Freeware Pioneers

Innovators Advocate Free Software

Tom Abate
San Francisco Chronicle

April 9, 1998

The dreamers met the skeptics in Palo Alto on Tuesday.

That's when the leaders of the free software movement faced the reporters with the one-track minds.

All the reporters wanted to know was: How would freeware authors base businesses on a practice of giving away software code? Tim O'Reilly, a book and software publisher in Sebastopol, said reporters were missing the point. The freeware pioneers' first objective was creating good software quickly, and only later did they discover that their altruistic efforts also could have a business payoff.

Flanking O'Reilly, sat a dozen or so Bay Area programmers, each of whom have written widely-used but little-known programs that do things like sending e-mail and serving Web pages on the Internet.

``You're looking at people who have been able to compete with large companies with just the power of an idea,'' O'Reilly said. Each program had started out as somebody's hobby. In each case, the author posted the source code on the Internet -- something that is anathema to commercial firms who guard the inner workings of their programs.

But by giving away their source code, these programmers got back something in return. Other people spotted bugs or improved their work. They didn't have to advertise, because satisfied users e-mailed the news to their friends, urging that they also try the free code.

Over time, these hobbyists found that companies had started using their creations. And these companies started to hire them to write custom applications, provide tech support or furnish other services. In short, although they didn't start out to create businesses, they think they've rediscovered an old strategy: Giving away the razor (the source code), ends up selling blades (in the form of custom applications).

``The whole software industry is moving to a business based upon selling services,'' said Eric Raymond, who explains the freeware business in an essay called the Cathedral and the Bazaar (http://www.opensource.org/).

Inspired by Raymond's work, Netscape recently published its browser source code. Netscape hopes to create a guerrilla force of independent programmers to help it compete with Microsoft.

But freeware advocates don't see themselves as an anti-Microsoft mob. They just think that publishing source code means faster innovation, because it allows many people to test and de-bug software.

``The Internet becomes the development laboratory for new ideas,'' said Brian Behlendorf, the San Francisco man who helped develop Apache, the popular Internet server software.

But in an industry that lives in Microsoft's shadow, this new style of development becomes ``a second force in the computer industry,'' O'Reilly said.

No one knows whether all this will amount to more than a few brave words. But Dave Vellante, vice president at International Data Corp. in Framingham, Mass., said, ``This freeware model has great potential to spur innovation, critical mass and volume, all of which you need to win in the software business.''

Below we profile four people whose work exemplifies what its cr eators have rechristened the ``open source'' movement.

Contact Tom Abate at abate(atsign)sfgate.com or (650) 961-2689.

©1999 San Francisco Chronicle