To a high-tech community seriously attached to making large mountains of cash from the next big thing, the last big thing or any old thing, the Open Source movement is anathema. It is, one suspects, particularly bothersome to Bill Gates, a man who clearly understands the value of keeping the source of his software secret.
In a prescient memo written in the mid-1970s, Bill castigated people willing to pay for hardware but not the software that he and his partner, Paul Allen, were writing in the hope that it would make them wealthy.
"Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put three manyears into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product, and distribute it for free?" he thundered.
Over the next quarter of a century, the secret source code of Microsoft's products made Bill and Paul rich beyond their wildest dreams. On the downside, the question he posed in his irate memo was irrefutably answered. Microsoft has not of course been alone in making bundles of money from heavily protected software. Other software programmers, manufacturers and marketers have also made their millions and either invested in promising start-ups or retired to Caribbean islands to sip rum cocktails, study the form in the Wall Street Journal and work on their golden tans.
However, there exists a whole group of extremely talented people who, despite the riches to be had, maintain that the challenge lies not in making money but in writing elegant code that will simply make computing more efficient and enjoyable.
This noble, if financially foolhardy, approach has gathered momentum over the last 10 years. Characters like Linus Torvalds, who spearheaded the development of Linux, and Richard Stallman, the founder - some might say saint - of the free software movement, are now entering the realm of legend.
Stallman will be in Ireland on February 6th to spread the gospel at a Copyright Association of Ireland (CAI) conference. He will be one of a number of speakers dissecting the relative merits of Open Source code, which has legal protection as a result of "copyleft" developments more than a decade ago. While everyone is familiar with the term copyright, copyleft is relatively new to the lexicon. People who share Bill Gates's views on writing code are resolutely in favour of retaining proprietary rights over software and insist that creators will never work without the promise of substantial economic rewards. Anyone who has heard the salary demands of Irish Web developers, designers or programmers with 15 minutes' experience might be inclined to agree.
The existence and continued popularity of Linux, however, suggests that there are thousands of programmers quite willing to work for free in order to cock a snook at the big boys in Silicon Valley. Now that copyleft or Open Source projects can call upon this global army of altruistic programmers, its success would appear to be assured.
Rebel Code, a new book by Glen Moody documenting the development of the Open Source movement from its origins in the UNIX community
30 years ago to the runaway success of Linux, is to be published next week. Although not for the technophobe or the casual PC user, it sheds considerable light on the motivation of Stallman, Torvalds and others who have not only written the code for operating systems but also enshrined in law the principles by which the source of it must be kept open, whatever modifications or improvements are made.
Stallman was introduced to the world of hacking (not to be confused with the more malevolent cracking) when he joined the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1971.
"We had fun writing programs, we had fun playing hacks on each other," Stallman explains in Moody's book. It was this "playful cleverness" - and in some cases one-upmanship - which would inspire him to program through the 1970s.
It was the continued pursuit of elegant and clever code rather than money that led him to create the GNU General Public Licence (GPL) in 1985. "He had to make sure that the freedoms he was trying to perpetuate were watertight legally," Moody explains. Under the new copyleft, "users could copy the program, modify it and sell the original or modified versions. They could not modify the rights granted by the copyleft to any user".
"Furthermore, if software released under the GNU GPL was combined with proprietary code, the resultant combination had to be released under the GPL. In other words, the GNU GPL `converted' the software it was used with to its own licence, an extraordinarily clever approach to propagating freedom."
Anyone who believes that copyleft will ultimately sound the death knell for copyright is somewhat wide of the mark, according to Paul Lambert, who is organising the CAI seminar in Dublin. He says that the copyleft licence must exist in tandem with copyright. "Contrary to claims made by copyleft enthusiasts, copyright does exist in copyleft works and is acknowledged by the existence of, and the terms of, the licence. It is clear, therefore, that copyleft could not work without the existence of copyright," he says.
Lambert goes on to explain that the term "free" has a specific meaning in the context of copyleft. "It refers to the freedom to use the software. There is potential for confusion with `free' in the monetary sense. One of the copyleft websites states that `public domain software is software that is not copyrighted'. This could imply that a positive formal procedure must be undertaken prior to obtaining copyright. This is incorrect. Once there is sufficient skill and intellectual effort involved in the creation and expression of a work, copyright shall vest automatically," he says.
While semantics may cloud the water somewhat, it is clear that behind the Open Source movement, there exists an intention to make software available without restrictions.
Although it is increasingly popular, a number of problems face Linux and other codes based around Open Source. With thousands of people in hundreds of locations working for free on the development of better software, there is a distinct possibility that it will result in a lack of uniformity and a myriad of different software versions of an operating system.
Although Linux's development is somewhat centralised at present, it is uncertain if this can continue indefinitely. Whether or not it does, the continued efforts of programmers to propagate freedom and knowledge is to be applauded.
In the spirit of Open Source, the first three chapters of Rebel Code will be available free from www.penguin.co.uk from January 25th.
The CAI is organising a copyleft conference entitled "Copyleft and Open Source Soft- ware: History, Applications and Legal Issues" from 9 a.m. on February 6th at the University Industrial Centre, UCD. Richard Stallman of the Free Software Association (US) will be speaking, as will Paul Lambert (L.K. Shields Solicitors) and Michael Brady (Anam Wireless Internet Solutions). Details from Heather at 01-6614844 and the CAI website, www.cai.ie