how the community develops features and addresses bugs. In contrast, proprietary code produced in secrecy may come with unforeseen limitations and other unwelcome surprises. With free software, you’re protected against lock-in risks and can see exactly what you’re getting - Reliability
Because there are more eyes on it, the reliability of free software tends to be superior as well. With a worldwide community supporting a code base rather than one team within one company — code is developed on online forums and guided by experts. The output tends to be extremely robust, tried, and tested code. In fact, free software now powers about 90% of the internet and is being rapidly adopted across major enterprises for this reason. - Better security
As with reliability, free software’s code is often more secure because it is much more thoroughly reviewed and vetted by the community (and any issues that do arise tend to be patched more diligently). Long a point of hesitation for enterprise adoption of free
software, concerns about security just aren’t an issue today. - Faster time to market
Because free software solutions are openly available and can be explored for free, it’s often much faster to investigate options and get solutions off the ground. - Cost-effective
Although free software solutions should be thought of as more than just free software, the fact that they require no licensing fees remains a decisive advantage when looking at the total cost of deploying a solution. - Freedom from lock-in
Proprietary software for core infrastructure increases the risk of becoming locked in by the vendor or technology. If this happens, enterprises can be at the mercy of vendors’ price increases and experience a lack of flexibility they can’t easily and readily escape. Enterprises should be careful to use true free software solutions, rather than those from providers that repackage free software to include proprietary hooks.
Final say: Three freedoms
The three freedoms that distinguish free software from typical software are as follows.
Freedom One: is the freedom to help yourself, making changes to suit your own needs.
Freedom Two: is the freedom to help your neighbor by distributing copies. You can make an exact copy, and hand it to your friends, so now your friend can use it.
Freedom Three: is the freedom to help build your community by making changes and publishing them for other people to use.
If you have all of these freedoms, the program is free software for you.
References:
1. ” Transcript of Richard M. Stallman’s speech, Free Software: Freedom and
Cooperation”. New York University on 29 May 2001.
2. ”6 pivotal moments in open source history”. Dave Neary from
opensource.com on February 1, 2018. Retrieved 18 March 2022.
3. ”10 advantages of open source for the enterprise”. Ben Bromhead from
opensource.com on August 17, 2017. Retrieved 24 March 2022.
