China DOS Union

Linux and Free Software Challenge Microsoft's Papal Status


Author: Thomas


Translated by: lily

In 1517, Martin Luther set off the Protestant Reformation, asserting that no secular power had the right to intervene between the individual and God. Likewise, 500 years later, Linus Torvalds insists that no one should come between us and the CPU. A digital reformation is inevitable.

In Luther's time, the Roman Catholic Church had nearly monopolized the faith, culture, and spiritual life of the people of Europe. But the source of spirituality came from the Bible, which lay beyond the educational level of ordinary people. In the sixteenth century, the Bible was written in Latin, and only clergy and a small number of upper-class people understood that language. It was rarely translated into common speech.

Without question, this situation was very favorable to the Church. Rome had successfully turned God's commands into a powerful economic force. The power of the Church gradually swelled. It even went further and became a center of benefit for the Roman Curia: if one could satisfy the tastes of the Roman Curia, the punishments of purgatory could actually be replaced by purchasing "indulgences."

No one likes being exploited

Whenever a power-abusing elite monopolizes some necessity of life and demands an outrageous price for it, people will eventually weigh for themselves whether the price/performance ratio is reasonable. Whether it is salvation or operating system source code, when things go too far, people will find another way to solve the problem.

Martin Luther was an ordinary Catholic priest far from Rome. He eventually challenged the authority of the whole church doctrine and papal system, but his reform began simply by questioning the church's practice of replacing salvation with indulgences. Such egalitarian and anti-authoritarian habits of thought finally led him to more general claims, for example: that individual conscience was above papal authority; that Christians in different places should have freedom of belief; and that the Bible should be translated into languages ordinary people could understand, so they could speak directly with God.

More importantly, Luther wanted to return the power of the Church to the broad masses of people who ought to have it. He stripped away the special status of the clergy, declaring that a priest was "an ordinary clergyman, unable to perform any special duty." In his theory, the preacher's special power to administer the sacraments was also removed. He believed that "both wine and bread should be given to the people."

Linus Torvalds is similar in this respect; he is a reformer of the information age. Like Luther, his journey began in an age when the clergy had become the modern computer scientists, and he too was at the University of Helsinki, far from the spheres of power of Redmond (where Microsoft is headquartered) and Silicon Valley. Like Luther, he had a sacred and eccentric idea: to remove all the bureaucratic middlemen and establish a direct connection between ordinary people and a higher power—their computers.

In order to eliminate the distinction between programmers and users, he encouraged ordinary people to participate in developing their own computing environment. Just as Luther wanted to transform the whole sacramental ritual—wine, bread, and translated scripture—so that ordinary people could use it, Linus hoped to remove the privilege developers had in accessing the operating system, insisting that the entire operating system source code should be made freely available to every ordinary person on the platform.

Just as in 1521, this basic idea changed the world with the advent of Linux—Torvalds's free UNIX-like operating system developed for Intel computers—which, compared with other systems, is regarded as the greatest threat to the existing powers of the digital world. It is neat and elegant, and free; compared with Microsoft NT, its networking is considered better and it is less prone to crashes. The source code and development environment are all included. If you wish or need to, you can freely trim it, add to it, subtract from it, or extend it as you please. Why? Because Torvalds wants to give the power to you. Because Torvalds's God, like Luther's, wants to know you so well that you can call him by name.

Pope Microsoft doesn't find this amusing at all.

"Fanatical Linux believers" subvert the old rules

Bill Gates has tightly grasped the most important text in the lives of nearly every computer user on earth—the operating system—and this has already brought him enormous wealth. Like any ruler in the territory of the Roman Church, he likes things the way he wants them. He likes to keep the rules of the game unchanged—rules made by him, and ensured to keep being written by him. The only thing that can threaten his kingdom is someone coming forward to question and change those rules—in short, to propose reform.

Pope Gates I has always dominated the game of "I make the operating system, you give me money." Until now, this has been the only game in the castle. But how should he respond to people like Torvalds who say, "Here is a good operating system, along with the source code—let's have a bright tomorrow"? No more commercial motive, no more iron-fisted control over source code, no more divide between programmer and user. In the new game, you are God.

Luther's reform not only won approval and gratitude across Europe, it also gained the support of the Saxon upper class, who had grown very tired of the church's harsh taxes and arrogant church bureaucrats. Like their Saxon ancestors, the princes of the twentieth-century digital world—the technology leaders of the Fortune 500 companies—have also grown somewhat weary of paying tribute to Redmond and preserving the gloom of Microsoft's technologism. They will do their utmost to seek credible alternatives. Just as Luther once was, Torvalds is the darling of anyone who hates the Pope of Rome—and at that time many people hated the Pope of Rome. Linux is already running on many machines, and support for it continues to grow daily.

Historical records show the truly fanatical tidal wave that arose during Luther's reform. In fact, Luther's later years were spent devoting a great deal of energy to calming the growing fanaticism of his followers, almost as much as he spent defending his ideas against slander from the Roman Church. Torvalds's followers show the traits of loyal adherents. They distrust authority, but the memory of oppression is also vivid in their minds, so they display a slight ideological zeal as well. This unrestrained zeal led Luther's faithful followers to plan more radical expansions of their reform, such as the "terrible massacres." We can only hope that Linux believers will have a sound and restrained plan of action.

I was fortunate enough to attend a recent meeting of a Linux user group in Silicon Valley called "SVLUG." This group meets on the first Wednesday of every month, and Cisco voluntarily hosts the gathering. That seemed sufficient enough—until I realized that Cisco's headquarters were the size of a medium-sized town. Although Cisco is laid out like a maze, it was not very hard for me to find SVLUG. After wandering through the parking area for about two minutes, I saw a young man wearing a T-shirt that said "Crazy LINUX Believer." I thought, what perfect timing, and followed him into a huge Cisco conference hall. I found a sense of familiarity from long ago. Three to four hundred smart, unworldly young people shared the same faith, almost as fanatically as their predecessors had been about the first home computers in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I had seen a fanatic group of this scale twenty years ago. In some ways it seemed to restore the susceptibility of childhood, and interestingly, it reminded me why I first came to love computers. My mind went blank for at least a few minutes. The atmosphere was colored as if it were underground work—mockery of subversives, secret signals, and revolutionary vocabulary. Anti-Mocrosoft rhetoric was not merely an attitude but already out in the open, as if a heavy burden had been placed on the shoulders of every member of the organization.

I wondered whether Linux gatherings all over the world were this fanatical and energetic. I imagined that as one got farther from Silicon Valley, it would be hard to find such zeal and such organization, and that this could only exist in the greatest region of digital wealth on earth.

Yet reality does not seem to be like that. For example, the Linux user group in Denmark is actually even larger than SVLUG. Like Luther's reform, Torvalds's reform seems to be spreading even faster—perhaps because people there can gain more benefit from a redistribution of power.

Of course, Luther's Pope of Rome—or the ideas he left behind—still exists. But he certainly can no longer attack heresy as madly as he once did. If the present reform follows the same pattern, then Linus's Pope will also have to take a serious look at his power.



Excerpted from：http://www.oso.com.cn

Linux: The Road to Free Software
Why Pay Attention to Linux
　　The emergence of the Linux system is a blessing for users. No matter how you look at it, it has at least created a new choice for them on top of what already exists. In other words, once the Linux system fails to meet your needs, you can simply walk away from it. It is only an option, not something mandatory.
The Linux system seemed to appear out of nowhere, taking 17% of the server market and rapidly growing at a rate of 212%. And this was achieved without large-scale involvement by vendors. IDC predicts that in the next four years, Linux will grow much faster than all other bundled operating systems, including Windows. Such rapid growth is very likely to push Linux to the front ranks of the operating system market before long.
New technology often carries substantial risk. Using it before it becomes absolutely mainstream may either drive a company's full-speed growth or restrict its development. That depends entirely on how it performs in the market, and how it is used within the company. For Linux, risk and opportunity coexist. Analyze Linux carefully, understand its strengths and weaknesses, its future direction, and evaluate how to use it effectively so that it can produce benefits.
From a purely technical point of view, Linux is only a variant of the Unix system. What makes it different lies in certain things beyond technology. To really understand why it has become so popular, one should take a close look at its history.

The GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation
The GNU Project was launched in 1984 by Richard Stallman, a researcher at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, as a way to resist the then-rising practice of keeping source code secret and forcibly imposing software license systems. He believed that source code secrecy was an obstacle that prevented programmers from freely modifying and improving software. Not only that, he also believed that using licenses to restrict software copying went against his principles of friendliness and information sharing. So he began rewriting several widely used programs of the time, and in the end provided them to others free of charge and without conditions, for use, modification, and redistribution. His goal was to recreate a complete operating environment: to make the tools and applications computer users needed free and without any restrictions.
He chose the UNIX system as a model, because technically it was better than the other operating systems of that time. However, because he opposed AT&T's practice of releasing Unix under licenses with restrictive clauses, he gave his plan a recursive acronym as its name—GNU, meaning "GNU's Not Unix."
Richard Stallman was an extremely capable "hacker." He single-handedly wrote free versions of many popular Unix applications. Among his greatest contributions were the GNU C compiler gcc and the macro-command text editor emacs.
　　Many people think free software (freeware), public domain software, and share software are the same thing, but in fact they are not. Shareware belongs to commercial software. Like other commercial software, shareware authors also hope to be paid, but they are willing to use free distribution to expand their reputation. Users who pay for the software can receive upgrades and de-bug services. The source code of shareware is typically not public. Rather than being a form of freedom, it is more of a business method. Public domain software, though free, is not protected by copyright. That means anyone who modifies it has the right to obtain copyright on the modified version and may prevent it from continuing to circulate. GPL software, on the other hand, is copyrighted by the original author and released to the public under very lenient terms of use. This guarantees that the software will always be available free of charge, so GPL may also be understood as Guaranteed Public for Life. Of course there are other kinds of free licenses, such as the famous BSD license. People call it "copy-neutral," because it places no restrictions at all on copying and redistribution, not even the GPL requirement that modifications be made public.
To people accustomed to commercial practices such as copyright, patents, and confidentiality agreements, the concept of free software seems very strange. Yet every year more and more high-quality software products are released under the GPL and used by a growing number of computer users, already posing no small threat to famous commercial software vendors.
Approaching Linux Torvalds
In 1991, a Finnish computer science student named Linux Torvalds wrote the first Unix-like kernel program for his own use. He published the source code on the Internet, hoping that other programmers would help him complete the whole operating system. The flood of feedback from all sides caused this little kernel program written by a student to grow rapidly into a very powerful operating system kernel. At that point, Torvalds discovered with surprise and delight that what he needed had in fact already existed: software in the form of GNU software and other free software. He recombined them and named the whole operating system after himself—Linux, meaning Linux's Unix (LINUS' Unix).
Now the entire Linux system, whether kernel or applications, has its source code open to the public, and anyone can freely use, modify, and redistribute it. Thousands upon thousands of qualified programmers from all over the world have accepted the GPL's invitation, making modifications and improvements in whatever way they consider appropriate.
We have long heard of Linux's various advantages. Now we should examine them carefully with the aim of separating truth from falsehood.

The Zero Price Tag
Linux usually attracts users with a price tag of free. But in fact, no business will install software without a technical support agreement. If those famous software vendors and sellers with outlets all over the streets were willing to provide support for Linux, many businesses would adopt Linux because technical support would be available from a third party. So Linux cannot be completely zero-cost.
Even so, in terms of licensing cost—especially in multi-user and multi-computer situations—businesses will be pleasantly surprised to find that Linux's cost advantage in this respect is obvious.
For example, according to Computer Trends magazine, the installation cost of a full Windows NT server setup, including Web server, E-mail, development tools, and database, is $4500 or $4636; while installing a comparable Linux system requires only one Red Hat CD containing all the software, at a cost of only $50 (the hardware cost is the same). In addition, Windows license fees are multiplied based on the number of installed machines, while Linux can be installed on an unlimited number of machines for free, with the only expense being the one-time purchase of the CD.
Now look at the cost of technical support. Recently, Hewlett-Packard announced that it would provide Linux with global telephone and E-mail technical support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, at a rate of $130 per server per month or $1560 per server per year. This third-party technical support cost is fairly reasonable. Seen this way, Linux's cost advantage is an impartial conclusion. Even assuming Windows NT technical support costs nothing, the purchase price per server is still about $2500. So the result of any discussion about Linux's cost advantage is already self-evident. Microsoft and its partners provide users with a variety of technical support choices at different prices, so if NT support costs are also counted, Linux's cost advantage becomes even more prominent.
Another hidden cost advantage of Linux is that it uses very little memory and disk space, so it can run on old machines. In other words, it saves the expense of hardware upgrades. Every new version of Windows, by contrast, requires hardware upgrades. High-speed chips keep appearing one after another, but because software has grown so bloated and takes up so much space, the speed advantage is relatively weakened. Hence the popular saying: "One generation plants the trees, the next enjoys the shade"—the former refers to Intel's former chairman Andy Grove, the latter to Microsoft's Bill Gates. Linux performs extremely well on new hardware, but at the same time can also run well on old machines.
Bloated software is another hidden cost of the traditional Windows platform. Linux's GNU C/C++ optimizing compiler takes up only 10MB of disk space, and all the related editing, compiling, project management tools and so on together take up less than 2MB more. Microsoft's Visual C++ 6.0 Professional Edition, on the other hand, requires 290MB of disk space. Even though Visual C++ is only a virtual tool with an integrated editor and compiler, the gap in space usage is still this huge.
In the past, people said: "Linux is free only if you're willing to spend the time." This vividly described how difficult it was for beginners to locate and edit configuration files, which was the only way to manage a Linux system. But newly designed administration and configuration tools, such as Red Hat's "Linuxconf" and Caldera's Lizard (Linux wizard), have centralized and visualized system administration, greatly reducing the need to edit configuration files by hand. Improvements in these tools have lowered the difficulty of Linux system administration to a reasonable level.
Last year, the Mexican government ambitiously planned to equip 140,000 schools with computer facilities, but discovered that even with volume discounts, Microsoft's Windows license fees were still too expensive. So it decided to switch to Linux, a move estimated to save $124 million. When the number of installations is very large, Linux's cost advantage is extremely obvious.
When Digital Domain was designing visual effects for the film Titanic, it needed a large number of servers for data processing work. In the end, the company chose 105 servers running Linux on Compaq/Alpha chips. Although the exact amount saved was not disclosed, according to information on Digital Domain's Web site, the main reason for choosing Linux was still cost. (Of course, the system's performance was also excellent; otherwise a low price alone would have been meaningless.)
Users' needs vary greatly, but it is best to do a rough cost calculation before making a decision.



Excerpted from：http://www.sit.net.cn

What Is "Open Source Software"?
Blue Forest http://www.lslnet.com 2000年11月20日 20:30


What is "open source software"?
Why use this term?
Open-Source software:

What is it? Why use it? What has Netscape brought into it?

Author：www.opensource.org

Translated by: lily

What is open-source software?

Open-source software is a new term, defined to describe software whose source code may be used by the public, and whose use, modification, and distribution are not restricted by licensing terms. Open-source software is usually copyrighted, and its license may contain certain restrictions: deliberate protection of its open-source status, notice of authorship, or
control of development. "Open Source" is being registered by the Open Source Initiative as a certification mark, which is also one way of creating a formal definition of open source.

Open-source software is mainly developed by programmers scattered all over the world, though universities, government contractors, associations, and commercial companies also develop it. Historically, open-source software has been closely associated with UNIX and the Internet. In those systems, support is needed for many different kinds of hardware, and source distribution is the only practical way to achieve cross-platform portability. On DOS, Windows, and Macintosh platforms, where only a small number of users have compilers available, open-source software is less common. For a more detailed discussion of the open-source development model, see Eric Raymond's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar."

Why does open-source software matter to the software market?


Traditional commercial software has huge advertising and trademark budgets, and that has won it far more attention than its importance actually warrants. Traditional commercial software is in fact only a small part of all software. Lion is developed by various organizations, and for their own internal needs. Internally developed source code, especially important source code whose sharing is mandated by the U.S. government, is distributed under source licenses. This is actually because the overwhelming majority of software experts do not write commercial software.


It is difficult to quantify the overall impact and average benefits of open-source software, but it is clear that both have been widely spread among the public and their value underestimated. Today, much open-source software is supported by commercial development. At the same time, the success of the open-source business model and the high productivity and quality of open-source development convinced Netscape in early 1998 to decide to place its browser development under an open-source license.


There is now tremendous momentum driving the open-source movement. It is interesting to see so many traditional commercial developers having to seek ways to develop in step with it. The computer industry has already seen several exciting waves of development and innovation, such as the first microcomputers in the 1970s, the mass production of personal microcomputers from the mid-1980s to the present, and the rise of the Internet during the same period. Commercial software using the open-source model may
be the next important trend.


How is open-source software different from free software?


Historically many people developed a kind of software (that is, the basis of free software) known simply as "free software," while the media generally called it "freeware." Unfortunately, both terms have proved to be unclear and ambiguous.


For most people, "free" refers only to purchase price. More important than that initial cost are the savings that come from the lack of licensing restrictions. Here are several kinds of software that may possibly be free of charge, but are clearly not open-source software, because they have certain restrictions or lack publicly available source code:

Shareware: Usually developed by individuals, generally unsupported and without publicly available source code; it hopes to receive financial support from users.
Demos/"Crippleware": Free or low-cost trial software, part of commercial software; it has no freely available source code, no support, and usually lacks key features.
Bundled Software: It comes bundled with commercial software and adds no extra cost, but it generally carries very limited usage rights and has no freely available source code. For example: Microsoft Internet Explore.
"Consortium-Ware": Source code is shared within a company or organization, but there is no freely available source code for the public. For example: Motif.
"Non-commercial use only": This is the typical software that can be downloaded free from the Internet, sometimes even with source code, but at the same time it has strict license restrictions on its use. For example: Netscape's browser before 1998

Some types of open-source licenses

BSD (Berkeley Source Distribution) license: requires copyright and authorship notices
GPL: General Public License ("CopyLeft", which forbids restrictions on derived or distributed products.
LGPL: Library General Public License. Unlike the GPL, under this license libraries (function libraries) can be freely linked to private software.
Artistic License: allows the author to retain control over further development.
NPL (Netscape Public Lincense): a new license based on the spirit of the GPL, but retaining more control and ownership over the source code (see the section "What Netscape is doing" below)
Public Domain/Not Copyrighted/No Restrictions: usually used for decisive algorithms to encourage broad use, and commonly used by the U.S. government.

Some examples of open-source software


There are now hundreds of mature open-source products in wide use. Here are some of the best-known:

BSD UNIX: Software developed by the University of California at Berkeley under the "BSD" license. Many commercial UNIX versions are directly based on BSD source code or borrow heavily from its design.
Linux: It grew from a Finnish college student's research project into the most popular non-Microsoft operating system of the last six years. At first it was only designed for PCs, but now it supports Palm Pilots, supercomputers with large 64-bit Digital Alpha chips, and nearly everything in between. Compared with traditional operating systems, it is more efficient, more reliable, and more advanced. It includes compilers, libraries, and various tools from the FreeSoftware Foundation, along with thousands of open-source products. The Linux platform is the foundation of a small but rapidly growing commercial industry, and also a hotbed of software innovation. It is developed under the GPL by commercial companies and free programmers scattered all over the world.
Perl language: the "conveyor belt of the Internet," the basis of dynamic content on most web servers, and widely used for script programming and automated document processing. It is developed by the Perl Institute under the Artistic license.
GCC: The GNU C compiler is the preferred C/C++ compiler on many Unix platforms, and can also run on other platforms; because it supports almost every processor, it is also widely popular as a cross-platform tool; it is maintained and developed by the FSF under the GPL.
X Window System: the most widely used non-Microsoft window system, with advanced cross-platform remote execution features, excellent performance, and high flexibility; developed by MIT and the X Consortium under a BSD-like license; other enhancements are developed by The XFree86 Project.
Internet backbone:
BIND: Berkeley Internet Name Daemon; used by almost all Internet domain name servers, acting like a globally distributed database; maintained by ISC (Internet Software Consortium).
BSD SendMail: the highest standard in mail transport agents. No commercial competitor can match it; absolutely secure and robust; responsible for more than 75% of the mail transfer work on the Internet, including giant sites such as AOL—millions of messages a day. Maintained by SendMail under the BSD license.
INN: InterNet news server, handling the overwhelming majority of Usenet news on the Internet as well as many enterprise networks. Maintained by ISC (BSD) (BSD license).
Apache: the engine behind more than half of all web servers (far more than Microsoft and Netscape combined), already used by over a million web servers in 1998. Developed by the Apache organization (maintained under a BSD-like license).
WU-FTPD: the most popular FTP server on the Internet, used by nearly all FTP sites. Originally developed by Bryan O'Connor at Washington University on Louis Street, it is now maintained by Academ Consulting Services and many volunteers (BSD license).

Advantages of using open source

Reduced risk: Having the source code allows customers to control the tools their business depends on. When the developer of an open-source product raises prices, adds unacceptable restrictions, or uses methods that dissatisfy customers, another organization can take that source code and begin developing a new product to solve the original organization's problems. Customers can also maintain it themselves or have someone else improve it to meet their own requirements. Customers control the software—something unheard of under the traditional proprietary software model. Even wealthy customers may reduce the risk of severe financial crisis or acquisition caused by internal problems at traditional software vendors.
Quality: Some studies have shown that open-source software has major reliability advantages over comparable commercial software. A more effective development model, more independent peer review of both code and design, and the great pride most authors take in their own work all contribute to its excellent quality. Some companies even give material rewards to people who find bugs.
Transparency: Proprietary software has many "dark corners" hiding many bugs. Source code is important for debugging and for understanding how a product works. In large software companies, only a very small number of people can access the source code, and the users usually cannot directly contact those who do. Access to source code is also extremely important for fixing security holes.
The right features: Some open-source products—including some of those listed above—are so successful that their commercial competitors cannot survive.
Tailoring: Open source gives users great freedom, allowing them to customize software according to their own business needs. Large organizations can cut a great deal of expense and labor cost even from small acts of customization. User bug-finding and improvements in turn also contribute to standard open-source software packages. This is impossible in traditional proprietary software development.
Favorable licensing and prices: Being defined as open source gives software greater flexibility in copyright licensing than proprietary software. This can greatly reduce the cost and time involved in larger installations, and is even more beneficial for institutions whose procurement procedures are time-consuming and laborious. It can also give users greater freedom in installing software.

When not to use open-source software

The wrong features: If an open-source product does not meet an organization's needs very well, while another proprietary product does, and the cost of obtaining a proprietary product with the required features is lower than the cost of redeveloping and modifying an open-source product, then it is better not to use open-source software. But see "Tailoring" above.
Support: Some open-source software traditionally lacks paid support and telephone support. In fact, however, this is nowhere near as serious as a product with neither source code nor support. See the section on support and open source software.
The wrong platform: Most open-source software mainly supports UNIX and Linux, and sometimes Windows NT. Other platforms, such as mainframes, present a huge challenge for porting open-source software. Porting software from UNIX to Windows NT costs a great deal. However. the advantages of open source can often make platform migration seem more worthwhile.
Lack of technical staff: Installing open-source software sometimes requires more technical experience, for example, the ability to configure or compile source code. The advantages of having source code are reduced in companies without software development experts. Open-source customization also requires configuration management experience. In any case, any organization with the above technical capabilities will fully enjoy the benefits of open source.
Inertia: If all existing systems are already well supported and functioning properly, there is no need to change them. However, it is important to review that decision from time to time, because new technology often makes them obsolete.

Questionable reasons for avoiding open-source software


These arguments are often used as excuses for avoiding open-source software, but they usually do not stand up to scrutiny.

---Fear of the unknown.
　　As you saw in the section "Examples of open-source software" above, many organizations already rely heavily on open-source software, whether or not their decision makers realize it. This problem is becoming easier to solve thanks to increased publicity by open-source developers, the growth of the market, and the appearance of more supporters.


---We have already made a huge investment in buying commercial software packages.
　　This is merely a form of the "sunk cost fallacy." Software licenses, like rent paid for office buildings, are expenses, not investments. If another product can meet your organization's needs better and at lower cost, then money previously spent on inferior software should not affect the
decision. Remember, you may face serious political opposition from conservatives who chose to support expensive, inferior products and do not want to admit their mistakes. At the same time, considering that they may be expanded again, investments in staff training and related infrastructure are entirely reasonable.

---If something goes wrong, we need someone to be held responsible.
　　Although in theory this sounds reasonable, if we use reliable software products from the start, that is far better than suing software vendors after suffering financial losses. Nearly all major software companies use end-user license agreements to avoid possible liability arising from problems with their software. Companies like Microsoft and IBM have huge first-rate legal staffs, making customer lawsuits almost impossible to succeed. In the future the law may increasingly tilt toward software vendors.

open-source and software technical support

Commercial support and contracts are almost always the greatest concern for companies using open-source software. Paid support is a legitimate issue, but for open-source products it is usually available, and its importance is generally greatly overestimated.

---Many major open-source products have technical support contracts available.

For example, Red Hat and Caldera offer telephone support for the linux they sell.　 Cygnus, Collective Technologies, and many small consulting companies do quite well in business by supporting and enhancing open-source software. More and more open-source software is also receiving substantial commercial maintenance and support while still preserving its open-source status.

---E-mail and Usenet news support are very effective.

Nearly all organizations developing open-source software provide free E-mail support, mailing lists, and Usenet newsgroups. These mechanisms are more practical and effective than telephone support. In one survey supported by many software vendors, the "Linux Users Association" won the "Best Technical Support Award" in 1997, while also exposing a large number of complaints about the service quality of traditional software developers.

---Support for traditional commercial software is often limited and low-quality.

For example, Microsoft provides only one technical support phone number for all its products: 900. Many commercial support staff focus on helping beginners get started, and cannot answer questions not covered in the manual. Many software companies consider traditional telephone support too expensive, and therefore cut it back, which leads to declining quality.

What Netscape is doing


A famous computer industry magazine reported that Netscape was "inspired by a large amount of free and shareware licensing." In fact, Netscape is now communicating with many famous UNIX free software developers, and at present seems to be very close to the BSD and GPL licenses. The Nescape Public License differs from the GPL in that it gives Nescape more control over source code development and trademarks.

Netscape's弃子 tactic is very clever. First, browser sales now account for only a small part of Netscape's business. The open-source status of the browser will not affect it too much, and some buyers who want official technical support will still be willing to pay. Second, by genuinely releasing it under a certain open-source license, it completely changes the passive situation created by Microsoft's free distribution of Explorer. This will help increase Nescape browser's market share. Finally, Netscape's position gains friendship, trust, and potentially tremendous innovation from the open-source community. Netscape's future is still not reassuring, especially on NT Web servers; but the brave, dramatic licensing policy it adopted for Communicator will not bring any loss.




Excerpted from：http://www.opensource.org