A week or two ago I sat down one weekend and read through the Judge's findings of fact in the Microsoft Monopoly case. They seem to have done the worst possible thing you can do in a case of this magnitude - anger the judge. It seems that the judge has swallowed the arguments of the Justice department hook, line, and sinker, and as a result will deliver a legal remedy that will be quite unfavorable to Microsoft. I suppose all of this will set the precedent for further regulation of the "New Economy", but the implications seem rather uninteresting. The Public Choice theorists have a fairly good model for how these regulatory frameworks emerge, and it seems rather likely that the regulation of the New Economy will have much in common with the past.
One thing that the judge specifically dismissed as a threat to Microsoft's market dominance was Linux and the Open Source software movement. I strenuously disagree with the judge on this point. Open Source software has already begun to erode Microsoft's share of critical markets, and threatens to become an even more potent competitor in the future. Several commentators have written articles arguing that the future of software development is not in designing better applications for desktop computers, instead it in the creation of Infoware - websites like Amazon.com, Ebay, E-Trade, and many of the other IPO darlings. The web servers that house these Infoware websites are the platform upon which the next generation of software applications will be built. With web access being enabled through Sega game consoles, digital cell phones, PDA's, network computers, and a wide variety of other devices, the importance of the desktop computer as the vanguard of computer industry evolution will enviably erode.
Although Microsoft has made valiant attempts to worm its way into these new markets, they have met with only limited success. They seem to be losing on many fronts - the PalmOS is rapidly becoming the standard for PDA's, set-top boxes for internet access are increasingly finding non-Microsoft solutions, and the Microsoft Network has seemingly floundered. Microsoft may have a few tricks up their sleeve (especially with their digital wallet technology), but it seems that even without sanctions by the Justice Department, they have a real fight on their hands to fully exploit these new markets that are forming the new thrust of computer industry development. Microsoft has seemingly hitched its destiny to a standards monopoly on the desktop computer, but the importance of their monopoly is apparently slipping between their fingers as the desktop computer joins a myriad of other devices as a mere portal to get consumers on the web.
The Potential of Open Source Software
Oddly enough, the long-term threat to Microsoft does not come from the Justice Department, or the combined efforts of other competitors. Instead, it comes from the Open Source method of software development (predominantly written for the open source Linux operating system). Already an Open Source software program - Apache - is the most popular web server software on the Internet (with over 50% of the market). Work is steadily progressing on making desktop Linux systems more user-friendly, and within a year or two there should be Linux desktop packages that I could even recommend to my computer illiterate parents. With users placing greater importance on web access than the ability to run applications on the desktop, Linux will be in an even better competitive advantage.
The power of the Open Source computing paradigm cannot be separated from the actual method by which the software is developed. Open Source software projects usually start out with a motivated computer programmer that wants to solve a vexing problem. He can usually build off the source code of a previous open source project, and build a new functionality into the program. Often others get interested in the problem, and begin adding additional solutions to the original program - slowly creating a better program step by step. Good solutions get kept, bad solutions get ignored, but as more and more people tinker with the source code of the program it gets better and better. Nobody gets paid for any of these efforts - the payoff is in the form of a sense of personal satisfaction and recognition from peers for quality work.
It's a simple mechanism, but when the voluntary efforts of hundreds of skilled programmers are brought to bear, the result can be the extremely rapid development of a top-notch program. (Eric Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar is one of the best explanations for how the Open Source development process works). With such a chaotic development process, there is a continual threat that different factions working on the project will cause a "fork" into two different (and incompatible) directions. In order to mitigate the harmful effects of counterproductive forking, the Open Source software community has embraced a variety of licensing schemes. One of more interesting (and popular) is the GPL (General Public License). Open Source software created using source code from a GPL program has to be released under the GPL, and have the source code available at cost upon demand. This basically means that companies cannot make proprietary modifications to GPL'd Open Source programs - all modifications have to remain open source.
The practical effect of this is to make any good modification of a GPL program available to the wider software community. All innovations created under one of these GPL license schemes are made publicly available for further development and are not locked behind proprietary connections. Obviously nobody is going to get rich just selling Open Source software - especially not when by its very nature it must be made available at cost. But companies have managed to do business in the open source development environment. Companies doing business in the Open Source environment can sell value-added repackaging of components, consulting services, or customization services. It's the old economic model of "give away the razor and sell the blade." Linux companies like Red Hat, Caldera, VA Linux have embraced Open Source programs, and manage to make a tidy profit providing customized packages and additional consulting and support services.
Reasons for Popularity
Despite the continuing popularity of proprietary software, open source software will become increasingly popular for several reasons.
1) It's dirt cheap
2) It can be distributed freely
3) It places very powerful software development tools (programming languages, compilers) into the hands of the interested users.
4) These tools can cost thousands of dollars when obtained from proprietary sources, but when open sourced they can be obtained for pennies.
5) It's more robust than conventional software designs.
Open Source as a social process
Since the open source method relies on improvements submitted by a multitude of designers, bugs and other errors can be rapidly fixed and identified. The "parallel processing" methodology works well, and works quickly. There are two groups of users that will really drive the long-term adoption of open source software: programmers from underdeveloped countries, and students of computer programming in the schools. Programmers in developing countries can gain access to powerful software tools without paying for them, or worrying about pirating commercial software.
In Western computer science programs (particularly in high schools) teachers with slim budgets can put powerful tools in the hands of their students, without having to incur the expenses of proprietary software solutions. With cutting edge open source programming tools available for free, soon (if not already) most young programmers will do much of their learning on open source software, and this experience will push them toward implementing open source solutions when they grow up to become full fledged programmers and system administrators.
The Open Source software movement is proof positive that voluntary and nonproprietary methods of coordinating complex tasks is feasible. Years ago, critics of Open Source software scoffed that it would never be possible to develop complicated applications without a master plan - but now there are open source office suites, Photoshop clones, and other fully developed packages. Even more recently critics doubted an entire open source operating system could be developed , but now there is Linux. At this point the burden of proof has shifted where the open source people should get the benefit of the doubt and treat the critics with a healthy dose of skepticism.
While all this chatter about software development methods might seem like small potatoes, I think the Open Source vs. Closed Source dichotomy may become a new rhetorical framework for debate on a wide variety of issues. There are already many social processes that take place within the frame of this dichotomy - even though the issues are not debated in this way (yet). The academic process is one good example of this. Academic scholarship is basically conducted using an open source methodology. There is source code (the body of past scholarship) that is made freely available (at the library in published journals), to which a group of users (degreed academics) make improvements and innovations (new and revisionary research) which are accepted or rejected by their peers (through public praise/criticism in journals) and eventually get integrated into the next generation of source code (textbook publishing or key citations). And of course, it's all done for free (scholars don't earn their living from the fees generated by publishing). Universities are giving away the razor (scholarly research) in order to sell the blade (instruction to the next generation of scholars). The academic process works because of this open source methodology, but now that academia is becoming increasingly commercialized, this framework could come in handy for dealing with these issues.
But wait, there's more! Several other emerging issues may well come to be argued within the context of this framework:
Genetically modified food
Monsanto's recent attempt to introduce the Terminator gene into its GM crops can also be understood as an effort to take an Open Source technology of hybrid seeds and turn them into a Closed Source method of generating proprietary profit. Putting the fears about GM food and Monsanto's potential monopoly over food production aside, one thrust of the argument could revolve around over who should guide innovation for crops - individual farmers, or big companies. If all high-yield seeds come from Monsanto, then the pace of innovation in designing and identifying new crop varieties becomes the sole responsibility of Monsanto. Under the traditional "open source" model for agriculture, farmers could experiment with new varieties and have their innovations accepted into the mainstream of agriculture (like the Mackintosh apple - it's descended from one limb of a mutant apple tree). Of course, if Monsanto decided to Open Source the Terminator gene technology itself, it could develop quite a business by assisting farmers experimenting with their own high-yield GM crops. And under an agricultural version of the GPL, the benefits of these modifications could be distributed to all.
The Human Genome
Human and animal DNA is another type of source code that will become increasingly controversial. While for the most part, the decoded Human Genome will be for the most part Open Source - the devil is in the details, and there may well be ways for companies to take portions of the code Closed Source. Already Celera has announced that it intends to privately develop a "rough draft" of the human genome by 2001 - 4 to 5 years before the Human Genome project will reach completion. While their proprietary human genome data may give them a temporary advantage, it remains to be seen whether or not it will persist past the complete sequencing of the Human Genome. However, they are also patenting short DNA segments (EST's and SNP's) with which they intend to develop customized medicines and other projects. Whether or not these types of basic genetic tags are considered Open Source or Closed Source will have big impact on how rapidly the new genetic technologies are put into widespread use.
Copyright and Patent issues
These two social technologies for the protection of intellectual property can be viewed historically as an attempt for society to gain the benefits of open source distribution of intellectual works (fair use, libraries, radio stations) while preserving some of the benefits of a Closed Source approach for the authors (reprint royalties, ASCAP fees). Before, the costs involved with physical duplication was a constant disincentive for widespread piracy. But now that much intellectual property is conveyed digitally, the costs of duplication have dropped to practically zero. Many of the Wired digerati advocate a more Open Source approach with their mantra "Information wants to be free," while the corporations lobby for stronger intellectual property laws. Already there are clear examples that society has accrued benefits from the recent Open Sourcing of intellectual property. Rap and Hip-Hop have emerged as musical art forms fundamentally based on resampling other copyrighted works. Several web pages copy entire articles online without paying attention to copyright issues, but the users of the site gain a real benefit by having a single source for relevant information. (This issue is currently being hashed out in the courts in a lawsuit between the Washington Post and the Free Republic website). The digerati have already extended much Open Source thinking into the intellectual property arena, so many of the arguments are quite familiar already.
We'll see if the Open Source vs. Closed Source debate gets of out the geek ghetto, but until that happens I think the notion is a pretty handy hook on which to hang some seemingly unrelated issues.
Written by Mark Justman Copyright 1999 Posted 11/21/99 http://go.to/futureplex
