Newsweek Article, PLUG, & Open Source

Ladies & Gents:

First an introduction: I am a not a wizard and not a newbie. I've been lurking here for some time and have Linux running on my Compaq (read: junk) home PC and my corporate Dell Latitude Notebook (not junk, which is why I don't let the kids near it). I've some formal programming experience and much real world business experience, so I thought I would post my thoughts on the latest meeting, on Eric's talk, and on Open Source (formerly "free software") in general. Feel free to hit the delete key now, should you choose.

I have not posted the Newsweek article, although I have read it and was a little disappointed. Its at http://www.newsweek.com/nw-srv/printed/us/st/ty0103_1.htm. One of the contributers, Arlyn Tobias Gajilan was at the meeting. The author was not there and didn't understand Arlyn's notes. In particular, the article says that Eric was "comparing [the Linux & Open Source] movement to the "gift economy" of Kalahari tribesmen in Africa." In fact, Eric mentioned the bushmen only to criticize anthropologists who spuriously claim that these tribesmen have no property rights. Eric pointed out that they do have property rights and defend water holes, which are valuable because they are both scarce and easy to defend. He was discussing American Indians of the Pacific Northwest in reference to the gift culture.

I took rather copious notes on Eric's speech and found it rather well presented, although I would disagree with many of his points. Eric's first paper "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" is a seminal work that will be remembered as one of the most important papers on software of this century. If you haven't read it, go read it now. I have added my notes to the bottom of this e-mail should you care to peruse them. In fact, if you have Eric's address, you might forward this to him, since it does contain some (hopefully constructive) criticism. I didn't take notes on the portion of his speech dealing with being an effective advocate, since I am not in the MIS biz.

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Notes from Eric S. Raymond’s Presentation to the Philadelphia Linux Users Group

January 6, 1999

Eric gave the group a quick summary of his previous two papers and a preview of his third paper "The Magic Cauldron." The theme of his third paper is based on the sociologic and economic motivations that were the impetus for the creation and development of Linux into its current position as the single most technologically sophisticated and reliable operating system ever created.

Eric began by comparing the 3 methods of coming into ownership of property under Anglo-Saxon law with the 3 methods of acquiring ownership of software. He drew analogies between pioneers homesteading a previously uninhabited/unowned property to founding a new software project. He equated the transfer of ownership of a piece of property to the previous owner of an existing software project transferring (selling or giving) that software to a new owner. And finally, he compared the user who comes to own software that is not currently owned or maintained by anyone to the common law concept of acquiring ownership of land through adverse possession.

Eric seemed to be surprised by the parallels. After all, he pointed out, what could be more dissimilar than tangible, finite property with intangible, infinite software code.

From a sociologically point of view, he opined that the creation of the concepts of territory and property are conflict avoidance devices. He argued that anthropologists who state that not all cultures have property rights are in error. Even the bushmen who have no defined hunting territories, do own and defend their water holes. Value of an item is relative to its scarcity and the ability to defend the item. Further, the better the quality of real property in terms of its ability to yield product, the more advanced the property rights system, across all cultures.

Eric thought that the concept of "forking" (where versions of a software project diverge into their own entities) is a taboo within the hacker culture. He thought that the time and energy people spend defending their actions after a software fork belie the fact that the culpable parties know they are violating a social norm. This concept was met with considerable scepticism by the audience.

17. If cultures are adaptive and people will defend their title to property because of the yields of ownership, then how does one explain the emergence of the open source model of software ?

1. Peer admiration.

There are 3 types of cultures, and within each, man (and woman - don't give me a hard time here. "man" means both man and woman) competes for social status due to existing evolutionary tendencies. In the command hierarchy, he with the biggest club or control of those with the biggest clubs controls others and has the highest social status. However, the command hierarchy doesn’t scale very well. As this type of community grows, the lower ranked individuals tend to create inefficiencies through their designs on higher ranks.

In the exchange economy, he with the most to trade has the highest status. But note that the command hierarchy can exist parasitically on top of the exchange hierarchy. Last is the gift culture in which he who gives away the most gains the greatest stature. Such cultures existed in the Pacific Northwest and tend to only thrive in environments in which the members are "wealthy," i.e. they have more than their basic needs for survival and exist in a relatively benign environment. The impetus for this behavior, according to Eric, is also evolutionarily disposed. Eric’s anarchic/libertarian views were evident in this portion of his speech.

(One wonders how a gift culture can exist for an extended period of time. Those ecosystems that would foster the gift culture, i.e. the richest communities are the most subject to a phenomenon that tends to equalize relative wealth among cultures of various levels of wealth: reproduction. In those natural systems which have the most resources available to its population, reproduction, followed by rapid population growth tends to lower the wealth of the average member to a level similar to that in ecosystems of average or even below average resources. In fact, such rich environments often lead to population explosions creating an ecosystem rather low in average wealth, which leads to a population implosion).

The Hacker Culture is quite similar to the gift culture, with members competing for status through their contributions to the source code. It is an "epi-phenomonon" which floats on top of an exchange culture because the exchange game does not motivate Hackers. And the hackers have both the time and knowledge to compete with each other. However, the Hacker Culture is a more pure type of gift culture, because the "gifts" have absolutely no exchange value whatsoever.

Economics of Open Source

Why doesn’t Harden’s Tragedy of the Commons apply to Open Source ? Or, in other words, if an asset is "free" isn’t it always misused or aren’t resources misallocated? Eric argues "No." The difference is that Open Source contributions actually improve the Commons, whereas in Harden’s model, the Commons are rapidly depleted through overuse. (What Eric misses here is that the hackers are not necessarily the same as the cattle owners who over-graze the commons because the hackers are not necessarily the end users). Thus in Open Source, there is an inverse commons effect. OS is a positive sum game, whereas the commons is negative sum.

Eric also discussed an economics game in which a professor puts 5ドル into a jar and doubles the amount still in the jar every 5 minutes. The students are free to take the money out of the jar at any time. In theory, the participants act selfishly the first few times the experiment is run, but then learn to cooperate to maximize their individual self-interests. (Eric failed to point out why those in Harden’s Commons are unable to come to a similar cooperative agreement). If you can cite the source for this economics game, Eric wants to hear from you, since he can't find it.

The inverse commons model and the economics game will form 2 of the 3 themes of "The Magic Cauldron" with an addition in which Eric discusses the circumstances under which a negative sum game can turn into a neutral or positive sum game.

He then discussed Open Source advocacy within commercial enterprises.

Comments from moi (jas3):

• Eric has correctly identified the motivations for the Linux community’s contributions to the source code. Peer admiration and the ability to contribute to a body of existing code are powerful motivations for the hackers and wizards responsible for its creation and development. Once it gained a critical mass, contributing to the creation of Linux within the Hacker culture became an honor for the most technologically savvy coders. Plus, there is a certain aesthetic to working on something which is technically beautiful.

• Eric did not discuss the needs that Linux was able to fill. It is an educational device for those studying Operating Systems. It is a tool for those who cannot afford the licensing fees Microsoft requires.

• However, he misses point that many of the programmers have other incentives. Educators have created and use Linux to teach their students how operating systems function. Much functionality has been added, not by those who are trying to impress others, but by those who need that functionality. This need often arises for the hobbyist, such as the extensive support for Ham radio stations, but also arises within the business world.

• The comparison of the Tragedy of the Commons to the development of Linux misses a point. The cattle owners who are grazing the Commons are competing for a scarce resource. The programmers who created Linux have an abundance of resources that allow them the time to compete with each other for status within their programmer community. The grazers are fighting for their survival. The coders are writing in their spare time (when not playing Doom).

• The development of LINUX for personal computers and servers has been largely possible through the incompetence of the commercial software developers, chiefly Microsoft. The application developers are hardly better than Microsoft, which has to its advantage a de facto monopoly not available to most application developers.

• The PLUG’s and Eric’s hope that Open Source becomes a model for the entire software industry borders on the religious. Open Source should and will succeed only if it is a better model for developers and consumers.

In the end, the commercial software industry could remedy most of the problems that have led to the emergence of Linux and the OS model if they would make a few changes. Although these changes will be hard for the software publishers to adopt, those that do will survive. Those that don’t, …

Most application developers would be wise to adopt some of the more successful practices of Linux and the Open Source model, such as:

• The rapid identification and correction of bugs in software, followed by the immediate distribution to existing clients of the corrected software at no additional cost.
• The release of the source code to the customer, with licensing rights that allow customer to make changes that suit his business needs. Or at least, the release of the source code to a select group of customers who have the desire and the technical ability to review it. Perhaps these customers could be the same customers who Beta test commercial software. Perhaps the software publishers could incentivize the customer base by rewarding those who found (and corrected) bugs economically (free software - trips to EuroDisney - cold hard cash).
• The creation of user forums to which employees of the publisher can and do contribute the solutions to problems.
• The release of new software at no (or at least minimal) cost to new users, e.g. Vueprint at Hamrick Software.
• To the extent that today’s commercial software developers can become more responsive to their customers needs more rapidly, Open Source software may be a solution looking for a problem. I am willing to concede that Linux may be an exception to the rule, but only because Microsoft has a monopoly in operating systems. This monopoly gives MS the ability to distribute buggy, bulky, slow, poorly documented, overpriced software, for which there is no competition. MS has been able to leverage its OS monopoly into creating a host of application programs that through predatory pricing, coercion, theft, and purchase of its competitors have driven much of its competition out of business. It’s practices in polluting the JAVA language were driven for one reason only: to kill the thin client applications that would (or might) render its OS superfluous.

I recognize that the last bullet is anathema to most PLUG members and to the general OS community. And I wish you luck, but in the business world, I believe that the commercial application developers WILL wise up. Word Perfect, for instance, did release a Linux version, but I don't think they'll ever release the source...

Comments, Insults, Flames welcome to either here (assuming the moderator approves) or to me at:

jas3@netreach.net