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The GNU/Linux approach
April 1, 1998
Could a Windows Alternative
Spring From Free Software?
By SEAN DAVIS
Dow Jones Newswires
Let's play Internet Jeopardy: The makers of "Titanic"
used it to render the
hit film's special effects. NASA uses it to stitch
together pictures of Earth.
It's free to anyone who wants it, but at least two
companies are selling it.
The question: What is Linux?
Linux is an operating system, like Microsoft Corp.'s
Windows. But unlike
Windows, no one owns Linux, and its source code -- the
instructions its
developers use to create it -- is freely available.
Proponents of Linux say because of this, the software
stands a good chance
of taking business away from Windows NT, the
enterprise version of
Microsoft's market-leading operating system for
workstations. One
commercial vendor of Linux, privately-held Red Hat
Software Inc., expects
to sell 400,000 copies of the software at $50 each in
1998.
The operating system generally referred to as Linux
got its start in 1983
when Richard Stallman, then a programmer at the
artificial-intelligence lab at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, set out to
create a free alternative to
Unix, the operating system developed at AT&T Corp.'s
Bell Labs.
Mr. Stallman dubbed his operating system GNU, which
stands for Gnu's
Not Unix. (The recursive acronym is a time-honored
tradition in software
development, Mr. Stallman says; he calls it "hacker
humor.") With Mr.
Stallman and others building it piece by piece, by
1991 GNU lacked only
one vital piece -- the kernel, which makes the
operating system run.
That's when Linux's namesake came along. Linus
Torvalds, then a student
at the University of Helsinki, wrote the kernel, named
it after himself and
made it available to the public under the GNU general
public license. (Mr.
Torvalds now works for software company Transmeta, a
Santa Clara,
Calif., start-up whose investors include Microsoft
co-founder Paul Allen.)
The GNU general public license is another Stallman
brainchild. Written in
1985 and revised twice, most recently in 1991, it
permits anyone to use
Linux, or GNU/Linux, as the operating system also is
known. Licensees
must agree to provide the source code to subsequent
users, even when they
sell the software, as they are permitted to do. And
users also must agree to
make any additions and improvements to the operating
system available to
the public in the form of source code.
This means that a community of hackers and software
developers, linked
together via the Internet, is constantly adding to and
improving Linux. The
operating system as it exists today is a loosely
defined accretion of repairs
and new features -- a situation the general public
license made possible.
But free software doesn't mean free of charge, and
that's where privately
held companies like Red Hat and its rival, Caldera
Inc., come in.
Red Hat, of Research Triangle Park, N.C., takes the
latest, greatest version
of Linux off the Internet and packages it for sale in
CD-ROM format.
Paying for Support, Reliability
Red Hat's president and co-founder, Robert Young, says
the company's
customers are paying for three things: the convenience
of a CD, technical
support and a reliable version of the operating
system. He says Red Hat --
named for co-founder Marc Ewing's Cornell University
lacrosse cap -- has
shipped about 600,000 CDs since its inception in
January 1995.
Caldera, of Orem, Utah, has a slightly different
business model. It adds
proprietary elements to Linux, including a
user-friendly desktop, and sells
the package on CD-ROM. Caldera doesn't publish the
source code for the
proprietary elements, some of which it licenses from
other vendors.
Standing behind Caldera is Ray Noorda, who retired as
chairman of Novell
Inc. in 1994. Canopy Group, a venture-capital firm Mr.
Noorda founded in
1995, is Caldera's sole investor, and Caldera was
started by former Novell
employees who worked under Mr. Noorda.
Challenging Microsoft isn't new for Mr. Noorda:
Earlier this decade, while
under Mr. Noorda's leadership, Novell went on a costly
acquisition spree
to compete with the Redmond, Wash., software giant, a
strategy it has since
abandoned.
Whether Linux can challenge Windows remains to be
seen. According to
Red Hat, Linux has at most 10.5 million users.
Microsoft will ship an
estimated 95 million copies of Windows in 1998.
Some Linux Successes
But Linux has had some notable successes. For example,
the special-effects
shop Digital Domain used powerful computers running
Red Hat's version of
Linux to render many of the stunning images from
"Titanic," including the icy
waters that swallowed the ship.
Another user is the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration. When
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland built a
supercomputer
out of off-the-shelf PC components, it chose Linux to
run the
number-crunching machine, partly because of the
operating system's culture.
"There really is a culture in the Linux community of
contributing
components," said Donald Becker, a staff scientist at
Goddard. "Working
with a culture like that makes everyone's job easier."
That same culture doesn't exist in the Windows NT
environment, he added.
Collective development and troubleshooting make Linux
both a nimble and
exceptionally stable operating system, proponents say.
The drawback, Mr.
Becker said, is that Linux is always changing,
requiring users to update
frequently.
"But the alternative is a stagnant system," Mr. Becker
said, "so it's a
necessary evil."
Free-Software Model Gains Currency
The free software model, for a long time anathema to
most commercial
software makers, is gaining currency. Netscape
Communications Corp.
recently said it will start giving away its Navigator
Web browser, as well as
the source code that makes it run. And Apache, the
free Web-server
software developed by far-flung hackers, is estimated
to run about 45% of
the Web pages world-wide, more than any other server
software product.
To Mr. Stallman, the founder and unpaid head of the
Free Software
Foundation in Cambridge, Mass., selling software is
just fine, provided the
buyer can share it with anyone he or she wishes. The
foundation itself sells a
version of Linux in CD-ROM form.
But Mr. Stallman discourages people from buying Linux
products that
include proprietary software, and hopes Linux sellers
will contribute to the
creation of new free software.
"Intellectual property is an artificial legal scheme,"
Mr. Stallman says, adding
that companies that keep users from sharing software
are "antisocial."
Opponents of free software argue that ownership begets
innovation -- but
Mr. Stallman and the rest of the free-software
movement disagree.
Linux, Mr. Stallman says, benefits from the "Tom
Sawyer effect":
Developers do the hard work of building an operating
system because they
think it's fun.
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