I was going over some of my old papers I wrote for school. This was a paper I wrote for my intermediate writing class at Salt Lake Community College (ENG 2010). I thought you might find it interesting. Mind you, this is designed to be written for a person who knows next to nothing about technology, so a lot of it may seam a bit superfluous. Also, I no longer agree with a large portion of what I said in this paper. Still, some of you may find it interesting.
Back to the future, the future of software.
Introduction:
On May 18, 2009, Google announced a new product; they called it Google Wave. The idea of Google Wave was to update email, and bring it into the twenty-first century. They did this by taking the current state of social networking, and making it into an open platform. What they wanted to do, was to make open source technology, which means that not only can someone download the product, but they can also download the sources that were used to make the product. This is a phenomena that has been taking place for the past thirty years. It started out as just a bunch of rouge developers, but has gradually moved to the mainstream market. (Google, 28 May 2009). This is just one example of what appears to be a paradigm shift. In the past, companies like Microsoft used to sell their software as an end product to costumers; however, companies are now moving more towards a service model, where they release a large portion of their software for general consumption, and they make their money by providing services.
Many web-bloggers, formal or informal internet journalists, look at this paradigm shift, and like to post a lot of rhetoric, such as ‘the future is open’, or ‘Linux is the future.’ While it is quite possible that the future is open, it won’t be what many of the bloggers imagine. The way that FLOSS (free, libre, open source software), is currently thought of, has far too many problems, and will not be sustainable in the world to come. Not only does it break far too many of the rules of economics, it also breaks too many of the rules of engineering. A lot of this hype is do to over-inflation by both old, and new, media. In addition, the place where FLOSS seams to flourish the best, is a thing known as cloud computing, a form of networking; this is the only place where FLOSS has any chance of survival, and thus deserves a good look.
Changing the game, breaking the rules:
FLOSS, or Free, Libre, and Open Source Software, is software which is designed to protect the freedoms of both the producer of the software, and the user of the software. This is done by a technique called copyleft, a sort of hack on the word copyright. The basic idea of copyleft is that anyone can use your software, get the source code, modify it, and then give it away. The OSI, Open Source Initiative, listed ten requirements that software needed to have, for it to be open. They are free redistribution of both the software, and source code, derivative works must be allowed, authors integrity must be intact, must not discriminate between any party, group, or field of endeavor, the license must apply to anyone with a copy of the software, and the license must not restrict other software, finally, the license must be technology neutral (Open, 07 July 2006).
Eric Raymond was one of the first people to jump on the FLOSS bandwagon. He first thought that it wouldn’t work, because it had much to large of a group. He made the claim that software should be made in a group of tight nit developers who speak to each other on a regular basis, sort of like a cathedral. However, he began to notice that FLOSS was working, and it was changing the world. The conclusion that he came to, was that FLOSS was more like a bazaar. This allowed the developers to have constant interaction with each other, even on opposite sides of the world. He said that this one advantage, was enough to turn the tides, and make FLOSS the future for developing software.
The usual claims that FLOSS will fail, are based on reasoning that it can not, and will not ever make money. Other claims say that it is all made by a bunch of people that have no idea what they are doing. Both of these claims are invalid. FLOSS can be used to make money. One example is Google, another is Red Hat. Also, the main developers of FLOSS are not random high school kids, rather, they are developed primarily in Universities. GNU was started by Richer Stallman, who quit working at MIT to start the free software foundation. Linux, a Unix like operating system based on Minix, was started by Linus Torvalds, a student at Stanford. Likewise, BSD, is another operating system which has roots in the University of California Berkly. The relationship that FLOSS has with commercial software, is similar to the relationship that many universities have with the corporate world (Revolution, 28 August 2001).
For a long time, one of the largest problems with FLOSS, was that it was slow. While many of the main packages, such as the Linux kernel were updated rapidly, less popular packages could go months or years without an update. SuperTux, a platform game similar to Super Mario Bros., has released their first version in 2004. However, even today, in 2009, they are still working to get out the second version of the game (GotM, 16 May 2004). To combat this, a new way of releasing software was made. The idea is that of meta-cycles. The idea is that rather than working on software, and releasing it when it’s done, the developers would make a calender, and every six months or so, they would release a new version of the software. They would plan the development around that schedule, and only put what they think they could do, into the development of that version. This seamed to work good. Software was made rapidly, and was rapidly made stable. There were still some bugs, problems with the software, but they were few and far in between. However, Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Canonical, realized that small cycles prevented developers from making large leaps in software. Meaning that if they kept this up, the software would eventually become outdated. He proposed that on top of the short cycles, they also have occasional long ones, two to three years in length, in which they would revolutionize the package. Currently, this idea is still being argued, but various makers of software have already moved to this model (Meta-cycles, 17 April 2009).
Not everyone thinks that a cycle based system is good. Byran Lunduke, co-host of the Linux Action Show, said that cycles don’t work. He says that they only work when there are small groups of people, or they have someone who can manage the team, and make sure that everything else gets done. He cites Fedora, a version of Linux, that got shipped with two volume controllers, because one of them only worked half of the time. He says that is leads projects to not have very good goals. He also called for projects to get leaders, in order to better manage things (Season 10 Episode 9, 19 July 2009). Although his ideas are not entirely correct, as having a cyclical release cycle can help projects become more organized, he does have some valid points, and can show many examples of how the development of FLOSS has failed.
Ironically enough, some of the best FLOSS programs out there, have some company or organization, whether commercial, or non-for profit, to support it. Linux, has the Linux foundation. Ubuntu, another Linux Distribution, has Cononical. Blender, a three dimensional modeling and animation program, has the Blender Foundation, and was originally made by Not a Number before it became FLOSS (Doc:Manual/Introduction, 20 July 2009). Not only does an organization help FLOSS projects have
goals, but it also can help with the man power to actually make the programs.
With all of this, FLOSS still keeps going on and on. It leads one to want to know why. First and foremost, the media, especially new media, but some of the old media, tends to over-inflate the possibilities of FLOSS. They take a project with potential, and speculate on everything that could happen. Also, FLOSS is considered to be the hip thing in technology; this has the practical upshot of being much less critical to FLOSS projects. Finally, cloud computing has provided a model where FLOSS tends to flourish. All of this has the effect, of an ever-growing movement towards using FLOSS as a business model.
Media and Hype:
Leo Laporte is the head of the TWiT network. He can best be described as a teenager, in the body of a man over 50. When a new piece of technology comes to the forefront, he has to try it out. In fact, he has claimed that the entire reason he got into radio, and podcasting, was so he would have an excuse to try out new toys. However, he has been known to change his opinions on technology, not in a bad way, he just forms an opinion fast, and broadcasts it to the world. When he learns something new, whether good or bad, he modifies his opinion accordingly, and again, he broadcasts it. Thus, when a new piece of technology comes out, before he hears anything bad about it, he loves it. He will jump on the PR that is given, and only when bad stuff happens, will he begin to make his opinion negative.
Although Leo is one of the most enthusiastic podcasters, only possibly matched by Jason Calicanis, many of the other major podcasters have similar effects on their listeners. When a new thing comes out, they all rush to it, only to find that a defect is in the product. Some bloggers, such as Joh:n C. Dvorak, have realized this, and give the entire world their pesomstic views. Also, the opinions of the listeners of such shows also change greatly depending on who makes the products. A listner of Security Now, a show on the TWiT network said, “My point is that when anyone else does this kind of thing, no one cares. When Apple does it, people thank Steve Jobs. When Google does it, people wonder why it wasn’t there in the first place. But when Microsoft does it, all hell breaks loose.” (Qtd. By Gibson, 11 June 2009). Lunduke also commented on this behavior when discussing Fedora 11. He said that if Microsoft were to have produced such a bad system, everyone, especially the Linux community, would have been very harsh on them. However, when it was a version of Linux that was bad, the only people who cared, said that it was free, and going under principals of community, gave Fedora a brake (Season 10 Episode 7, 21 June 2009).
All of this translates into FLOSS, because so many podcasters get incredibly exited when they hear about new things that are being done in the open source world. When they hear about a new project, they jump on the bandwagon long before it is anywhere near stable, and they talk all about it. They say that it is still buggy, but that it is okay, because it is pre-alpha software, and that people should try it at their own risk. However, when one of many projects fail to do anything, they get no attention. This is the standard way media works, and there is nothing wrong with doing that. The only problem comes about when people hear all of the great things coming out of the mouths of these podcasters, but they fail to see all of the other problems with FLOSS.
This type of thing happens to all forms of technology, not just FLOSS. The reason why this is such a large problem in the open source world, is because the community at large inflates things. Lunduke shows an example of this when discussing Mono, an SDK for developing C# applications. Many people in the Linux community, are worried that Microsoft will sue them, for breaking several of Microsoft’s patents, by using Mono. Lunduke thinks this is pathetic, pointing out that the likely hood that they are breaking patents by using Mono is slim, and that just by the nature of developing software in general, they are at risk of breaking patents anyway (Season 10 Episode 7, 21 June 2009). This is just one example of when the Linux community has overinflated a small story. Other examples just in the past three years include the Microsoft-Novell deal, the creation of Linspire, and it’s Click ‘n Run service, Apple patenting the CUPS protocol, and the creation of the GNU GPLv3 (General Public License version three), just to name a few. All of these events seamed to be big events at the time; however, they now look like small meaningless blips in time. Yet many in the Linux community are still greatly divided, and turn the entire issue into a very large ordeal.
Thus, when it comes to FLOSS, everyone who hears about it, likes the idea of it. They investigate more, and see a few good token programs. Some of the more adventures ones even give it a try. According to W3Schools, 47.3% of the world uses an open source web browser called Firefox, compared to the next highest browser, Internet Explorer, with 40.9% of the market (Browser, 01 July 2009). Also, when Google releases a new open source product, everyone gives Google all of their attention. Interestingly enough, the less details about their products that Google gives, the more attention the media gives to them. The media, in conjunction with the ability of the Linux community to over-inflate a story, is one of the reasons why FLOSS gets so much attention, and yet it is not as large as it is made out to be.
Cloud Computing, and the future:
Cloud Computing is a recent paradigm shift in the way people are thinking about computers. It is largely just a buzz word, a piece of jargon, to mean an old phenomena, that has slightly changed, with the media jumping all over it. What a person does with cloud computing, is take all of their data, and store it on the Internet, also, they use a lot of their applications on the Internet as well. Google is quite possibly the largest cloud computing company, especially with their Google Apps., a series of applications that reside on the web, which the end user can use from any front end terminal. Also, Google has announced the release of what they call the Google Chrome OS, a Linux based Operating System which is designed for extremely fast booting, and using web applications.
However, this idea has not been a new one. Back in the early days of computing, time sharing was a very large thing. Essentially, people buy some time on a particular computer, which allow them to do computational heavy tasks, with a lightweight computer. Cloud Computing is this same idea, with slightly different motives. Rather than doing this to do computation heavy tasks, people will join cloud computing for social reasons. In other words, no one cares about Facebook for Facebook’s sake, they care about Facebook because all of their friends are on it. However, Cloud Computing has gotten an unusually large amount of hype.
This is all related to FLOSS in one simple way, currently most sources of Cloud Computing use FLOSS as their software. Google makes a big deal about their Chrome web browser being open source, WordPress offers it’s software for free download at wordpress.org. This type of movement is one of the few reason why FLOSS is going to be the future, because Cloud Computing is going to be the future, and in many ways, is already the present. The only other saving grace FLOSS has, is its presence on embedded devices. People are going to move more and more to the cloud. Or rather, people will get into computing because of the cloud, this is because they can do it without actually knowing much about computers by itself.
The cloud won’t grow to be as large as many think it will be. As seen in the previous section of this paper, a lot of that is due to hype that media has put out. However, it is growing, and will continue to grow, even if there is another paradigm shift. With FLOSS at its core, more and more people will begin to use it. However, they will not know they are using FLOSS, to them, they are just using technology. They may not even realize that they are using an operating system in the first place. This already happens in the embedded device market already; many people fail to realize that many of the current smart-phones on the market, run Linux.
Many supporters of FLOSS think this is a bad thing. They want people to know of their freedoms, and realize why it is important. However, most people neither care, nor want to take the time to listen, they just want to use their computer. Thus, despite what many supporters of FLOSS think, the true potential of FLOSS, is that it can be unobtrusive. Almost anyone who has used a computer, along with the Windows operating system, has used FLOSS. The true power of FLOSS, and the reason why it is growing, is not directly because of Cloud Computing, but rather, because it serves as a good platform to use, one where no one will know that it is actually being used.
Also, the cloud is not as large of a thing that it is currently being made out to be. Popular social networking site Twitter, will eventually be replaced, and people will stop thinking of Google as a hip thing. Yet the technology behind it will stay. As such, FLOSS will also stay, but it will not be what most people think of it.
Drawing Conclusions About the Future of FLOSS:
FLOSS has come a long way. Software started out free and open, and William (Bill) Gates began to make an economic model to support software. However, other alternatives are growing, meaning that FLOSS does have a future. The problem stems with the current way that people view software development. It has far too many flaws, and really needs to be revamped. The media also over-inflates the ability of FLOSS, which is not a bad thing, rather, the large community of FLOSS developers and users take this over-inflation, and magnify it.
However, there is hope for the FLOSS community. FLOSS will survive in embedded devices, and in Cloud Computing. The problem is that in both of these areas, no one will really know that they are using FLOSS. The community will possibly overreact to this, as they fail to realize that it is a good thing that no one knows they are using FLOSS. It is a good thing, because it shows technological progress, meaning that humanity has progressed to the point where consumers do not need to learn another language, or way of thinking, to use their computers. Or at least, enough people have grown up with this way of thinking, that it appears to have become an intricate part of human society.
With this being said, I use FLOSS on a daily basis. I’m writing this paper on an open source operating system, with an open source office suite, doing research with an open source web browser, which is accessing websites powered by open source software. Other less tech savvy people may not go to that extreme, they are likely to be using the popular Windows operating system, or possibly Apple’s OS X. However, some are likely to be using the open source web browser Firefox. Also, all of them will be using websites which are powered by open source software on some level. Even though I use a disproportionate amount of FLOSS, and I enjoy the freedoms that are associated behind it, I do not think that everyone needs to know about it. However, I will continue to use it, and promote FLOSS, while telling people not to trust the cloud, and to backup all of their data locally.
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