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The high-tech gift culture... |
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...From the outset, Linux was copylefted software. Ten people downloaded the first posted version of the program, and five sent back bug fixes, code improvements and new features. By December 1991 about a hundred people were participating in Usenet discussions about Linux and hacking the code. A year later, there was a fully functional Linux operating system running on the IBM PC family of machines. By 1993 there were about 20,000 Linux users worldwide and about 100 programmers actively contributing changes to the code. By 1994 there were 100,000 users and networking facilities had been added to the system, which by now ran to 170,000 lines of code. And so it went on, until today there are somewhere between 7.5 million and 10 million users and upwards of 10,000 programmers actively involved in Linux newsgroups, testing and code improvements. And now here's the astonishing bit: in this maelstrom of co-operative development, there is order and progress. The reason Linux has become so popular is not because it makes people feel good to be using something not made by Microsoft (though of course that helps in some cases), but because it is a remarkably stable and robust product. If I had to bet my life on an operating system tomorrow, I would choose Linux. My personal Web server runs under it and when I last checked the machine had been running continuously for nearly a year without once needing to be rebooted. Compare that with my Windows 95 desktop machine, which starts to degrade after a single day's intensive use. And the reason for Linux's astonishing performance is obvious: it is because it has been debugged and tested to destruction by a larger army of skilled programmers than Microsoft could ever assemble. It's much the same process as the one on which we rely to produce scientific knowledge. And because of Stallman's copyleft concept, each participant in the process feels they have a stake in improving the system. The story of Linux is one of those rare cases where the right thing to do turned out to be the right thing to do. -oOo- What's made this extraordinary phenomenon possible? Answer: a combination of three things - the copyleft licensing system and the willingness to share source code that it engenders; the Net; and the distinctive mindset of those who work on the Linux kernel. Source code: commercial (copyrighted) programs are never distributed as source code but as what are called binaries. As a customer (or user) you never get to see what the programmer wrote, only the translation of it into incomprehensible binary code. A prerequisite for the Linux and GNU projects therefore is that programmers make the source code of what they produce freely available to others. That is why the Linux and GNU projects are nowadays often described as part of the Open Source movement. The Net: enables programmers working in the Open Source tradition to work collaboratively at a distance. Many of those who contribute to these projects are programmers and system managers on machines scattered all over the world. Without a communications medium which enables them to converse via e-mail and online conferences, and to ship program files back and forth around the world, the pace of development on GNU-Linux would have been much slower. As it is, the Open Source movement makes the pace of traditional software development look positively arthritic. Whereas new versions of major software packages are issued once a year (or once ever three years in the case of Microsoft Windows), for example, upgraded versions of Open Source programs often appear monthly. The mindset: This is the most astonishing aspect of the GNU-Linux phenomenon. Computer programmers tend, by and large, to be quirky and highly individualistic. Trying to organise or manage such awkward characters is normally as thankless as herding cats. Indeed often the only way companies like Microsoft can entice and manage gifted programmers is by providing serious financial inducements in the form of stock options and other occupational perks. But these strategies are not available to the Open Source movement. For one thing, it has no money. Linux is available, free of charge, to anyone who wants it and can find a download site. Or it's available in packaged distributions like Red Hat's which cost less than $50 and include manuals and installers. When IBM (which even today is a $100 billion company) tried to strike a deal with the group of Open Source hackers who created the Apache web server program, the company's lawyers were baffled to discover that there seemed to be nobody to whom the company could pay a licence fee - the group had no legal existence. Even more puzzling was the fact that the twenty or so hackers involved in the Apache project seemed completely uninterested in money. Their only concern was that any deal with IBM would have to respect the copyleft principle. Why did IBM want Apache? Simple: it's the world's best web server program, period. About half of all the web servers in the world are powered by Apache. And most of the mission-critical ones - including Hotmail, the web-based e-mail system now owned by Microsoft - are Apache sites. Yet this astonishing program, which has 50 per cent of the global market, was created by a group of programmers scattered round the world who rarely meet and derive no serious financial benefit from it. What motivates such people? A clue emerges from the IBM-Apache story because in the end a deal was struck: Apache allowed IBM to incorporate their software as the cornerstone of an online commerce system it was building; in return the company provided the Apache group not with cash but with an improvement on their software which had been worked out by IBM programmers - an adjustment which made Apache work better when running on Microsoft NT servers! In other words, what persuaded the Apache crowd to agree was the gift of what they call a 'neat hack', i.e. a smart piece of programming. -oOo- The IBM lawyers were no doubt as baffled by this as they would have been by a potlatch ceremony in some exotic tribe. But to those who understand the Open Source culture it is blindingly obvious what was going on. For this is pre-eminently a high-tech gift economy, with completely different tokens of value from those of the monetary economy in which IBM and Microsoft and Oracle and General Motors exist. "Gift cultures", writes Eric S. Raymond, the man who understands the Open Source phenomenon better than most, "are adaptations not to scarcity but to abundance. They arise in populations that do not have significant material-scarcity problems with survival goods. We can observe gift cultures in action among aboriginal cultures living in ecozones with mild climates and abundant food. We can also observe them in certain strata of our own society, especially in show business and among the very wealthy". Abundance makes command relationships difficult to sustain and exchange relationships an almost pointless game. In gift cultures, social status is determined not by what you control but by what you give away. "Thus", Raymond continues, "the Kwakiutl chieftain's potlach party. Thus the multi-millionaire's elaborate and usually public acts of philanthropy. And thus the hacker's long hours of effort to produce high-quality open source". Viewed in this way, it is quite clear that the society of open-source hackers is in fact a gift culture. Within it, there is no serious shortage of the 'survival necessities' -- disk space, network bandwidth, computing power. Software is freely shared. This abundance creates a situation in which the only available measure of competitive success is reputation among one's peers. This analysis also explains why you do not become a hacker by calling yourself a hacker -- you become one when other hackers call you a hacker. By doing so they are publicly acknowledging that you are somebody who has demonstrated (by contributing gifts) formidable technical ability and an understanding of how the reputation game works. This 'hacker' accolade is mostly based on awareness and acculturation - which is why it can only be delivered by those already well inside the culture. And why it is so highly prized by those who have it.
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This is an excerpt from A Brief
History of the Future: The Origins of the Internet by John Naughton Copyright notice: © 1999 by John Naughton. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.K. and international copyright law and agreements, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that this entire notice, including copyright information, is carried and provided that John Naughton and Weidenfeld and Nicolson are notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the consent of John Naughton. |
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