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May 27, 2008

To some observers in the Linux community, there are some members of the free software movement who view the world of business with a certain amount of suspicion, both founded and unfounded.

On average, the community considers the multibillion dollar open source industry as a validation of its beliefs... To many, so-called 'free' software and business are now closely related, and now Linux inventor Linus Torvalds and developer Andrew Morton are currently employed by the Linux Foundation, a non-profit consortium of corporations.

However, in recent months, this association (if you will) has shown some signs of becoming strained to say the least. Key points in this growing trend is the increasing commercialization of the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project, the renewed calls of Mark Shuttleworth of Canonical and Ubuntu for release synchronization among projects, and Matt Asay's worry about free riders who give nothing back to the Linux community.

As could be expected, overall reactions to such events vary considerably. For example, the recent OLPC changes are widely seen as a betrayal of the Linux community, while Shuttleworth's and Asay's comments have simply sparked increased debate on the topic.

But what these events all have in common is that they actually reverse the assumptions that have allowed business and free software to collaborate in the first place! Rather than having business adapt to free software, they suggest a wish to have free software adapt to business...

In November 2007, the OLPC project was considered (and still is) viewed by many as a poster-child for free software. The project received strong assistance from leading free software projects and companies, and its innovative software was widely regarded as an example of what free software could accomplish and its overall strong benefits to its users.

However, in the last few months, this same association has actually hindered the OLPC goal of distributing 150 million computers by the end of 2008 and to some, it now appears as increasingly impossible to achive. In an interview in March with BusinessWeek, OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte was quoted as saying that, in the past, the project had operated "almost like a terrorist group" and needed to be managed "more like Microsoft." (!)

Negroponte also acknowledged that the OLPC was looking for a CEO... About the same time, he announced that the project's XO computers would run a version of Windows. Those news have recently been confirmed by Negroponte himself.

It's rather hard to see how Microsoft, with its orientation to profit and ruthless business practices, would be compatible with the basic idealism with which OLPC was founded and previously operated. Making accessibility to the Internet even partially connected to a commercial company is simply the wrong message sent to a lot of people, especially in the Linux community.

While all these events have been happening, OLPC has lost several key members, including Mary Lou Jepson, the cofounder and CTO, Walter Bender, head of software and content, and Ivan Krestic, director of security architecture. Both Bender and Krstic indicated that their resignations were over disagreements with the directions in which OLPC was heading.

For his part, Jepson specifically denied such motivations, but the denial may have been more diplomatic than anything else that some have already speculated.

In the free software community, these events have been met with outrage by many, and tensions are increasing. You don't have to search far on the Web today to find people suggesting that OLPC has used and literally abandoned the Linux community all together, and that it is becoming simply another so-called 'utility' laptop manufacturer like many others.

Of course, some will say that such reactions are greatly amplified and outrageous. After all, the OLPC still seems focused on its educational mission, and the original free software operating system will still be available alongside Windows on the next version of the XO.

But nevertheless, they are certainly understandable, both emotionally and in real-life terms.

In merely equating the free software way of doing things with terrorists, Negroponte does seem to be repudiating the same Linux community that created the project in the first place!

Additionally, in not only wanting to model the project on the fiercely competitive Microsoft but instead partnering with it, Negroponte is actually confirming that he is doing exactly that!

Think about it for a minute; if you're coding and selling software or IT services built around that software, timely releases make sense, and that is something that Microsoft excels in!

It allows for a regular product cycle, and create a sense among users that you are reliable... (is it?) But in the free software world, where "release early and release often" is a real slogan, official releases are unimportant, especially when the standard desktops all include an update notifier.

Today, many Linux distributions (or distros as they are called) have moved to regular release cycles, but these are still very flexible for the most part, and nobody is ever concerned if the releases slip a week or so.

The whole idea of a free operating system is to remove the overall restrictions on users as far as possible. If you start trying to differentiate between users on the basis of how much they pay back to you, then you are undermining the whole idea of free software.

In fact, when you really think about it for a minute, it's only from a traditional business perspective that such differentiation seems desirable, or even possible. If you truly understand free software, then you have to realize that an inability to control your code is part of the price of doing business in the first place!

Yes, Negroponte and the OLPC have succesfully managed to get the whole open source and Linux community up in arms against its very own principles and its mandate to help users, and that is a very sad story in deed...

Source: Linux Planet.

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