technology/7-heated-debates-free-and-open-source-software-history
Unix was born in 1969 as an operating system that its owner, AT&T, could not sell for profit. That changed in the early 1980s, when AT&T received permission to commercialize Unix.
Unix’s commercialization engendered a considerable crisis within the community of hackers who used and helped to build the system. Although the Unix source code remained available, many hackers did not want to continue using a system whose image was sullied by the trappings of commercialism.
Hackers’ reaction to the commercialization of Unix helped to birth Richard Stallman’s GNU project, as well as efforts to free BSD (a Unix variant that originally shared much of its code with AT&T Unix, but eventually became a standalone system) of Unix code.
Another grave threat to hackers in the nascent free software community emerged in the mid-1980s, when commercial software companies — with Apple leading the way — attempted to set a precedent for copyrighting the “look and feel” of software programs.
Such copyrights would have restricted the ability of programmers to emulate user interface elements or functionality of another organization’s software programs, even if all of the code they wrote was original.
Thanks to the efforts of hackers like Richard Stallman, the campaign to copyright look and feel mostly failed. But it helped to establish ill-will within the free software community toward Apple that persists in some circles to this day. It’s why Stallman in recent years has made statements calling Steve Jobs the “pioneer of the computer as a jail,” for example.
A few months after Linus Torvalds announced the Linux kernel to the world in August 1991, Robert Tanenbaum, the computer science professor who developed another Unix-like operating system called Minix, proclaimed on Usenet that “LINUX is obsolete.” Tanenbaum’s criticisms of Linux included what he perceived as its lack of portability, as well as its monolithic architecture.
The criticism engendered a fierce flame war between Tanenbaum and Torvalds. Torvalds blasted Tanenbaum for charging money for Minix: “Look at who makes money off minix,
and who gives linux out for free. Then talk about hobbies. Make minix freely available, and one of my biggest gripes with it will disappear.”
Torvalds also took issue with Tanenbaum’s attempt to present himself as a superior computer scientist because he was a professor with a strong reputation in the Unix world, whereas Torvalds was a mere student. “Your job is being a professor and researcher: That’s one hell of a good excuse for some of the brain-damages of minix,” Torvalds wrote.
The debate ended without either party giving in, although from an historical perspective Tanenbaum seems to have been proved wrong in his criticisms of Linux. Monolithic kernel architectures failed to catch on, and Linux evolved into probably the most portable operating system on the planet.
Not content with the relatively slowpace of development of the GNU glibc library, Linux kernel developers in the early 1990s forked glibc by creating what they called Linux libc. They used Linux libc for several years, until GNU released glibc 2.0 in 1997.
While the glibc vs. Linux libc controversy is largely forgotten today, in the 1990s it highlighted the technical confusion and wasted effort that could arise when different projects within the free software community disagreed over which programming framework to use. The lesson remains relevant today, amid talk of forking open source projects like Docker.
When people in the early 1990s began combining the Linux kernel with GNU tools and utilities to build a complete operating system, most referred to the result simply as “Linux.”
This habit did not sit well with Stallman and other GNU developers, who were denied credit for their work when people failed to mention GNU. Their objections were understandable; in the early 1990s, Linux accounted for only about 3 percent of the total code in a Linux-based operating system.
Stallman and the Free Software Foundation promoted use of the term GNU/Linux (at first, Stallman had advocated for Lignux, a term that never gained traction) with some success, although today it is relatively rare to hear people talk of GNU/Linux. Most continue to say just “Linux.”
By 1998, as the commercial importance of GNU, Linux and free software grew, some hackers worried that the term free software — not to mention the Free Software Foundation’s rather dogmatic message about setting computer users free, rather than focusing on the practical benefits of using free software — confused users and scared businesses away from the ecosystem.
These concerns prompted a meeting in 1998 of leading free software figures (Stallman was not invited), where they agreed to begin using the term open source software instead of free software. Although the former has largely superseded the latter, some hackers continue to use free software today, believing that it is important to emphasize the freedom that publicly available source code provides to users.
In July 1998 the KDE project released the first version of the K Desktop Environment, the first interface for GNU/Linux systems that was smooth and mature enough to compete with closed-source alternatives.
Yet KDE had a major problem in the eyes of some free software users. It depended on Qt, a programming library owned by a company named Trolltech. Trolltech allowed use of Qt on Linux-based systems for free, but it refused to license Qt under the GPL or a similar license that would ensure the free availability of Qt source code.
The controversy prompted GNU to support the launch of a new desktop interface project, called GNOME. GNU also supported a parallel project called Harmony, which attempted to clone the Qt library using free code. Harmony was abandoned when GNOME 1.0 was released in 1999.
Trolltech eventually liberalized the licensing terms of Qt, and KDE remains a widely used desktop environment today. But that has not stopped widespread adoption of GNOME, which remains one of the most popular interfaces for GNU/Linux today
In July 1998 the KDE project released the first version of the K Desktop Environment, the first interface for GNU/Linux systems that was smooth and mature enough to compete with closed-source alternatives.
Yet KDE had a major problem in the eyes of some free software users. It depended on Qt, a programming library owned by a company named Trolltech. Trolltech allowed use of Qt on Linux-based systems for free, but it refused to license Qt under the GPL or a similar license that would ensure the free availability of Qt source code.
The controversy prompted GNU to support the launch of a new desktop interface project, called GNOME. GNU also supported a parallel project called Harmony, which attempted to clone the Qt library using free code. Harmony was abandoned when GNOME 1.0 was released in 1999.
Trolltech eventually liberalized the licensing terms of Qt, and KDE remains a widely used desktop environment today. But that has not stopped widespread adoption of GNOME, which remains one of the most popular interfaces for GNU/Linux today
To say that the free and open source software community has faced its share of controversy is a huge understatement. Indeed, fierce debate among hackers — about both technical issues and philosophical ones — has played a pivotal role in shaping free and open source software communities over the years.
Here’s a look at some of the biggest controversies to affect projects like Unix, GNU, Linux and more.
For more on the history of free and open source software, check out Christopher Tozzi’s new book, For Fun and Profit: A History of the Free and Open Source Software Revolution.
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