Revolution OS
-
0:02 - 0:09Any comments, suggestions and bug reports
regarding the subtitle.
E-mail to: geek@geekbone.org -
0:10 - 0:11I was at the Agenda 2000
-
0:12 - 0:14and uh, one of the people who was there
was Craig Mundie, -
0:14 - 0:18who is some kind of
high mucky muck at Microsoft, -
0:18 - 0:22I think uh, vice-president of consumer products
or something like that. -
0:22 - 0:24And uh, I hadn't actually met him
-
0:24 - 0:28I, I, I, uh, bumped in to him in an,
in an elevator... in an elevator -
0:28 - 0:32And uh, I looked at his badge and said,
"Oh, I see you work for Microsoft." -
0:33 - 0:36And he looked back to me and said,
"Oh, yeah and what do you do?" -
0:36 - 0:39And I thought he seemed just a sort of a tad dismissive
-
0:39 - 0:42I mean, here's the archetypal, you know,
guy in a suit -
0:43 - 0:44looking at a scruffy hacker
-
0:45 - 0:48And so I gave him the thousand
yard stare and said, -
0:48 - 0:50"I'm your worst nightmare."
-
0:50 - 0:53Wonderview Productions
PRESENTS -
0:53 - 0:57A
J.T.S. Moore
FILM -
0:59 - 1:04REVOLUTION OS
-
1:05 - 1:08For most its short, but colorful history,
-
1:08 - 1:10the computer industry has been dominated
-
1:10 - 1:12by the Windows operating system.
-
1:12 - 1:14But that could soon change,
-
1:14 - 1:16as Windows faces a strong challenge from Linux
-
1:18 - 1:20Silicon Valley has long been the place
-
1:20 - 1:22to develop new technology,
-
1:22 - 1:25start new companies and get really rich.
-
1:25 - 1:28Now The Valley is the front line in a revolution
-
1:28 - 1:31fighting for that most
politically incorrect of ideas: -
1:31 - 1:32individual freedom
-
1:33 - 1:35Day and night,
a loose confederation of -
1:35 - 1:37hackers and programmers zaps bits pieces of
-
1:37 - 1:40computer code around the world as it builds the tools
-
1:40 - 1:42to set computer users free
-
1:42 - 1:45using open information and
the free exchange of technology -
1:45 - 1:46to achieve its goals.
-
1:46 - 1:49This revolution began in the 1980's with
-
1:49 - 1:51the Free Software Movement and GNU project.
-
1:51 - 1:53And now is most commonly associated
-
1:53 - 1:57with Linux and the Open Source Movement.
-
1:57 - 2:00What is Linux?
-
2:00 - 2:02We do have one sector that taking off today.
-
2:02 - 2:04It is the Linux-related sector.
-
2:04 - 2:06And I thought this might be
a good opportunity to say, -
2:06 - 2:08"What is Linux?"
-
2:08 - 2:09And I'll answer this question for you.
-
2:10 - 2:10Many of you probably already know,
-
2:10 - 2:12but
There are 12 million users out there -
2:12 - 2:16A computer Operating System
developed by hundreds of -
2:16 - 2:18programmers collaborating on the Internet
-
2:18 - 2:19A challenge to Microsoft Windows NT
-
2:20 - 2:21Very popular for its speed
-
2:22 - 2:23and so this's what the craze is about
-
2:25 - 2:27To kind of explain what Linux is you have to
-
2:27 - 2:29explain what an Operating System is
-
2:29 - 2:32And... the thing about Operating System is
you, I mean... -
2:32 - 2:34you're never ever supposed to see it.
-
2:34 - 2:36Because...
-
2:36 - 2:38nobody really uses an Operating System,
-
2:39 - 2:42people use... programs... on their computer
-
2:42 - 2:44And the only mission in life
-
2:44 - 2:48of an operating system is to help
those programs run. -
2:48 - 2:51So an operating system never does
anything on its own -
2:51 - 2:54It's only waiting for the programs to
-
2:54 - 2:56ask for certain resources
-
3:00 - 3:02or ask for the programs to
-
3:02 - 3:03connect them to the outside world.
-
3:04 - 3:06And then the operating system
comes, steps in and then -
3:06 - 3:10tries to make it easy for people
to write programs -
3:10 - 3:13And, What is Open Source?
-
3:13 - 3:16Open Source is a way for people to collaborate
-
3:16 - 3:22on software without being encumbered
by all of the problems of intellectual property, -
3:22 - 3:26having to negotiate contracts every time
you buy a piece of software, -
3:26 - 3:29have a lot of lawyers involved.
-
3:29 - 3:32In general, we just wanna get software to work
-
3:32 - 3:34and we want be able to have
-
3:34 - 3:37people contribute fixes to that, etc..
-
3:38 - 3:40So we sort of sacrifice some of
-
3:40 - 3:42the intellectual property rights
-
3:42 - 3:44and just let the whole world
use the software -
3:46 - 3:48Before there could be Linux
-
3:48 - 3:51There was Richard Stallman
and the Free Software Movement. -
3:52 - 3:54They think of Richard Stallman as the...
-
3:55 - 3:58great philosopher, right.
-
3:58 - 4:00And think of me as the engineer
-
4:01 - 4:04Richard Stallman is the founding father of
the Free Software Movement. -
4:05 - 4:08Through his efforts to build the
GNU Operating System. -
4:08 - 4:12He created the legal, philosophical and
technological foundation -
4:12 - 4:14for the Free Software Movement.
-
4:14 - 4:15Without these contributions,
-
4:15 - 4:18it's unlikely that Linux and Open Source
-
4:18 - 4:20would have evolved in to their current forms today
-
4:21 - 4:25I joined the
MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1971, -
4:25 - 4:29I joined... a thriving community of hackers,
-
4:30 - 4:31people who loved programming,
-
4:31 - 4:34loved exploring the what they could do
with computers. -
4:34 - 4:38And they had developed
a complete Operating System, -
4:38 - 4:40entirely written there.
-
4:40 - 4:43And I became one of the team, that
-
4:43 - 4:46continued to improve the Operating System,
adding new capabilities -
4:46 - 4:50That was my job, and I loved it, we all loved it.
That's why we were doing it. -
4:51 - 4:54And [clears throat] we called our system
-
4:54 - 4:57"the Incompatible Time Sharing System"
-
4:57 - 4:59which is the example of the
-
4:59 - 5:00playful spirit
-
5:00 - 5:02which defines a hacker.
-
5:02 - 5:05Hackers are people who enjoy
playful cleverness. -
5:06 - 5:08Well, it first started going wrong
-
5:08 - 5:12as the outside world started pressuring us
to have passwords. -
5:12 - 5:15We didn't have any passwords
on our computer. -
5:16 - 5:18And the reason was that the hackers
-
5:18 - 5:20who'd originally designed the system
-
5:20 - 5:26realized that passwords were a way
the administrators could control all the users. -
5:26 - 5:28And they didn't want to build tools
-
5:28 - 5:32you know, locks and keys for
the administrators to control them, -
5:32 - 5:34so they just didn't do it.
They left that out -
5:35 - 5:38And we had the philosophy
that whoever sitting at the computer -
5:39 - 5:41should be able to do whatever he wants
-
5:42 - 5:46and somebody else who was there yesterday
shouldn't be controlling what you do today -
5:46 - 5:50When they put passwords onto one of
the machines at MIT -
5:52 - 5:54I and bunch of other hackers didn't like it,
-
5:54 - 5:58I decided to try a subversive sort of hack.
[clears throat] -
5:58 - 6:00I figured out how to decode the passwords,
-
6:00 - 6:04so by looking the database of encoded passwords
-
6:04 - 6:07I could figure out what each person
would actually type to login -
6:08 - 6:10And so I sent messages to people, saying,
-
6:10 - 6:14"Hello? I see that you've
chosen the password mumble, -
6:14 - 6:16whatever it was.
How about if you do as I do -
6:16 - 6:18just type Enter for your password
-
6:18 - 6:22it's much shorter, much easier to type".
-
6:22 - 6:26And... of course with this message I was
-
6:26 - 6:29implicitly telling them
the security was really just a joke. -
6:29 - 6:33Anyway, but in addition
I was letting them in on this hack. -
6:34 - 6:38And eventually, A fifth of all
users on that computer joined me -
6:38 - 6:41in using just Enter as their passwords.
-
6:41 - 6:44[ Where did the ideas that lead to what is now
called Open Source world? -
6:44 - 6:46How did that begin? Who began that? ]
-
6:46 - 6:50It actually began with the start
of computers because at that time -
6:50 - 6:53software was just passed around between people
-
6:54 - 6:58And I think it was only like in the
lates 70's or early 80's -
6:59 - 7:02That people started really closing up
their software, -
7:02 - 7:06And saying, "No, you can never
get a look at the source code. -
7:06 - 7:09You can't change the software
even if it's necessary -
7:09 - 7:12for you to fix it, for your own application"
-
7:13 - 7:17And... um, you can actually blame
some of that on Microsoft, -
7:17 - 7:21They are one of the real pioneers
of the proprietary software model. -
7:22 - 7:24In the mid 1970's, a group of hackers
-
7:24 - 7:28and computer hobbyist in Silicon Valley
formed the "Homebrew Computer Club". -
7:29 - 7:32In the club January 31, 1976 newsletter,
-
7:32 - 7:35Bill Gates of the recently formed Microsoft,
-
7:36 - 7:37wrote an open letter to the community
-
7:38 - 7:44where he made a point by point argument for
the relatively new concept of proprietary software -
7:44 - 7:48up to that point, the practice of computer users
had been to freely pass around software -
7:48 - 7:51with not much thought given to
its ownership -
7:52 - 7:54Known as An Open Letter to Hobbyists,
Bill Gates writes, -
7:54 - 7:57"To me the most critical thing
in the hobby market right now -
7:57 - 8:00is the lack of good software courses,
books and software itself. -
8:00 - 8:03Without good software and an owner
who understands programming, -
8:03 - 8:05A hobby computer is wasted.
-
8:05 - 8:08Will quality software be written
for the hobby market? -
8:08 - 8:11Gates goes on to write,
"The feedback we have gotten from -
8:11 - 8:14the hundreds of people who say they are
using BASIC has all been positive. -
8:14 - 8:16Two surprising things are apparent, however.
-
8:16 - 8:201) Most of these "users" never
bought BASIC, and -
8:20 - 8:222) The amount of royalties we have received
from sales to hobbyists -
8:22 - 8:26makes the time spent on of Altair BASIC
worth less than 2 dollars an hour -
8:26 - 8:28Why is this?
-
8:28 - 8:30As the majority of hobbyists must be aware,
-
8:30 - 8:32most of you steal your software.
-
8:32 - 8:35Hardware must be paid for but software
is something to share. -
8:35 - 8:38Who cares if the people who worked
on it get paid? -
8:38 - 8:39Is this fair?
-
8:39 - 8:41One thing you don't do by stealing software
-
8:41 - 8:44is get back at MITS for some problem
you may have had -
8:44 - 8:46MITS doesn't make money selling software.
-
8:46 - 8:49One thing you do do is prevent
good software from being written. -
8:49 - 8:51Who can afford to do professional work for nothing?
-
8:52 - 8:54What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming,
-
8:54 - 8:58finding all bugs, documenting his product
and distribute it for free? -
8:58 - 8:59The fact is,
-
8:59 - 9:02no one besides us has invested a lot of money
in hobby software. -
9:02 - 9:05What about the guys who resell Altair BASIC?
-
9:05 - 9:07Aren't they making money on hobby software?
-
9:07 - 9:11Yes, but those who have been
reported to us may lose in the end. -
9:11 - 9:13They are the ones who give
hobbyists a bad name, -
9:13 - 9:16and should be kicked out of any
club meeting they show up at. -
9:16 - 9:19I would appreciate letters from
anyone who wants to pay up, -
9:19 - 9:21or has a suggestion or comment.
-
9:21 - 9:25Signed Bill Gates, General partner, Micro-Soft.
-
9:25 - 9:29In the late 70's and early 1980's,
Richard Stallman was -
9:29 - 9:32doing Artificial Intelligence research and coding
-
9:32 - 9:35at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab.
-
9:35 - 9:37Richard had a number of negative experiences
-
9:37 - 9:39during that period which soured him
-
9:39 - 9:41on the whole idea of commercial software.
-
9:41 - 9:43[ such as? ]
-
9:43 - 9:47uh... some company wanted to work on and
wanted to fix was locked up. -
9:48 - 9:52and he couldn't get the company on the code to let him fix it
-
9:52 - 9:54even though it would have been to their advantage to do so.
-
9:54 - 9:57And that put me into a moral dilemma, you see?
-
9:58 - 10:03Because to get one of the modern computers
of the day, which was the early 80's, -
10:04 - 10:06you would have to get a proprietory
operating system. -
10:06 - 10:09The developers of those systems
didn't share with other people, -
10:10 - 10:12Instead they tried to control the users,
-
10:12 - 10:13dominate the users, restrict them.
-
10:14 - 10:16Say, if to get the system,
-
10:16 - 10:20you have to sign a promise you won't
share with anybody else. -
10:20 - 10:23And to me that was essentially a promise
to be a bad person, -
10:23 - 10:25to betray the rest of the world,
-
10:25 - 10:29cut myself off from society
from a cooperating community. -
10:30 - 10:34And I had already experienced what happened
when other people did that to us, -
10:34 - 10:36when they refused to share with us.
-
10:36 - 10:38because they had signed these contracts.
-
10:39 - 10:40And it hurt the whole lab,
-
10:40 - 10:43it kept us from doing useful things before.
-
10:43 - 10:46So I just wasn't going to do that.
-
10:46 - 10:50I thought,"This is wrong!
I am not going to live this way" -
10:50 - 10:54And from experiences like this
he developed a profound hostility -
10:54 - 10:57to the idea of
intellectual property and software. -
10:57 - 11:00He eventually acted this out
by founding the Free Software Foundation. -
11:00 - 11:05So, I looked for another alternative
and I realized: -
11:05 - 11:06I was an operating system developer.
-
11:07 - 11:10If I were to develop another operating system.
-
11:10 - 11:14And then as the author,
encourage everyone to share it. -
11:14 - 11:18Say, everyone, " You come and get it,
use this, form a new community" -
11:19 - 11:23Not only could I gave myself a way
to keep using computers without -
11:23 - 11:26betraying other people,
but I'd give it to everybody else, too. -
11:27 - 11:30Everybody would have a
way out of that moral dilemma -
11:31 - 11:34And so I realized this was
what I had to do with my life. -
11:35 - 11:39I actually began the project in January of 1984.
-
11:39 - 11:42That's when I resigned for my job at MIT
-
11:42 - 11:45to start developing the GNU operating system.
-
11:46 - 11:50Now I should explain the name GNU is a hack.
-
11:50 - 11:53Because it's a recursive acronym.
-
11:53 - 11:56It stands for "GNU's Not Unix".
-
11:56 - 11:59You see so the "G" in "GNU" stands for "GNU".
-
11:59 - 12:01And what the name means is
-
12:01 - 12:06I was developing a system that was like
the Unix operating system, -
12:06 - 12:08but was not the Unix operating system.
-
12:08 - 12:10It was a different system.
-
12:10 - 12:12We would have to write it completely
from scratch -
12:12 - 12:14because Unix was proprietory.
-
12:14 - 12:16We were forbidden to share Unix,
-
12:16 - 12:20We couldn't use Unix.
It was useless for a community. -
12:20 - 12:23So we had to write a replacement for it.
-
12:25 - 12:26Throughout the 1980s,
-
12:26 - 12:29as Richard Stallman was building the GNU project,
-
12:29 - 12:32computer scientists from
the University of California at Berkeley -
12:32 - 12:35were developing their own free
operating system. -
12:35 - 12:38Known as Berkeley Unix, or BSD,
-
12:38 - 12:42it was based upon the Unix kernel
which had been licensed from AT&T. -
12:42 - 12:46However, due to legal problems with AT&T
and fragmentation of the source code, -
12:46 - 12:50hackers and other non-institutional users
were slow to adopt it -
12:50 - 12:54Well, Unix consisted of a large number of
separate programs -
12:55 - 12:56that communicated with each other.
-
12:56 - 12:59So we just had to replace these programs
one by one. -
13:00 - 13:03So what I started doing was
writing a replacement for one program, -
13:03 - 13:05and then another, and then another,
-
13:05 - 13:07and then people started joining me,
-
13:07 - 13:11because I published an announcement
inviting other people to join me -
13:11 - 13:12to help write these programs.
-
13:13 - 13:20And uh... and by around 1991,
we had replaced practically all of them. -
13:20 - 13:22[ What were some of the programs that you ... ]
-
13:22 - 13:25Well... we had to... to have a complete system,
-
13:25 - 13:29you need to have a kernel, which is the program that
-
13:29 - 13:32allocates resources to all the other programs,
-
13:32 - 13:35you need a compiler, which translates a program
-
13:35 - 13:40from readable source code
that programmers can understand into numbers, -
13:41 - 13:45mysterious numbers
that the computer can actually run. -
13:45 - 13:48you need other programs
that go with the compiler to help do this job. -
13:48 - 13:49you need a debugger.
-
13:49 - 13:50you need a text editor.
-
13:50 - 13:52you need text formatters.
-
13:52 - 13:53you need mailers...
-
13:54 - 13:55you need lots and lots of things.
-
13:55 - 13:58There are hundreds of programs
in the Unix-like operating system. -
13:59 - 14:00I saw Stallman's announcement.
-
14:01 - 14:04Actually I met him in February of 1987.
-
14:04 - 14:08He came to give a five-day tutorial
on Emacs at our company. -
14:09 - 14:11And during the day he would explain
-
14:11 - 14:13new ways to think about Emacs
-
14:14 - 14:16and ways to extend it, enhance it,
and to use the Emacs source code -
14:17 - 14:18uh, for better or worse.
-
14:18 - 14:22But in the evening,
he was busily working on this compiler, -
14:22 - 14:24and he had not yet released it to the public,
-
14:24 - 14:28so he was uh, being a little bit uh,
careful about -
14:28 - 14:30who, who got to see the source code.
-
14:30 - 14:34But I was very eager,
and when he first announced it in June, -
14:34 - 14:36I downloaded it immediately.
-
14:36 - 14:37I, I played with it.
-
14:37 - 14:39I got some, some pointers from him.
-
14:40 - 14:41And when I sent the source code back to him,
-
14:41 - 14:42he was very,
-
14:43 - 14:47uh, actually amazed that how quickly
I was able to ramp up on his technology. -
14:48 - 14:48Whenever we worked on something
at Stanford or in the university, -
14:48 - 14:52Whenever we worked on something
at Stanford or in the university, -
14:52 - 14:54we would get, mostly at the time
-
14:54 - 14:58we were working off machines
from Digital Equipment or Sun, mostly Sun. -
14:58 - 15:00Whenever we would get a Sun machine,
-
15:00 - 15:04the first thing we would do is
we would spend literally days -
15:05 - 15:09downloading GNU free software from the Internet,
-
15:09 - 15:11building it and installing it on that Sun machine.
-
15:11 - 15:15The crucial thing about GNU is that
it's free software. -
15:15 - 15:19And Free Software refers not to price,
but to freedom. -
15:19 - 15:21So think of free speech, not free beer.
-
15:22 - 15:24The freedoms that I am talking about
-
15:24 - 15:28are the freedoms to make changes if you want to,
-
15:28 - 15:30or hire somebody else to make changes for you
-
15:30 - 15:32if you're using a software for your business,
-
15:33 - 15:36to redistribute copies,
to share with other people, -
15:36 - 15:40and to make improvements and publish them
-
15:40 - 15:42so that other people can
get the benefit of them, too. -
15:43 - 15:46And those are the freedoms that distinguish
free software from non-free software. -
15:47 - 15:50These are the freedoms that
enable people to form a community. -
15:51 - 15:52If you don't have all these freedoms,
-
15:52 - 15:55you're being divided and
dominated by somebody. -
15:56 - 15:59My first experience contributing to free software
-
15:59 - 16:03came in late 1989, early 1990.
-
16:03 - 16:06I was working as a graduate student
at Stanford University -
16:06 - 16:09on Computer Aided Design tools.
-
16:09 - 16:11One of the pieces I needed was a tool
-
16:11 - 16:12called a parser generator.
-
16:13 - 16:15Well, the Free Software Foundation
-
16:15 - 16:18under Richard Stallman
created a great tool called "bison". -
16:18 - 16:22I needed a tool that worked with C++.
Bison worked with C. -
16:23 - 16:26I modified bison to create something
called "bison++". -
16:26 - 16:29And it's a tremendous feeling of empowerment
-
16:29 - 16:32be able to take a piece of software that was available
-
16:32 - 16:36and create what you needed
in a very short piece of time by modifying it. -
16:37 - 16:39I put it back on the Internet
-
16:39 - 16:41and I was amazed at the number of people
-
16:41 - 16:43that picked it up and started using it.
-
16:43 - 16:47In fact, I remember going to, uh job interviews,
-
16:47 - 16:50I, at various times, considered
just going out getting a job. -
16:50 - 16:52And I'd gone to a job interview.
-
16:52 - 16:54And I was talking to one of the people,
-
16:54 - 16:56and I started asking them about what tools they used,
-
16:57 - 16:59and they said, "Gee, we used bison++!"
-
16:59 - 17:01and I said, "Oh, I am the author of bison++!"
-
17:02 - 17:06Free Software generally does have a copyright.
-
17:06 - 17:09It does have an owner.
-
17:09 - 17:10And it has a license.
-
17:10 - 17:12It is not public domain.
-
17:12 - 17:15If we put the software in the public domain,
-
17:15 - 17:18somebody else would be able to make
a little bit of changes -
17:18 - 17:21and turn that into a proprietory software package,
-
17:21 - 17:24which means that
the users would be running our software, -
17:24 - 17:27but they wouldn't have freedom to cooperate and share.
-
17:28 - 17:31To prevent that, we use a technique called "Copyleft".
-
17:32 - 17:35The idea of Copyleft is that
it's "Copyright" flipped over. -
17:36 - 17:37And what we do is, we say,
-
17:37 - 17:39this software is copyrighted
-
17:39 - 17:44and we, the authors give you permission
to redistribute copies, -
17:44 - 17:45we give you permission to change,
-
17:45 - 17:47we give you permission to add to it.
-
17:47 - 17:49But when you redistribute it,
-
17:49 - 17:52it has to be under these terms,
no more and no less. -
17:53 - 17:55So that whoever gets it from you
-
17:55 - 18:00also gets the freedom to cooperate
with other people, if he wants to. -
18:00 - 18:04And then, in this way everywhere the software goes,
-
18:04 - 18:06the freedom goes, too.
-
18:06 - 18:08And it becomes an inalienable right
-
18:09 - 18:12to cooperate with other people and form a community.
-
18:12 - 18:15[ And so, what is that? the license?
what was that... ] -
18:15 - 18:17Well, Copyleft being a general idea,
-
18:17 - 18:20in order to use it, you have to have specific example.
-
18:20 - 18:24The specific example we use for
most GNU software packages -
18:24 - 18:27is the GNU General Public License,
-
18:27 - 18:31a particular document and legalese
which accomplishes this job. -
18:32 - 18:34A lot of other people use that same license,
for example, -
18:34 - 18:38Linus Torvalds uses that license for Linux as well.
-
18:39 - 18:42Well, the license I use is the
GNU General Public License. -
18:42 - 18:44That's the one Richard Stallman wrote.
-
18:44 - 18:48And I think it is really astounding contribution.
-
18:48 - 18:52Uh, it's one of the few software licenses
that was written -
18:53 - 18:56from the standpoint of the community rather than
-
18:56 - 19:00from the standpoint of um, protecting a company
-
19:00 - 19:06or um, as is the case with MIT and BSD license
-
19:06 - 19:09performing the goals of
a government grant program. -
19:10 - 19:12Uh, and the GPL is really unique in that.
-
19:13 - 19:16It's not just a license.
It's a whole philosophy that, -
19:16 - 19:19I think, motivated the open source definition.
-
19:19 - 19:24I don't hide that a lot of what I do came from Stallman.
-
19:28 - 19:32A crucial step in the growth of GNU/Linux
and the Free Software movement -
19:32 - 19:36was the creation of businesses
based upon the software and philosophy. -
19:36 - 19:38Grown zero for the beginning of
the business face -
19:38 - 19:42was the Electronics Research Lab
at Stanford University. -
19:42 - 19:45Known as ERL, the lab was the place for the first GNU
-
19:45 - 19:48and Linux business founder inspiration.
-
19:48 - 19:50So right here was where ERL was.
-
19:50 - 19:53That would have been the entrance
over there next to the uh, -
19:53 - 19:56electrical engineering McCullough building.
-
19:56 - 20:00As you walk in, you come in,
you walk down the hallway, down here. -
20:00 - 20:04My office would have been about, about here.
-
20:04 - 20:07and then right across the hall,
from that was Michael Tiemann's office. -
20:08 - 20:12Michael Tiemann took uh.. and
started a company, Cygnus Software -
20:12 - 20:17with the idea was to sell consulting
and services around the GNU Free Software -
20:17 - 20:19and, well Michael's done very well with Cygnus.
-
20:19 - 20:23Well uh, I spend a lot of
time working out uh, -
20:23 - 20:25how we were going to make money
-
20:25 - 20:27and in the original GNU manifesto
-
20:27 - 20:30which is the last chapter
of the GNU Emacs manual. -
20:30 - 20:32Stallman proposed a number of different
-
20:32 - 20:34possible ways to make money.
-
20:34 - 20:36Form the beginning of the
Free Software movement -
20:36 - 20:37I had the idea that there's
-
20:37 - 20:39room in it for business to be done.
-
20:39 - 20:42One of the advantages of Free Software is that, there's
-
20:42 - 20:45a free market for any kind of service or support.
-
20:45 - 20:47So if you are using software in your business,
-
20:47 - 20:49and you want good support,
-
20:49 - 20:52you have a choice of people to go to for it,
-
20:52 - 20:54you have a choice of businesses... that
-
20:54 - 20:57are in the business of
providing you with support. -
20:57 - 20:59So they are going to have to in general give you
-
20:59 - 21:02good support or you go to somebody else.
-
21:02 - 21:04With proprietory software,
-
21:04 - 21:07support is a monopoly, there is one company,
-
21:07 - 21:10typically, that has the source code
-
21:10 - 21:12and only they can give you support
-
21:12 - 21:15so typically, you are at the mercy of a monopoly.
-
21:15 - 21:18That's the case, for example with Microsoft.
-
21:18 - 21:21So no wonder the support is so bad.
-
21:21 - 21:22The benefits of Free Software were
-
21:22 - 21:25tremendous but the cost of supporting it internally
-
21:26 - 21:28uh, and made managers very very nervous and
-
21:28 - 21:32so the fundamental idea I had was
if we can build a model -
21:32 - 21:36that could deliver two to four times the support
-
21:36 - 21:39and uh, and uh, and hand holding capability
-
21:39 - 21:41that an internal engineer could provide.
-
21:41 - 21:44And we could do it at 1/2 to 1/4 of the cost
-
21:44 - 21:46that would meet the test of wether or not
-
21:46 - 21:48people would actually buy.
-
21:48 - 21:50And by about the Fall of that year, we had
-
21:50 - 21:52all the things worked out about who
-
21:52 - 21:54needed on the technical team, what
-
21:54 - 21:56the terms the sale would be, what
-
21:56 - 21:58the key price point were, and we
-
21:58 - 22:02actually received our incorporation in Nov of 1989.
-
22:02 - 22:05One of the most difficult things in starting our company
-
22:05 - 22:06was actually finding a name for it.
-
22:06 - 22:09I explained this to one of my friends
-
22:09 - 22:10"we're having difficulty"
-
22:10 - 22:13and he returned an e-mail message
-
22:13 - 22:17that basically just had a bunch of words
with the name "GNU" in it. -
22:17 - 22:22And "Cygnus" was the one that
looked least obnoxious and least obscene. -
22:22 - 22:25I can say very clearly that Cygnus
-
22:25 - 22:29was the first business that specialized in Free Software.
-
22:29 - 22:32Cygnus supported Free Software,
-
22:32 - 22:36filled a very essential niche because
we had this great software, -
22:36 - 22:40you could get it for nothing but
you couldn't get support - they made their money -
22:40 - 22:42by charging for support.
-
22:42 - 22:46The GNU project started by building a toolkit,
-
22:46 - 22:51a basic development tool such as
a C compiler, a debugger, a text-editor, -
22:51 - 22:54and uh, other necessary apparatus.
-
22:54 - 22:59And their intention was eventually to
develop a kernel to sit underneath those -
22:59 - 23:02and be the center of the operating system.
-
23:02 - 23:05By about 1990 they had successfully
developed that toolkit, -
23:05 - 23:09and it was in wide use on great many variants of Unix.
-
23:10 - 23:12But there was still no free kernel.
-
23:12 - 23:16The kernel happened to be
one of the last things we started to do -
23:16 - 23:18and we had started it not long before.
-
23:19 - 23:22And that's when Linus Torvalds came along.
-
23:22 - 23:26"Lin-us" or "Line-us"? What's the exact,
do you prefer the pronunciation? -
23:26 - 23:29um.. When I speak Swedish it's "Lee-nus";
-
23:29 - 23:31when I speak Finnish it's "Leen-ous";
-
23:31 - 23:33when I speak English it's "Line-us".
-
23:33 - 23:36And I really don't care how people pronounce my name.
-
23:36 - 23:38But "Linux" is always "Linux".
-
23:38 - 23:43He developed a kernel, and got it working
faster than we got ours working, -
23:43 - 23:46and got it to work very nicely and solidly.
-
23:46 - 23:48His kernel is called "Linux".
-
23:48 - 23:52The initial goal was my very personal goal
-
23:52 - 23:55to be able to run a similar environment on my computer
-
23:56 - 23:59that I had grown used to at, at the university computers.
-
24:00 - 24:05And I could not find anything that suited me for that.
-
24:06 - 24:09So having been doing computers for all my life basically.
-
24:09 - 24:12At that point I decided that I'll do my own.
-
24:13 - 24:17Most of the inspiration early on came from, from SunOS
-
24:18 - 24:22which was what um,
I was using at the university at the time. -
24:22 - 24:23[ Which University? ]
-
24:23 - 24:25University of Helsinki in Finland.
-
24:26 - 24:30From 1991 to about 1993 was really
-
24:30 - 24:33I guess the infancy period of Linux.
-
24:33 - 24:36That was when it was still only alpha or beta quality;
-
24:36 - 24:39it was relatively unstable.
-
24:39 - 24:42Although, even then it was a good deal more stable
-
24:42 - 24:46than a lot of what are now called
"production" operating systems. -
24:46 - 24:50Linus used the traditional
tried-and-true method of writing one program -
24:50 - 24:52that does the job,
-
24:53 - 24:55and he got it to work.
-
24:55 - 24:58quickly in fact faster than
I would have thought was possible. -
24:58 - 25:02The term for it is "monolithic",
-
25:02 - 25:09which means that basically
the OS itself is one entity, indivisible. -
25:11 - 25:13uh, while in the microkernel,
-
25:13 - 25:16the, the operating system kernel is actually
-
25:18 - 25:21uh, just a collection of servers that
-
25:21 - 25:24do different things and then they have a common protocol
-
25:24 - 25:26for doing communication between themselves.
-
25:26 - 25:32[ So why is that... the GNU project that's had
so much lead-time, that's been doing this, -
25:32 - 25:35Why...Why is it that he was able to kinda
come in at the tail end so to speak ] -
25:35 - 25:41Well we actually started the
GNU Hurd not long before he started Linux. -
25:42 - 25:46And it happened though we chose a design
that's a very advanced design -
25:46 - 25:48in terms of the power gives you
-
25:48 - 25:51but also turns out to be very hard to debug.
-
25:52 - 25:57We decided to divide up the kernel
which traditionally had been one program, -
25:57 - 26:00to divide it up into a lot of smaller programs
-
26:00 - 26:04that would send messages to
each other asynchronously to, to communicate. -
26:06 - 26:10The problem is that, that style of programming
-
26:10 - 26:12has a great deal of potential for bugs,
-
26:12 - 26:15which are often very hard to
figure out because they depend on... -
26:15 - 26:22does this program send this message
before or after this one sends that message... -
26:22 - 26:27And the result was:
it took us years to get the thing to work. -
26:28 - 26:32[ What is Linux's relationship to the GNU project? ]
-
26:33 - 26:39Well there's relationships to GNU
on kind of multiple levels. -
26:40 - 26:44One is just the philosophical level of thinking that
-
26:44 - 26:47"making your source open is a good idea".
-
26:47 - 26:51When Linus developed the kernel
he wasn't doing it for the GNU project. -
26:51 - 26:53He did it independently.
-
26:53 - 26:56And he released it independently
and we didn't know about it. -
26:56 - 26:58But some of the people who did know about it
-
26:58 - 27:01decided to look for what else they could find
-
27:01 - 27:04to put together with that kernel to
make a whole system. -
27:04 - 27:08They looked around, and lo and behold
everything they needed was already available. -
27:08 - 27:10They looked around, and lo and behold
everything they needed was already available. -
27:10 - 27:12"What good fortune!" they thought.
-
27:12 - 27:14But actually there was no chance about it.
-
27:14 - 27:18They had found all the pieces of the
GNU system which was missing just the kernel, -
27:19 - 27:21so when they put all that together
-
27:21 - 27:25really they were fitting
Linux into the gap in the GNU system. -
27:25 - 27:26But they didn't know that.
-
27:27 - 27:31There's a lot of these programs
-
27:32 - 27:35um, done by the Free Softwares Foundation,
-
27:35 - 27:37and done by other people like Linux.
-
27:37 - 27:41And there's a symbiosis between
Linux and the programs -
27:41 - 27:45that the programs run on Linux and at the same time
-
27:45 - 27:47and they take the advantage of Linux as a platform,
-
27:47 - 27:51while Linux takes the advantage of the programs
-
27:51 - 27:53by just being able to use them.
-
27:53 - 27:54[ What...What programs? ]
-
27:55 - 27:56umm...
-
27:56 - 27:59The main one is actually the GNU C Compiler.
-
28:00 - 28:03Which... Without a C compiler
it would not have been possible -
28:03 - 28:10to make Linux or most of the open progress available.
-
28:10 - 28:13Linux uses the GPL,
-
28:13 - 28:17and I agree with a kind of philosophy behind the GPL.
-
28:18 - 28:23That said the GPL itself is not a very pretty document
-
28:23 - 28:28which is probably just because
no lawyerese can ever be very pretty. -
28:34 - 28:38I'd been playing around with Linux for actually
-
28:38 - 28:41late '92 or early '93 for about a year.
-
28:41 - 28:46before I decided that it was to the point
where actually had everything that I needed -
28:46 - 28:48to really replace a Sun Workstation.
-
28:48 - 28:52And I was looking for a way to
have a Unix workstation at home -
28:52 - 28:56at the time we used Sun Sparc Stations
in the office at Stanford. -
28:58 - 29:00Those machines cost us about 7,000 dollars.
-
29:00 - 29:03Now I desperately wanted a Unix machine at home!
-
29:03 - 29:06There's always a this thought
you get as you get a graduate student -
29:06 - 29:07"Gee... if I could work at home!
-
29:07 - 29:09Then I would be so much more productive,
-
29:09 - 29:12I would graduate sooner because
I would finish my thesis sooner" -
29:12 - 29:16Well, Well, is it true? Well, you can judge.
-
29:16 - 29:20You know most people end up spending a lot of their time
-
29:20 - 29:21becoming more productive so that
-
29:21 - 29:24they ever actually worked on their thesis
they'll finish it in a day. -
29:24 - 29:26It takes a while sometimes.
-
29:26 - 29:28So I decided that I wanted a Unix machine at home.
-
29:28 - 29:32And I went out there I was able to
use Linux together with the PC. -
29:33 - 29:36For about 2,000 dollars, I put together a system.
-
29:36 - 29:39That was one and a half to two times faster
-
29:39 - 29:42than that 7,000 dollars Sun Sparc Station.
-
29:42 - 29:44It was absolutely amazing.
-
29:44 - 29:47I had one and a half to two times the speed,
-
29:47 - 29:50at a third to fourth the price.
-
29:50 - 29:51Light bulbs went off.
-
29:51 - 29:53I knew there was an opportunity here.
-
29:53 - 29:57This was the chance to really do something
better than what Sun has done -
29:57 - 30:00around open source and Linux.
-
30:00 - 30:03I called it Linux originally as working name.
-
30:03 - 30:07And that was just because Linus
-
30:07 - 30:08and the it has to be there.
-
30:08 - 30:10It's Unix. It's like a law.
-
30:11 - 30:14And...what happened was that...
-
30:14 - 30:18I initially thought that I can't call it Linux publicly,
-
30:18 - 30:20because it is just too egotistical.
-
30:20 - 30:22And that was before I had a big ego. Right?
-
30:22 - 30:27They thought they were taking a whole bunch
of components putting them around Linux -
30:27 - 30:30So they ended up calling the whole thing
"A Linux System" -
30:31 - 30:33and somehow that term caught on.
-
30:33 - 30:35And the result is
-
30:35 - 30:39there are now ten million people using
-
30:39 - 30:40this variant of the GNU system...
-
30:40 - 30:42the GNU/Linux operating system.
-
30:43 - 30:44And most of them don't know it.
-
30:45 - 30:49[ Some people advocate it be described as GNU/Linux.
-
30:49 - 30:52I mean what's your thought on
that? I would say, justify or... ] -
30:52 - 30:58Well, I think it's justified but it is justified
if you actually make GNU distribution of Linux. -
30:58 - 31:05The same way that I think that Red Hat Linux
is fine or SuSE Linux, or Debian Linux. -
31:06 - 31:09Uh, because if you actually make your
own distribution of Linux -
31:09 - 31:11You get to name the thing.
-
31:11 - 31:15But calling Linux in general "GNU Linux"
I think, is just ridiculous. -
31:17 - 31:19I got involved in Fall '93.
-
31:19 - 31:25Because I was sent a copy of the first CD-ROM
commercial Linux distribution, -
31:25 - 31:28which was called Yggdrasi produced by Adam Richter.
-
31:29 - 31:31And I got a copy because...
-
31:31 - 31:34I had been myself writing Free Software for
a long time since the early 80's. -
31:34 - 31:37I was actually one of the
early GNU contributors myself. -
31:38 - 31:40And I was absolutely astonished,
-
31:40 - 31:41I was completely astonished.
-
31:41 - 31:45Because I've been a software engineer
for nearly 15 years at that point. -
31:46 - 31:48And according to all the rules I knew...
-
31:48 - 31:52about controlling complexity,
keeping a project group small, -
31:52 - 31:55having closely managed objectives.
-
31:55 - 31:57Linux should have been a disaster, and it wasn't.
-
31:57 - 31:59Instead, it was something wonderful,
-
31:59 - 32:02and I was determined to figure out
how they were getting a way with that. -
32:04 - 32:08In order for Linux to grow beyond
the world of the computer programmer -
32:08 - 32:12It needed a use and application
that made it a must-have technology -
32:13 - 32:14That threshold was crossed
-
32:14 - 32:18with the development of a program
that made complex websites possible -
32:18 - 32:21That program is the Apache web server.
-
32:21 - 32:25The killer app of Linux was undoubtedly
the Apache web server. -
32:25 - 32:27If you look at the history of Linux,
-
32:27 - 32:29the adoption curve of Linux and
the adoption curve of the Internet -
32:29 - 32:32the adoption curve of Linux and
the adoption curve of the Internet -
32:32 - 32:33exactly track each other.
-
32:33 - 32:381993, which was when the Apache
web server project really got started, -
32:38 - 32:42was also the beginnings of the popular ISP explosion
-
32:42 - 32:46when the Internet first became a mass market commodity
-
32:46 - 32:48and the idea of web-based electronic commerce
-
32:48 - 32:50and, and mass communication became real.
-
32:51 - 32:54I think it was one of the first applications
that caused people to go -
32:54 - 32:56"Well, if I install Linux."
-
32:56 - 32:59I get some tangible benefit from doing so, right?
-
33:00 - 33:03I mean, clearly there were a lot of
interesting applications on Linux -
33:03 - 33:05at, at the time, this being maybe
two or three years ago, -
33:05 - 33:07when the root thing really started to take off
-
33:07 - 33:09but there wasn't a driving, you know,
-
33:09 - 33:11you could almost say business case
-
33:11 - 33:14for someone to use Linux versus using NT
-
33:14 - 33:17until, I think, Apache and
a lot of the things that plugged into Apache -
33:17 - 33:18enhanced Apache
-
33:18 - 33:21I mean, when you want to go out and build..
go out to build a server farm -
33:22 - 33:24It was much more cost effective
-
33:24 - 33:24cost effective
-
33:24 - 33:29real dollar returns to build it on Linux and Apache
than was to build it on IIS and NT -
33:29 - 33:32even if it meant that you have to
spend a little bit of money -
33:32 - 33:33to train your staff to learn how to use that or
-
33:33 - 33:35to find people who were people who
were knowledgeable. -
33:35 - 33:36But the good news was that
-
33:36 - 33:38the knowledge wasn't very expensive
-
33:38 - 33:39because there were all those college students out there
-
33:39 - 33:43who'd been using Linux for a long time
and were very familiar with it. -
33:43 - 33:46If you look at the trend curves in web servers
-
33:46 - 33:50Apache has steadily been gaining
a market share ever since -
33:50 - 33:52it's up to something like 66% now
-
33:52 - 33:55It's steadily clobbered
all of the closed source competition -
33:55 - 34:00And that's because it's more reliable
it's more flexible, it's more extensible -
34:00 - 34:03It does what webmasters actually need
-
34:03 - 34:06and the combination of Apache and Linux
-
34:06 - 34:08found its way into a great many commercial shops.
-
34:09 - 34:14Essentially, Apache became the application
that motivated Internet service providers -
34:14 - 34:18and e-commerce companies to choose Linux
over Microsoft's Windows. -
34:19 - 34:22It would probably runs best on Linux and on FreeBSD
-
34:22 - 34:26and the reason is the
communities around those operating systems -
34:26 - 34:30are also the communities that
contribute the most back to Apache, right? -
34:30 - 34:34And there were also the operating systems
that Internet service providers -
34:34 - 34:36started using very heavily as well
-
34:36 - 34:39and Internet service providers really liked Apache
-
34:39 - 34:41because it allowed them to do
-
34:41 - 34:44a lot of different things
that some of the commercial web servers didn't -
34:44 - 34:48such as the ability to host more than
one web site on a single box, which clearly -
34:48 - 34:51if you are an ISP and you would have 40,000 users
-
34:51 - 34:52and they all want their web site
-
34:52 - 34:54it's gonna be pretty important to you.
-
34:55 - 34:57one of the key factors in the growth of Linux was
-
34:57 - 35:00the creation of companies that
specialized in the distribution -
35:00 - 35:02and support of the Operating System itself
-
35:02 - 35:06Among these companies,
Red Hat Software is the best known. -
35:06 - 35:09Red Hat started as a product of Marc Ewing
-
35:09 - 35:11while he was working at IBM.
-
35:11 - 35:13He wanted a little better Linux distribution
-
35:13 - 35:14he started playing around,
-
35:14 - 35:18found out he uh, he spent more time
maintaining his Linux distribution -
35:18 - 35:21than he did uh,
than he did working on his new project. -
35:21 - 35:25So he uh, sort of started the distribution himself
-
35:25 - 35:27He met up with Bob Young,
-
35:27 - 35:30who at the time was running company called
ACC Bookstore -
35:30 - 35:33which was a mail-order PC Unix uh, catalog
-
35:33 - 35:35And Bob kind of knew he wanted something,
-
35:35 - 35:37you know, more his own to market,
-
35:37 - 35:39rather than reselling other people's products
-
35:39 - 35:42And he was fairly good at marketing, and...
-
35:42 - 35:44Mark knew he needed some marketing help
-
35:44 - 35:47because he was very good at the technical parts,
so they kinda got together -
35:47 - 35:51I started working with Red Hat in May of 1995,
basically right out of NC State. -
35:51 - 35:56along with Eric Troan who, me and him
combined make up employees #4 and #5. -
35:57 - 36:01We actually reported to work in an apartment
that Mark Ewing used to live in -
36:02 - 36:06We took it over as kind of
the development part of Red Hat software -
36:06 - 36:10and stayed that way till about November of 1995 when...
-
36:10 - 36:13a toilet we had in the apartment kind of exploded,
-
36:13 - 36:14flooded our downstairs neighbor
-
36:14 - 36:17and she got little upset and...
-
36:17 - 36:20the apartment folks found out
we were running a business there -
36:20 - 36:22instead of actually living there the same time
-
36:22 - 36:23So they decided to throw us out.
-
36:23 - 36:25So at that point, we had about a week to go find
-
36:25 - 36:28our first office, which we did
-
36:28 - 36:30and get ourselves moved in a hurry
-
36:40 - 36:45We started going in again '95 or so
to the venture capital firms, -
36:45 - 36:48asking, saying, there's something happening here.
-
36:48 - 36:50There's a great business opportunity,
-
36:50 - 36:54to build the next Sun for open source.
-
36:54 - 36:58Well, the venture capitalists looked at this and said
-
36:58 - 37:00"Gee, you are selling systems
-
37:00 - 37:02the software is free. This is kind of scary.
-
37:02 - 37:05We're not sure that we want to put money in. And...
-
37:05 - 37:08by the way, we funded other systems companies
-
37:08 - 37:11and it hasn't really panned out. We are scared."
-
37:13 - 37:16I came to the US about 3 years ago,
-
37:16 - 37:18and the reason really was that I'd been spending
-
37:20 - 37:23like 6 or 7 years at Helsinki University.
-
37:23 - 37:27and decide it was time to see the real world
and not just university life. -
37:27 - 37:32Especially this area had a lot of the most
interesting work being done. -
37:34 - 37:35So I just decided that...
-
37:35 - 37:39let's try to move half way across the world,
-
37:40 - 37:41and give this a try.
-
37:41 - 37:43And it's turned out pretty well.
-
37:43 - 37:46[ Ah...you see this as temporary or long term? ]
-
37:46 - 37:49Well, we saw it as temporary at first.
-
37:49 - 37:53And I think it's certainly looking like
it's turning into long term. -
37:53 - 37:57Our youngest daughter is
both US and Finnish citizen, -
37:57 - 37:58because she was born here
-
37:59 - 38:03and the older one is speaking
both Swedish and English, so... -
38:27 - 38:31The next major event was one that
I had directed hand in. -
38:31 - 38:34I wrote a paper, called
"The Cathedral & the Bazaar". -
38:34 - 38:38which was my observations,
my anthropological analysis -
38:38 - 38:40of what it was that made
the open source world work. -
38:40 - 38:45We didn't call it that then. We were still
using the term "Free Software" primarily. -
38:45 - 38:48So it was my observation of
what made the Free Software world work -
38:48 - 38:52and why we were able to
produce extremely high quality software -
38:53 - 38:57in spite of constantly violating all of
the standard rules of software engineering -
38:58 - 39:00In that paper, I was setting up a contrast
-
39:00 - 39:03between two different styles of development,
-
39:03 - 39:04two opposed styles of development.
-
39:04 - 39:10One, which is the
conventional closed development style, -
39:10 - 39:12which I called the "Cathedral" style.
-
39:12 - 39:16In that one, you have
tight specification of objectives. -
39:16 - 39:21Small project groups which are run
in a fairly hierarchical authoritarian manner. -
39:22 - 39:25And you have long release intervals
-
39:26 - 39:28On the other hand,what I identified
is happening in the Linux world -
39:28 - 39:34was a much more peer to peer decentralized,
market or bazaar-like style, -
39:34 - 39:36which has a very short release intervals
-
39:36 - 39:41and constant solicitation of feedback from people
who are formally outside of the project. -
39:41 - 39:45A very intense peer review process.
-
39:45 - 39:48And the startling thing was that the more I looked at this,
-
39:48 - 39:52the more it seemed that trading away
all the supposed advantages -
39:53 - 39:55of conventional closed development,
-
39:55 - 39:59for that one single advantage
of massive independent peer review -
39:59 - 40:03actually seemed to win,
actually seemed to get you good results. -
40:06 - 40:08The reason Netscape is important is
-
40:08 - 40:13that they were the first large company
to participate in open source. -
40:13 - 40:15We had Cygnus providing support,
-
40:15 - 40:18but we didn't really have much business.
-
40:18 - 40:22And Netscape went open source essentially
as a way to fight Microsoft. -
40:22 - 40:25Which was giving away Internet Explorer,
-
40:25 - 40:29but not letting anyone else have the source code,
not letting companies collaborate. -
40:30 - 40:32Working as part of the sales force, I got a bit of,
-
40:32 - 40:34I got a good idea of.. of why people bought our software
-
40:34 - 40:38and what it took to make our software successful
in the marketplace against competitive products. -
40:40 - 40:41However, the problem was,
-
40:41 - 40:45we were seeing, as that, as time went on,
-
40:45 - 40:48our software was uh,
-
40:48 - 40:52being competed against by other
people's software, particularly Microsoft's -
40:52 - 40:56and as time went on, the price of our software had to drop
-
40:56 - 40:58because other people were giving their software away
-
40:58 - 41:01at no charge or at little charge.
-
41:01 - 41:03Now the real problem was that they feared
-
41:03 - 41:06Microsoft would achieve a monopoly lock on the browser market
-
41:06 - 41:10and they would then use that monopoly lock to
-
41:10 - 41:12pervert actually,
-
41:12 - 41:16the HTTP and HTML standards that the web depends on.
-
41:16 - 41:20And once they had turned those
standards in to lock in devices, -
41:20 - 41:24they could then use that control
to drive Netscape out of the server market, -
41:24 - 41:27which was where it was making its real money.
-
41:27 - 41:30My concern was that as time went on,
-
41:31 - 41:33Netscape's business would be threatened,
-
41:33 - 41:37by the fact that we didn't have enough people
to do what we needed to do as a company -
41:37 - 41:41in order to keep our software viable in the marketplace.
-
41:42 - 41:45The Netscape release happened in early 1998.
-
41:45 - 41:49And uh, I was told later, I had no idea at the time,
-
41:50 - 41:53that it came about as a direct result of
-
41:53 - 41:55the right people having read
"The Cathedral and the Bazaar". -
41:56 - 42:00"The Cathedral and the Bazaar",
the paper by Eric Raymond, -
42:00 - 42:05was a significant influence on
Netscape's decision to release source code. -
42:06 - 42:08It came as a complete shock to me.
-
42:08 - 42:10I wasn't really ready for the thought
-
42:10 - 42:12that I was changing the world even by accident.
-
42:13 - 42:17However he was not by any means
the only influence on that decision. -
42:18 - 42:20Uh, and not necessarily the most important one,
-
42:20 - 42:21when all is said and done.
-
42:21 - 42:24As I said, Netscape,
-
42:24 - 42:28Netscape had already been talking about
releasing source code for quite some time before -
42:28 - 42:30anyone ever heard of Eric's paper.
-
42:31 - 42:33Linux Congress in early 1997,
-
42:33 - 42:36which was the first place that I gave that paper.
-
42:36 - 42:40And one of the people who heard it was
Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly and Associates. -
42:40 - 42:43And uh, he thought it was pretty intriguing
-
42:43 - 42:47and he asked me to give it at
his first PERL conference, which was uh.. -
42:47 - 42:50later that year, in Fall of 97.
-
42:51 - 42:52And apparently what happened, I was told later,
-
42:52 - 42:55although I had no idea that this was happening at the time,
-
42:55 - 43:02uh is that some people from Netscape actually
heard the paper at the PERL conference -
43:02 - 43:06and took those ideas back to Netscape and
they kind of lit a fire there. -
43:06 - 43:10The role of my paper was essentially
to make the internal case at Netscape, uh -
43:10 - 43:14to make the business case for
why Netscape should release its source code. -
43:14 - 43:18The paper was called
"Netscape Source Code As Netscape Product". -
43:18 - 43:22uh.. a strange title,
essentially what the title meant was that -
43:23 - 43:24In my opinion we needed to
-
43:24 - 43:28think of source code not just as something
that was used in creating our products, -
43:28 - 43:30but as something that was a product in its own right.
-
43:30 - 43:33Something that customers might use, other people might use.
-
43:34 - 43:36I then looked at what the business models might be
-
43:36 - 43:39if we released source code for our products.
-
43:39 - 43:41How would we license them?
-
43:41 - 43:45How do we sell products in this environment?
-
43:46 - 43:50Then I looked at the competition, particularly Microsoft.
-
43:50 - 43:52What would they be likely to do
if we released source code? -
43:52 - 43:55Was there some way they could
use our source code against us? -
43:55 - 43:59I used Eric's paper as an example of
how distributed development could work, -
44:00 - 44:03how a company could develop software not
just using their own people, -
44:03 - 44:06but also working with people on the Internet.
-
44:07 - 44:11And that's why I included a reference to
Eric's paper in my paper. -
44:11 - 44:13Once my paper was circulated,
-
44:13 - 44:15the people who read my paper would naturally enough
-
44:15 - 44:18find a reference to Eric's paper
and read that as well. -
44:18 - 44:21[ And who was involved in
making that happen at Netscape? ] -
44:22 - 44:25Primarily the person who made the
actual decision was Jim Barksdale. -
44:26 - 44:28And this turned out to be important later.
-
44:28 - 44:31That our big win, the big score
-
44:31 - 44:34that gave us mainstream
visibility and credibility with investors -
44:34 - 44:38came not because of bottom up evangelism
from a bunch of engineers, -
44:38 - 44:42but because one strategist at the top
-
44:42 - 44:44saw the potential power of this method and
-
44:44 - 44:47then essentially imposed that vision
on everyone underneath him. -
44:48 - 44:51When I completed the paper,
I first gave a copy to Mark Andreessen, -
44:51 - 44:55who was co-founder of Netscape and
was at the time one of, -
44:55 - 44:57on the senior management team at Netscape.
-
44:57 - 45:01Mark then gave a copy of the paper to several
other people within Netscape management, -
45:01 - 45:03including Jim Barksdale.
-
45:03 - 45:06I'm not sure exactly when Jim and
the other senior managers -
45:06 - 45:08made the actual decision,
-
45:09 - 45:11I believe it was in early January sometime.
-
45:11 - 45:16Netscape actually announced that it was gonna
release the source code on Jan 22nd, -
45:16 - 45:20the same time it was going to give
Communicator away for free. -
45:20 - 45:23When Netscape decided to release the source code,
-
45:23 - 45:25people sort of got a wake up notice and said
-
45:25 - 45:29"Hey, maybe there is something to this idea
of releasing source code -
45:29 - 45:32and doing development with people
outside your company." -
45:33 - 45:38So Netscape's decision brought a lot of
public attention to the idea of Free Software, -
45:38 - 45:40what became known as Open Source,
-
45:40 - 45:43and brought a lot of attention to
the Linux operating system, -
45:43 - 45:47which was one of the most prominent examples of
Open Source software at that time. -
45:52 - 45:56This is our first office, Mountain View, California.
-
45:56 - 45:58We moved here in early 1995.
-
45:58 - 46:00This is 4,000 square feet.
-
46:00 - 46:07It was an incredible leap of faith for us to
move out and take the company to our own office. -
46:07 - 46:10Now what's really important about this place
-
46:10 - 46:13is that this is the office
where the term "Open Source" was invented. -
46:13 - 46:18If you walk in to an executive's office
and say "Free Software", -
46:18 - 46:22OK, If you're lucky, the response
you'll get is something like, -
46:22 - 46:29"hmm, hmm, Free Software, must be
cheap, shoddy, worthless." -
46:29 - 46:33Uh, and if you're not lucky,
it has associations with, uh. -
46:34 - 46:38with the Free Software Foundation's
wholesale attack on intellectual property rights, -
46:38 - 46:41which regardless of what
you think about the ethics of that, -
46:41 - 46:45it's lousy marketing, it's not something
that businesses want to hear. -
46:46 - 46:48So Eric Raymond knew there was a problem.
-
46:48 - 46:50We'd been calling this Free Software,
-
46:50 - 46:54but people took the term "Free"
and associated with "Free of charge", -
46:54 - 46:57they thought they couldn't make money or couldn't sell,
-
46:57 - 46:59which is exactly the wrong concept.
-
46:59 - 47:05We wanted to get across the idea the software
was open and that the source code was available. -
47:05 - 47:07Very important pieces.
-
47:07 - 47:11We had this meeting at the VA offices
in Mountain View, where Eric, -
47:11 - 47:17myself, and Christine Peterson from Foresight Institute
joined us as well as some other people. -
47:17 - 47:20Christine Peterson was there by phone. uh..
-
47:22 - 47:26Jon "Mad dog" Hall was also there by phone. uh..
-
47:26 - 47:30And then Todd Anderson, who later worked for
SuSE for a while was there. -
47:30 - 47:33Sam Ockman who now runs Penguin Computing was there.
-
47:33 - 47:37He was uh.. He was an employee of VA at the time
-
47:37 - 47:40Well, we came up with the concept of Open Source,
-
47:40 - 47:43we called Linus in fact and asked Linus if he liked it.
-
47:43 - 47:46He was interested, He liked it.
-
47:46 - 47:49Eventually we came up with something that replaced "Free Software".
-
47:49 - 47:50That was the beginning of Open Source.
-
47:50 - 47:52[ How did you chose words "Open Source"? ]
-
47:53 - 47:57You know, I think Christine Peterson was
the person who really came up with the idea. -
47:58 - 48:04Uh, we wanted, again, the idea
that the source code was out there and it was open. -
48:04 - 48:06There weren't many choices.
-
48:08 - 48:12Well, since the fist three recipients have
spoken for the Open Source movement, -
48:13 - 48:16I think I should speak about
the Free Software movement. -
48:16 - 48:20The Open Source movement,
focuses on practical advantages -
48:20 - 48:22that you can get by having a community of users
-
48:22 - 48:26who can cooperate on interchanging and improving software.
-
48:27 - 48:30I agree completely with the points they make about that.
-
48:30 - 48:35The reason why my views are different,
while I am in the Free Software movement -
48:35 - 48:37rather than the Open Source movement,
-
48:37 - 48:40is that I believe there's something
more important at stake. -
48:40 - 48:45That freedom to cooperate with other people,
freedom to have a community... -
48:45 - 48:47is important for our quality of life.
-
48:47 - 48:51It's important for having a good society
that we can live in. -
48:51 - 48:57And that that is in my view, even more important
than having powerful and reliable software. -
48:58 - 49:02But I think some of the people in
the Free Software camp... -
49:03 - 49:06are a little scared by the commercialization.
-
49:08 - 49:12And uh, you know,
of course a rebel is put off by success. -
49:12 - 49:16uh.. I think that commercialization is very important.
-
49:16 - 49:19We want to mainstream this software,
-
49:19 - 49:24and I work with Richard Stallman
who's the gray haired man of Free Software, -
49:25 - 49:28uh, on a regular basis, and I don't feel
-
49:28 - 49:32I have any philosophical differences.
-
49:32 - 49:35me as author the Open Source definition and
-
49:35 - 49:40he is originator of free software as an organized thing,
-
49:42 - 49:45except for one thing.
Richard thinks that all software should be free, -
49:45 - 49:50and I think that free software and
non-free software should coexist. -
49:50 - 49:51That's the only difference we have.
-
49:52 - 49:55Uh, we decided early on that what we needed,
-
49:55 - 49:59a..a definition, we needed a kind of
meta-license to define the term "Open Source". -
49:59 - 50:00a, a definition, we needed a kind of
meta-license to define the term "Open Source". -
50:00 - 50:04And what we came up with is a document called
"The Open Source Definition". -
50:04 - 50:09It's derived from the Debian Free Software guidelines
that were originally written by Bruce Parens. -
50:09 - 50:13I'd written the original draft of that, uh,
-
50:13 - 50:16discussed it for a month with the Debian developers
-
50:16 - 50:19Debian is a Linux distribution
-
50:19 - 50:22And made it their project policy
-
50:22 - 50:25And Eric and I decided to relabel
-
50:26 - 50:28what we'd written for Debian
-
50:28 - 50:29as The Open Source definition
-
50:29 - 50:31and to say Open Source is a software
-
50:32 - 50:34that gives you a list of nine rights
-
50:34 - 50:37which is in the Open Source definition.
-
50:38 - 50:40The first right is Free Redistribution
-
50:40 - 50:43This doesn't mean Free as in no price
-
50:43 - 50:45It means liberty
-
50:46 - 50:49Um, you have to be free to redistribute
-
50:49 - 50:50your software to someone else
-
50:50 - 50:52And actually no price is a side effect
-
50:52 - 50:56You can charge for that redistribution or not
-
50:56 - 50:58It has to come with source code
-
50:58 - 51:02So that someone can maintain a program.
-
51:02 - 51:04If they go from a PC to a Mac for example
-
51:05 - 51:08they can change the software.
-
51:08 - 51:10Derived Works have to be possible
-
51:10 - 51:13If someone has to improve your program
-
51:13 - 51:18um, they should be able to distribute the result
-
51:18 - 51:22uh, There is a provision about integrity
-
51:22 - 51:23of the author's source code
-
51:23 - 51:28which says that the author can sort of
maintain their honor -
51:28 - 51:30and if you make a change
-
51:30 - 51:32you might have to change the name of the program
-
51:32 - 51:35or mark out your change very clearly
-
51:35 - 51:38so that your change doesn't reflect on the author
-
51:38 - 51:42There is no discrimination against people or groups.
-
51:42 - 51:44Uh, the example I usually use is
-
51:45 - 51:47You can't stop an abortion clinic
-
51:47 - 51:51or an anti-abortion activist from using the software
-
51:51 - 51:54There is no discrimination against fields of endeavor
-
51:55 - 51:57And that means the software has to be usable
-
51:58 - 52:01in a business as well as in a school
-
52:01 - 52:04The license has to be distributable
-
52:04 - 52:06In other words
-
52:06 - 52:09I have to be able to give that license to someone
-
52:09 - 52:12and that license then should work
-
52:12 - 52:15if that someone gives it to yet a third person
-
52:15 - 52:19The license can't be specific to a product
-
52:19 - 52:20in other words
-
52:20 - 52:25if I distribute my software on a Red Hat system
-
52:25 - 52:27the license can't say
-
52:27 - 52:30you can't distribute this on a SuSE or Debian system
-
52:30 - 52:34The license can't contaminate other software
-
52:34 - 52:40So if I distribute this on a CD with another program
-
52:40 - 52:44It can't say that other program must be free
-
52:44 - 52:46otherwise you can't distribute my software
-
52:46 - 52:49And then the only other part of
-
52:49 - 52:50the Open Source definition
-
52:50 - 52:53is a list of licenses that were accepted
-
52:53 - 52:57And the ones that we started with were the GPL
-
52:57 - 53:00which was actually the example for a lot of
-
53:00 - 53:04what's in the Open Source definition in the BSD license
-
53:04 - 53:08because software for BSD system pre-existed Linux
-
53:14 - 53:17I think the next moment that I thought
was really pivotal -
53:17 - 53:20was when the database vendors flipped over
-
53:20 - 53:22which happened about three months sooner
-
53:22 - 53:23than I expected to
-
53:23 - 53:25and actually happened in late July early August
-
53:25 - 53:29commitments to do one ports from Oracle and
-
53:29 - 53:32and Sybase and the other key database vendors.
-
53:32 - 53:33[ And why was that critical? ]
-
53:33 - 53:36because we knew that in order for
-
53:36 - 53:38the open source story to be credible
-
53:38 - 53:40and especially in order for the Linux story
to be credible, -
53:40 - 53:44we'd have to get commitments from
independent software vendors -
53:44 - 53:47to do ports of their applications to these platforms
-
53:47 - 53:50and I was actually kind of worried
-
53:50 - 53:52I thought that we were in a window of vulnerability
-
53:52 - 53:55between the time that we announced
the open source campaign -
53:55 - 53:57and the database vendors flipped over
-
53:57 - 54:00that was the point in which hostile action
-
54:00 - 54:04by Microsoft or other close-source software companies
-
54:04 - 54:05that was the point in which
-
54:05 - 54:07a serious marketing bleeds might have suck us
-
54:07 - 54:11but once the big database vendors flipped over
-
54:11 - 54:14that opened the way for other ISVs
-
54:14 - 54:16that started the snow ball effect going
-
54:16 - 54:18Every six months or so
-
54:18 - 54:19I would come back to the venture capitalists
-
54:19 - 54:21I would show them the new numbers
-
54:21 - 54:23showing more and more people adopting Linux
-
54:23 - 54:25and new people porting, new users
-
54:25 - 54:27and I'd show them our customer list
-
54:27 - 54:30And our customer list was getting much more impressive
-
54:30 - 54:32It was people like Cisco that were beginning to appear
-
54:32 - 54:35people like, you know, those dot-com companies
-
54:35 - 54:37were started to show up on our customer list
-
54:37 - 54:40and eventually the venture capitalists
-
54:40 - 54:42you know, they kept looking at it
-
54:42 - 54:44they kept saying "Oh, we can't quite do it"
-
54:44 - 54:47Finally, Linus appeared on the cover of Fortune
-
54:47 - 54:49There was something happening with Open Source
-
54:49 - 54:53Well, at that point, the venture capitalists
couldn't ignore it -
54:54 - 54:57they just got sick of hearing about Linux everywhere
-
54:57 - 54:58and they got tired of me, just, you know
-
54:58 - 55:02showing it to them every,
at that point it was almost every week -
55:02 - 55:04So they uh, they decided it was time to invest,
-
55:04 - 55:06that there was something happening
-
55:06 - 55:10I announced Open Source to the world on the Internet
-
55:10 - 55:13I did a lot of the early... administrative the work of
-
55:13 - 55:17starting the Open Source Initiative
-
55:17 - 55:18and I think six months later
-
55:18 - 55:21I was reading the words Open Source
-
55:21 - 55:24in the news all the time
-
55:24 - 55:26And I was totally astounded
-
55:26 - 55:27And a year later, I believe
-
55:27 - 55:31Microsoft was talking about releasing some source code
-
55:32 - 55:34And someone in the press asked Steve Ballmer
-
55:34 - 55:37if they were going to open source their code
-
55:37 - 55:38and Steve Ballmer said,
-
55:38 - 55:42"Well, Open Source means more than
just releasing the source code" -
55:43 - 55:45And I realized that he had read my document
-
55:45 - 55:48and understood it and was now telling
the press about this -
55:49 - 55:52Now if you are like just a guy on the net
-
55:52 - 55:54who's not doing this for a job at all
-
55:54 - 55:56and you sort of write a manifesto
-
55:56 - 55:58and it spreads out through the world
-
55:58 - 55:59and a year later
-
55:59 - 56:02the vice president of Microsoft is talking about that
-
56:02 - 56:05You'd think you were on drugs, wouldn't you?
-
56:05 - 56:07But that's what really happened
-
56:13 - 56:17The Local Users Groups
tend to be more than an issue of -
56:19 - 56:21building a social network
-
56:22 - 56:28especially getting people familiarized with the issues
-
56:29 - 56:33also just acting as a kind of supporting network
-
56:34 - 56:39for people who do not, for example, have the ability
-
56:39 - 56:42to pay for commercial support network
-
56:42 - 56:45So one thing they're doing in this area
-
56:45 - 56:47for example, is they're making these.
-
56:47 - 56:49I think it's once a month
-
56:49 - 56:52They're having install feasts, which mean that
-
56:54 - 56:57getting Linux installed on their machines
-
56:57 - 56:59or have some issue, I mean
-
56:59 - 57:00maybe they've installed Linux
-
57:00 - 57:03but want to set up the network in a specific way
-
57:03 - 57:05can actually bring in their machines
-
57:05 - 57:06to this users group meeting
-
57:06 - 57:09And there's a lot of people there willing to help
-
57:09 - 57:13who may have seen the same problem before.
-
57:22 - 57:24Well, actually things aren't so well.
-
57:24 - 57:27I tried it earlier myself. I had problems.
-
57:27 - 57:30And so I came to this install feast world.
-
57:30 - 57:31All the gurus abound.
-
57:31 - 57:35Hopefully I'll have better luck getting it in.
-
57:35 - 57:38Instead of having, uh, sending e-mails, or
-
57:38 - 57:40writing to news groups on the Internet
-
57:40 - 57:42and waiting several days for the answers sometimes
-
57:42 - 57:46it's easy to come here and find other people
-
57:46 - 57:47who might know about your problem
-
57:47 - 57:49and may be able to help you
-
57:49 - 57:50And hopefully within a few hours
-
57:50 - 57:52you have your machine installed
-
57:52 - 57:56Originally I wanted to it install on
uh, my larger laptop -
57:56 - 57:58and I just did a search on the net
-
57:58 - 58:02and found where there were resources to get help
-
58:02 - 58:04And um, I'm here today
-
58:04 - 58:08cause I'm trying to put Linux on
this little guy right here. -
58:08 - 58:10just a Toshiba Libretto
-
58:10 - 58:13It's not a easy thing in the world to do
-
58:13 - 58:15because it's a weird piece hardware, So...
-
58:15 - 58:17Any chairs right here?
-
58:29 - 58:31I think that Department of Justice case
-
58:31 - 58:33has made people aware of the fact that
-
58:33 - 58:36you should at least look for alternatives to Microsoft.
-
58:36 - 58:40and maybe Microsoft isn't the American dream after all
-
58:40 - 58:42and that kind of shifting perception
-
58:43 - 58:45you can very clearly see
-
58:45 - 58:49that people just took Microsoft for granted
-
58:50 - 58:52and maybe they're still buying Microsoft but at least
-
58:52 - 58:55they're kind of more aware of the issue these days
-
58:55 - 58:58Microsoft actually uses Linux as defense
-
58:58 - 58:59They used Linux to ground a claim
-
58:59 - 59:00that they don't have a monopoly
-
59:00 - 59:03because Linux could essentially
-
59:03 - 59:05push them off their catbird any time.
-
59:05 - 59:08It was a very ingenious argument,
totally specious -
59:08 - 59:10because it didn't
-
59:10 - 59:12do anything to answer the charge
-
59:12 - 59:13that they had previously engaged in
-
59:13 - 59:16bullying and very anti-competitive practices.
-
59:16 - 59:18but it was clever of them
-
59:18 - 59:20And, in an event, the judge didn't buy it
-
59:22 - 59:25While ordinarily we in the Linux community are
rather worried about -
59:25 - 59:28letting Microsoft become the issue,
-
59:28 - 59:33but there was a Slashdot article
about December of '98 -
59:33 - 59:38where a fellow named Matt at the noodle
had pointed out that... -
59:38 - 59:42the of Australia has managed
to receive a refund for -
59:42 - 59:46the unused copy of Windows that
came with his computer. -
59:46 - 59:50So he declared the 19th of January, was January?
-
59:50 - 59:52err, no, It was February. It was February.
Oh, I'm sorry, the 19th the February... -
59:52 - 59:54he declared 19th the February
Windows Refund Day. -
59:54 - 59:57and he encouraged everyone to go to
the computer manufacturers, -
59:57 - 60:00and return their unused copies of Windows...
-
60:00 - 60:03as it was specified in the
Windows End-User License Agreement. -
60:03 - 60:06It's important to remember that
in the License itself, it says that -
60:06 - 60:11you can receive a refund if you don't use the software,
-
60:11 - 60:14and that the manufacture is bound by law to do this...
-
60:14 - 60:16or it was bond by contract.
-
60:16 - 60:19and we found if you called up
these manufactures, they basically said... -
60:19 - 60:21"Stop bothering me." and keep hanging up on you.
-
60:21 - 60:24We didn't really wanna sort of giving out our location,
-
60:24 - 60:27or where we were going to meet, until...
-
60:27 - 60:28you know, at the very last seconds.
-
60:28 - 60:32What we did is, we have people meet
at the place where we could control -
60:32 - 60:34in the different towns around here.
-
60:34 - 60:37So I was the San Jose marshal, and I believe Nick you were...
-
60:37 - 60:39I was..., Rick Moen and I did San Francisco.
-
60:39 - 60:40Right
-
60:40 - 60:44and so we had the maps there and we
handed them off everybody who was coming. -
60:44 - 60:48Well, we actually met at a Denny's
That's just outside of the Foster City limits... -
60:48 - 60:50Foster City city limits,
-
60:50 - 60:53which meant also just outside of
Foster City Police jurisdiction, -
60:53 - 60:57which meant any, any instances
that happened at the meeting point -
60:57 - 60:59happened in the jurisdiction of San Mateo,
-
60:59 - 61:02and if they told us they get lost, we'd say,
"Fine, we are going to Foster city. Bye." -
61:02 - 61:06It's sort of the Dukes of Hazzard method of
avoiding the cops, so... -
61:08 - 61:11Well actually, originally we marched
on the other side of this building. -
61:11 - 61:15We marched around and up onto the parking
structure that's up there, -
61:15 - 61:18and that's where Microsoft had a reception
laid out for us with -
61:18 - 61:20drinks
and a big sign that said... -
61:20 - 61:22"Microsoft Welcomes the Open Source Community".
-
61:22 - 61:26and the local news cameras got shots of
Eric Raymond and Microsoft representative. -
61:28 - 61:30Microsoft's story seems to mostly be that...
-
61:30 - 61:35...this was not an issue for Microsoft,
rather from the OEMs. -
61:35 - 61:38So we all needed to go back to our
computer manufacturers and try yet again -
61:38 - 61:40to try and get refund from them.
-
61:40 - 61:42We responded to them saying, you know,
-
61:42 - 61:46that we tried that and it's not possible,
we need Microsoft to take action at this point. -
61:46 - 61:49And they just repeated the tag line
over and over again... -
61:49 - 61:52"you need to go to the OEMs and manufacturers
and get your refunds there." -
61:52 - 61:58We had about 150 people,
probably half of voyage had signs and such, so.. -
61:58 - 62:02Well, we ended up actually right
in this courtyard here. -
62:02 - 62:06Basically we originally met, gathered outside,
-
62:06 - 62:11various people sent groups in,
people from FreeBSD camp sent a couple of folks in. -
62:11 - 62:15We had Eric Raymond and Christ
actually tried to go up eventually. -
62:15 - 62:18They had blocked the elevator off to us.
-
62:18 - 62:19[ Where are the offices? ]
-
62:19 - 62:21The offices are right up here on the 9th floor.
-
62:23 - 62:25We got some really nice parts out of it.
-
62:25 - 62:26and we think as a result
-
62:26 - 62:30Toshiba made a possible for you to buy
laptop without the operating system on it. -
62:31 - 62:33So, it's a small victory, but...
-
62:33 - 62:37Well, even now, companies such as IBM and...
-
62:37 - 62:40a lot of other computer manufacturers
are allowing you... -
62:40 - 62:42now to buy machines that don't have
Windows on them. -
62:51 - 62:54When I was a kid and I went to school,
-
62:54 - 62:56the teachers will try to teach us to share.
-
62:56 - 62:58They said if you bring some candy,
-
62:58 - 63:01you can't eat it all yourself, you
got to share with other kids. -
63:01 - 63:07But now the administration says teachers
should be teaching kids to say yes to licensing. -
63:07 - 63:10If you bring some software to school,
"Oh! No, don't share it... -
63:10 - 63:14...sharing means you're pirate,
sharing means you will be put in jail." -
63:14 - 63:18That's not the way society should work.
We need the good will, -
63:19 - 63:23the willingness to help other people
at least when it's not too hard, -
63:23 - 63:26because that's the basis of society,
-
63:26 - 63:28that's the fundamental resource.
-
63:28 - 63:32They give us a society instead of
a dog-eat-dog jungle. -
63:32 - 63:33[ So what about people say if that if
-
63:33 - 63:36you have rampant piracy and eliminate
the profit motive and... -
63:36 - 63:38...and creative works, software.
Will not... ] -
63:38 - 63:41Well, they were on both counts. For one thing,
-
63:41 - 63:45people are making a profit from
developing Free Software, -
63:45 - 63:50but for another, the freedom to
have a community is more important. -
63:50 - 63:54[ People that look at, casually at
Open Source Free Software and think... -
63:54 - 63:57Well, because you are supposed to
share and do it for people's good will, -
63:57 - 63:59Doesn't that seem someone communist.
What's your response? ] -
63:59 - 64:03Absolutely nonsense,
it makes me really angry when people do that. -
64:03 - 64:08Well, back in, back in 1989,
actually communism would have been a compliment. -
64:08 - 64:11the word people were using at that time
was "crazy", -
64:11 - 64:12and I want them to use capitalism.
-
64:12 - 64:16Communism is an ideology that forces people to share.
-
64:16 - 64:20If you don't share, you get thrown in jail or killed.
-
64:20 - 64:26In 1990, we got a visit from a director
of an institute in uh, the Moscow University, -
64:26 - 64:30and actually I saw him in Helsinki just 2 weeks ago,
-
64:31 - 64:33but in an event, he came by,
-
64:33 - 64:37and Richard Stallman had suggested
that he visit Cygnus, -
64:37 - 64:41because he was interested in and
understanding how the Free Software model... -
64:41 - 64:46might apply to stimulating entrepreneurial
innovation in Russia of all places, -
64:46 - 64:50and we had been kind of secretive
about our business plan, -
64:50 - 64:53because you know, we were not really
sure it's gonna work, -
64:53 - 64:56we didn't want to look too stupid if it failed.
-
64:56 - 64:58But I was very very open with him.
-
64:58 - 65:02The more I told him,
the more he started to shake his head like this, -
65:02 - 65:06and I finally said, you know, "What's wrong?"
-
65:06 - 65:11And he said, "This sounds to much like communism
to be successful in Russia." -
65:13 - 65:17You got to go a Gulag and end up in a mass grave
with a bullet in the back of your head. -
65:17 - 65:21Open Source is not communism
because it does not force people. -
65:23 - 65:26Carl Marx did not invent helping your neighbor.
-
65:28 - 65:32It's not communist to have a commons,
-
65:32 - 65:39A commons existed long before communism as
a philosophy of government. -
65:39 - 65:42there are many commons in our lives,
-
65:42 - 65:44For example, we drive on the highway,
-
65:44 - 65:47something it is maintained for our common good.
-
65:47 - 65:51Actually labeling our business model...
-
65:52 - 65:54means that it misses the point a little bit.
-
65:54 - 65:55whether it's communist, or whether it's capitalist,
-
65:55 - 65:58the label doesn't matter, the real question is,
-
65:58 - 66:02how much value can you deliver,
how scalable is the business, -
66:02 - 66:05what kind of problems,
what kind of of rate of innovation can you sustain. -
66:05 - 66:09and then, however you want to label that,
it's really up to you. -
66:10 - 66:14The Revolution goes Prime Time.
-
66:38 - 66:39A lot of people described,
-
66:39 - 66:42that August LinuxWorld as
"Linux's coming-out party", -
66:42 - 66:46Linus Torvalds was very funny about this,
he said, "What? Was Linux gay?" -
66:48 - 66:51But some people said
"Yeah, that was our debutante ball." -
66:52 - 66:53That was when the...
-
66:53 - 66:57Linux Gods, and the hardware hackers
really got it together with the suits. -
67:07 - 67:10At 3pm on August 10th 1999,
-
67:10 - 67:13Linus Torvalds delivered the keynote
address to the LinuxWorld. -
67:13 - 67:18The crowds of 6000 people began lining up at 12 noon.
-
67:38 - 67:40Ladies and gentlemen,
please welcome Larry Augustin... -
67:40 - 67:46LinuxWorld Conference Chair and President and
CEO of VA Linux Systems. -
67:54 - 67:57These guys have to clap, I pay them.
-
67:57 - 68:01Thank you all for being here,
looks like it's been a great show so far. -
68:01 - 68:08If you'll indulge me for a moment, I'm going to
try to avoid the glare of the lights. -
68:08 - 68:11I still think there's lots of people,
even though this is the 2nd show, -
68:11 - 68:14I still think there's lots of people
who don't quite get... -
68:14 - 68:17...what it is that's so exciting about Linux.
-
68:17 - 68:19So there is a great show going
on next door, -
68:19 - 68:22there's huge exhibits and everything,
-
68:22 - 68:27but it's the people out here
that are real contributors, not those companies. -
68:27 - 68:30The person on next I know you all know,
-
68:30 - 68:32so I don't have to give anything in the way
as introduction. -
68:32 - 68:36Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, Linus Torvalds.
-
68:36 - 68:39Linus
-
68:44 - 68:45Thanks.
-
68:48 - 68:50Calm down.
-
68:56 - 68:58Calm down.
-
68:58 - 68:59Say "oooo".
-
68:59 - 69:00yes.
-
69:00 - 69:04I don't want to just give one
of my normal talks, -
69:04 - 69:05because I find them boring,
-
69:05 - 69:09probably by now most of you find them boring
too because you've heard them like 10 times. -
69:10 - 69:13But after the technical updates,
we will actually try... -
69:13 - 69:17...whether we can do a question and
answer session with 5,000 people, -
69:17 - 69:20or how many of you there are there.
-
69:21 - 69:23and it may not actually work out,
-
69:23 - 69:27because one of the 5,000 people is really loud.
-
69:27 - 69:28The one thing I will do,
-
69:28 - 69:32which I always do in all my talks is
the gratitude thing, -
69:32 - 69:36I want to kind of acknowledge the fact that...
-
69:36 - 69:38...I'm obviously not been alone in doing Linux.
-
69:38 - 69:40RHAT IPO: On August 11, 1999
-
69:40 - 69:44Red Hat Software became
the first Linux company to go public. -
69:44 - 69:46Red Hat, up 228%
-
69:46 - 69:49this the IPO the everybody was waiting for.
-
69:49 - 69:51They of cause are behind
the Linux operating software. -
69:58 - 70:02Morgan J.T., I know
-
70:03 - 70:04All I've gotten today,
-
70:04 - 70:07are comments about
what the stock prices all morning, -
70:07 - 70:11you know it was 41, it was 42, it was 47,
-
70:11 - 70:14it is 53, it is 51...
-
70:14 - 70:18Every machine as far as I can tell
on the show floor -
70:18 - 70:22is pointed to their e-trade accounts or their
broker accounts, they know the Red Hat's price -
70:22 - 70:25I can't believe this.
-
70:25 - 70:27I just heard 53.
-
70:27 - 70:28Oh, boy.
-
70:28 - 70:30Hang on, I didn't buy it.
-
70:30 - 70:31You didn't buy?
-
70:31 - 70:33No, no, I didn't buy.
-
70:33 - 70:35I should've buy, but uh...
-
70:35 - 70:37No no, that's great.
-
70:37 - 70:38If it's... if it's....
-
70:38 - 70:39You guys don't know?
-
70:39 - 70:40Well, you know
-
70:40 - 70:43Red Hat being successful as just being said
-
70:43 - 70:46It legitimizes Linux
So it's much easier for us to go out -
71:03 - 71:06Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) ...
on the Red Hat IPO -
71:06 - 71:08It's kind of been a little bit divided.
-
71:08 - 71:09You've got a lot of people
-
71:09 - 71:10that are pretty hardcore and
-
71:10 - 71:11And they are a kind of offended by that
-
71:11 - 71:14you know, cause they worked really hard,
they are not really getting... -
71:14 - 71:17maybe they fair share out of that.
-
71:17 - 71:18Some people do get ticked.
-
71:18 - 71:19and you know the thing
-
71:19 - 71:21that you see that on a lot of mailing lists
on the Slashdot you'll read, you know -
71:21 - 71:27This guy is really mad because he didn't
get chance to, he's didn't get a chance to do... -
71:28 - 71:30to get stock from Red Hat
-
71:30 - 71:35He didn't get a chance to get...
to get a job from this other company, you know. -
71:35 - 71:39But the, the kind of the shocking secret
there is that, -
71:39 - 71:42Most the really hardcore guys,
you know, they don't care so much. -
71:42 - 71:44The guys that are kind of really down in trenches.
-
71:44 - 71:46They're writing this code because
they need this code. -
71:46 - 71:48If we could invite Richard Stallman
-
71:48 - 71:52who is the founder of
the Free Software Association -
71:52 - 71:54and Tim Ney, who's the managing director.
-
71:54 - 71:57Here we go. Hahahahaha
-
71:57 - 71:59Ah, here it is.
-
72:00 - 72:05Now, Richard, I saw you playing your recorder
at, in Paris at that Linux conference -
72:05 - 72:06But I didn't have audio tracks.
-
72:06 - 72:08So would you them to add audio to their, uh...
-
72:08 - 72:10Video downstream next time
-
72:10 - 72:13Uh..I don't have any control over that
-
72:13 - 72:17unfortunately those things can
only be done with non-free software. -
72:20 - 72:23We give you the award, and before you say a word,
-
72:23 - 72:28we'll have a Tim and yourself hold up
a little representation of the contribution -
72:28 - 72:31towards the Free Software Association.
-
72:31 - 72:35So, very ironic things have happened,
-
72:35 - 72:38but nothing to match this
-
72:38 - 72:42Giving the Linus Tovarlds award
to the Free Software Foundation -
72:42 - 72:46is sort of like giving the
Han Solo award to the rebel fleet. -
72:50 - 72:56You see, some of you may not realize how far
that analogy goes. -
72:58 - 73:01But actually let me tell you
how this, how we got here. -
73:01 - 73:03see what happened this.
-
73:03 - 73:0515 years ago, if you wanted to use a computer,
-
73:05 - 73:09the only way you could do it
was to, was with proprietary software, -
73:10 - 73:13software that divides and subjugates the users.
-
73:13 - 73:15And most people just...
-
73:15 - 73:16A lot of people didn't like it.
-
73:16 - 73:18But they saw there's no alternative.
-
73:18 - 73:22But some of us were determined
to make an alternative. -
73:22 - 73:26And we said we're gonna develop
a free operating system, -
73:26 - 73:27a free software operating system
-
73:27 - 73:33that will give users the chance to have freedom
while they use their computers. -
73:34 - 73:36Now a lot of people said, "Well, it's a nice idea
-
73:36 - 73:39but it's so hard, you'll never get it done,
-
73:39 - 73:42so I don't wanna participate,
I don't believe you can ever get it done." -
73:42 - 73:45But luckily not everybody said that.
-
73:45 - 73:49And clearly, we knew
we would eventually get the kernel done. -
73:49 - 73:50But as it happens.
-
73:50 - 73:54somebody else did a better kernel before we did.
-
73:54 - 73:57Now in the old days, we had an overall strategy
-
73:57 - 74:01from calling people's attention
to the importance of freedom -
74:01 - 74:05To the freedom they can have, or not have,
when they use a computer. -
74:06 - 74:08Well what can we do about it?
As far as I can tell, -
74:08 - 74:14the only workable way of trying to
change this make that strategy work again -
74:14 - 74:20is to, spread the word that the operating system
you're using is actually the GNU system. -
74:20 - 74:22Somewhat modify of cause.
-
74:23 - 74:25And when people know this,
-
74:25 - 74:29they'll take a look at the reasons
we developed this system. -
74:29 - 74:30They'll think about these issues.
-
74:30 - 74:33And some of them will decide they agree.
-
74:33 - 74:37So I ask people,
please tell the people this is the GNU system. -
74:37 - 74:41It's the combination of the GNU and Linux
so we can call it GNU/Linux -
74:47 - 74:50[ So Larry, when you were at Stanford
8 or 9 years ago during your Ph.D -
74:50 - 74:52did you ever think in this position? ]
-
74:52 - 74:52No
-
74:52 - 74:54[ All kidding aside. ]
-
74:54 - 74:56No I had no idea honestly
-
74:56 - 74:59[ What did you think you would be
when you were finished up with your Ph.D? ] -
74:59 - 75:00You know that's a good question,
-
75:00 - 75:02I really didn't have a good idea, I mean.
-
75:02 - 75:06Here we are, on this huge show floor.
-
75:06 - 75:09There are people just going crazy about Linux.
-
75:09 - 75:12We had 6,200 people crammed into a room
-
75:12 - 75:15to see the Linux, Linus speak last night.
-
75:15 - 75:17Here we are, with, you know,
-
75:17 - 75:20all of these huge venders all over the show.
-
75:20 - 75:23I..It's, just, you have no idea that
this is gonna happen. -
75:23 - 75:26I mean this is just this little operating system
that were happy with. -
75:26 - 75:28that few people cared about, you know,
-
75:28 - 75:30I thought I'd have a nice little
consulting business. -
75:30 - 75:31And here I am suddenly,
-
75:31 - 75:33with all of this huge show going on.
-
75:33 - 75:34It's just incredible.
-
75:34 - 75:38I mean, a year ago, you could look and say,
you know, this is gonna be big -
75:38 - 75:39and everyone standing at the show going
-
75:39 - 75:42"You know the show was big last year,
-
75:42 - 75:45is it gonna, is it gonna be as big as this year?"
-
75:45 - 75:46The you remind them
-
75:46 - 75:48"You know, last year was only 6 month ago."
-
75:48 - 75:50And then they go "Oh, , Linux time".
-
76:17 - 76:19So leading up to the IPO, uh...
-
76:19 - 76:25we had arrived actually in San Diego
on Tuesday night -
76:26 - 76:30We spent Wednesday morning meeting investors
in San Diago. -
76:30 - 76:31We flew up to San Francisco
-
76:31 - 76:35spent Wednesday afternoon meeting
investment firms in San Francisco -
76:35 - 76:36VA Linux Selected
December 9, 1999, as the day
for its stock to begin trading. -
76:36 - 76:40then on the Thursday morning of the IPO is
-
76:40 - 76:42when our stock would be traded publically.
-
76:42 - 76:46So it was nice we had ended
the tour in San Francisco -
76:46 - 76:50because we could go to the credits suite's
trading desk the next morning -
76:50 - 76:52to watch the public offering.
-
76:52 - 76:56And in San Francisco being close
enough to the company, and to our families, -
76:56 - 77:00we could invite people up to
actually join us in the first trade. -
77:00 - 77:03So I invited my wife and we invited Linus and Tove,
-
77:03 - 77:06and a number of other friends and people
who worked in the company in to join us. -
77:06 - 77:08Whenever we invite Linus and Tove,
-
77:08 - 77:11they have uh, two young children,
-
77:11 - 77:13and I have a daughter, Andrea.
-
77:13 - 77:14And we always bring the kids along
-
77:14 - 77:16so we went in to the credit suite's trading floor
-
77:16 - 77:19with all these traders and there are these 3 year old kids
-
77:19 - 77:21running around and chasing each other
around the show floor, -
77:21 - 77:22around the trading floor.
-
77:22 - 77:27So Linus and I walked in and
we walked up in to the trading floor -
77:27 - 77:29and everyone was very excited.
-
77:29 - 77:32And we kept asking them, well
"Hows it going? Are things going ok?". -
77:32 - 77:35And they said, "Oh, it's.. uh, we're really excited,
-
77:35 - 77:36I think things are going well.
-
77:36 - 77:39We don't wanna, We don't wanna say,
We don't wanna jinx anything." -
77:39 - 77:43We walked in and it was a big screen TV showing CNBC.
-
77:44 - 77:48And it was amazing to us,
but the theme for the day was Linux. -
77:48 - 77:50Now we have an IPO that's gonna go today.
-
77:50 - 77:53And when I mean go, it is going to go.
-
77:53 - 77:55The estimates I'm hearing are staggering.
-
77:55 - 77:58But watch VA Linux Systems. It goes at 12:40 today.
-
77:58 - 78:00The symbol is L-N-U-X.
-
78:00 - 78:04A provider of large scale computer
servers and workstations, -
78:04 - 78:06specially designed for the Linux operating system.
-
78:06 - 78:12The original range on this IPO was
11 to 13 dollars, then 21 to 23, then 28 to 30. -
78:12 - 78:15Priced at 30, and the estimates I'm hearing
I don't wanna repeat -
78:15 - 78:17because I don't have a confirmation.
-
78:17 - 78:22But if they're true, they will blow you're mind
when this stock takes off at 12:40. -
78:22 - 78:24I turned to Linus and I said "Gee, did you ever think,
-
78:24 - 78:29you know, you'd walk in here some day and
Linux would be THE theme on CNBC?". -
78:30 - 78:32and Linus said in his joking way said "Oh Absolutely!".
-
78:33 - 78:36So we walk in and they show us
the buy and sell orders coming in.. -
78:36 - 78:38and it's incredible.
-
78:38 - 78:42We're seeing numbers like
320 dollars, 340 dollars a share. -
78:42 - 78:44And I'm just in complete shock.
-
78:44 - 78:50You know, this is over 10 times
where we priced the offering. It was incredible. -
78:50 - 78:54And I remember Linus just kind of,
sort of patting me on the back and saying, -
78:54 - 78:58you know "Relax..." and it was
pretty exciting to see that. -
78:58 - 79:01We were, it was just amazing. We were stunned.
-
79:01 - 79:04We were lucky that we were able to
get back to the offices, -
79:04 - 79:08we'd been in San Francisco
so we could come back to VA's offices -
79:08 - 79:11to, to see everyone in the office for the IPO.
-
79:11 - 79:16When we got back, we had uh,
everyone was obviously very excited. -
79:16 - 79:19The IPO had done just tremendously well.
-
79:19 - 79:22We had a little party that we put together.
-
79:22 - 79:24It was interesting, while we were celebrating
-
79:24 - 79:27there were plenty of people that were still trying to work.
-
79:27 - 79:30I recall cries of "Be quiet!",
"We're on the phone!", "We're Working!", -
79:30 - 79:34Uh, as we uh, as we went in to the offices.
-
79:34 - 79:38One of the things I did was
I gave the road show presentation -
79:38 - 79:40for the employees back at the office,
-
79:40 - 79:43so they could have an idea of
what we'd been telling investors, -
79:43 - 79:46and understand exactly what we'd uh,
put together for them. -
79:46 - 79:55But again the story of the day is VA Linux,
now up 766% to 235 dollars to 265. -
79:55 - 79:58Sue, the best performing IPO ever.
-
79:58 - 80:03Here it goes, Sycamore Networks was uh,
priced at 38 dollars, surged to $270. -
80:04 - 80:06This has just beat it. And by the way..
-
80:06 - 80:10[ How do you feel about potentially billions
of dollars of wealth being created -
80:10 - 80:14from your creation,
that you're not directly cashing out? ] -
80:15 - 80:18So, if I hadn't made Linux available, I mean,
-
80:18 - 80:21I wouldn't have gotten any money that way either.
-
80:21 - 80:24So I mean, It's a win-win situation.
-
80:24 - 80:31Uh, just the fact that there are
a lot of commercial companies -
80:31 - 80:37means that there are a lot of Linux people
who used to work on Linux kind of on the side. -
80:38 - 80:40And now they get paid for
doing what they wanted to do. -
80:40 - 80:45And that helps me in the sense that
I wanted them to work on Linux anyway. -
81:06 - 81:12The whole GNU project is really one big hack.
-
81:12 - 81:16It's one big act of subversive playful cleverness,
-
81:16 - 81:22to change society for the better, because
I'm only interested in changing it for the better, -
81:22 - 81:27but in a clever way.
-
81:27 - 81:31Hi, we're the GNU/Stallmans, and this is
"The Free Software Song"
- Title:
- Revolution OS
- Description:
-
Official Website of http://www.revolution-os.com/
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0308808/
Wikiepdia:
Der Film führt einen nahtlosen geschichtlichen Bogen über die Evolution von GNU/Linux, von den Anfängen -- als Software auf Papierbändern zum Preis eines Biers kopiert wurde und Bill Gates in den 70ern anfing, proprietäre Programme in BASIC für von Computerhobbyisten verwendete Kleinstcomputer zu schreiben und diese in einem bitterlichen Brief aufforderte, Software zu kaufen statt zu tauschen -- bis zu Richard Stallman und einer Beschreibung dessen, was ihn motivierte, seine Stelle am MIT aufzugeben und sein Leben fortan der Entwicklung Freier Software zu widmen.
Michael Tiemann erklärt in der Wüste, wie er von Stallman eine sehr frühe Version von dessen GNU C-Compiler bekam, und ihn weiterentwickelte.
Larry Augustin beschreibt am Originalschauplatz, einem amerikanischen Universitätscampus, wie er sich mit dem von Stallman gegründeten GNU-Projekt und einem normalen Personal Computer eine leistungsfähige UNIX-Workstation bauen konnte, die ihn ein Drittel des Preises einer Workstation von Sun Microsystems kostete, aber das Doppelte leistete, und wie daraus die Firma VA Linux wurde, deren Börsengang im Film ebenfalls lebhaft mitverfolgt wird. - Video Language:
- English
- Duration:
- 01:25:10
Po-chiang Chao edited English subtitles for Revolution OS | ||
Po-chiang Chao edited English subtitles for Revolution OS | ||
Po-chiang Chao edited English subtitles for Revolution OS |