The Advantages of Free Software

If the GPL seems a bad idea from the standpoint of commercialism, consider the recent surge
of successful freeware packages—they are indicative of a system that does indeed work. This
success has evolved for two reasons: First, as mentioned earlier, errors in the code itself are far
more likely to be caught and quickly fixed under the watchful eyes of peers. Second, under the
GPL system, programmers can release code without the fear of being sued. Without that
protection, no one would ever release his or her code.

This concept of course begs the question of why anyone would release his or her work for
free. The answer is simple: Most projects don’t start out as full-featured, polished pieces of
work. They may begin life as a quick hack to solve a specific problem bothering the programmer.
As a quick-and-dirty hack, the code has no sales value. But when this code is shared with
others who have similar problems and needs, it becomes a useful tool. Other program users
begin to enhance it with features they need, and these additions travel back to the original
program. The project thus evolves as the result of a group effort and eventually reaches full
refinement. This polished program contains contributions from possibly hundreds if not
thousands of programmers who have added little pieces here and there. In fact, the original
author’s code is likely to be little in evidence.

Here’s another reason for the success of generally licensed software: Any project manager
who has worked on commercial software knows that selling, marketing, supporting, documenting, packaging, and shipping can be more expensive than developing the software. A programmer carrying out a weekend lark to fix a problem with a tiny, kluged program lacks the interest, time, and backing money to turn that hack into a profitable product.

When Linus Torvalds released Linux in 1991, he released it under the GPL. As a result of
its open charter, Linux has had a notable number of contributors and analyzers. This participation has made Linux very strong and rich in features. Torvalds himself estimates that since the v.2.2.0 kernel, his contributions represent only 5 percent of the total code base.
Since anyone can take the Linux kernel (and other supporting programs), repackage them,
and resell them, some people have made money with Linux. As long as these individuals
release the kernel’s full source code along with their individual packages, and as long as the
packages are protected under the GPL, everything is legal. Of course, this means that packages
released under the GPL can be resold by other people under other names for a profit (and can
in turn be resold again . . .).

In the end, what makes a package from one person more valuable than a package from
another person consists of the value-added features, support channels, and documentation.
Even IBM can agree to this; it’s how they made the bulk of their money between the 1930s
and 1970s: The money isn’t in the product; it’s in the services that go with it.

Defining Free Software and the GNU License

In the early 1980s, Richard Stallman began a movement within the software industry. He
preached (and still does) that software should be free. Note that by free, he doesn’t mean in
terms of price, but rather free in the same sense as freedom. This meant shipping not just a
product, but the entire source code as well.

Stallman’s policy was obviously a wild departure from the early eighties mentality of
selling prepackaged software, but his concept of free software was in line with the initial
distributions of UNIX from Bell Labs. Early UNIX systems did contain full source code. Yet
by the late 1970s, source code was typically removed from UNIX distributions and could be
acquired only by paying large sums of money to AT&T. The Berkeley Software Distribution
(BSD) maintained a free version but had to deal with many lawsuits from AT&T until it could
be proved that nothing in the BSD was from AT&T.

The idea of giving away source code is a simple one: A user of the software should never
be forced to deal with a developer who might or might not support that user’s intentions for the
software. The user should never have to wait for bug fixes to be published. More important,
code developed under the scrutiny of other programmers is typically of higher quality than code
written behind locked doors. The greatest benefit of free software, however, comes from the
users themselves: Should they need a new feature, they can add it to the program and then
contribute it back to the source, so that everyone else can benefit from it.

From this line of thinking has sprung a desire to release a complete UNIX-like system to
the public, free of license restrictions. Of course, before you can build any operating system,
you need to build tools. And this is how the GNU project was born.