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A Decade of OSS, 10 Years After the Summit

Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon Apr 07, 2008 11:00 AM
from the has-it-been-that-long dept.
Programming IT Technology
Jacob's ladder writes "Ten years ago this week, the Free Software Summit arguably marked the beginning of today's OSS movement. Ars Technica interviews many of those in attendance when the revolution began. John Ousterhout, creator of the Tcl scripting language and Tk toolkit and founder of Electric Cloud was there, and notes how much the landscape has changed. 'When I made my first open-source release in the early 1980s (VLSI chip design tools from Berkeley), there were probably less than five open-source projects in the world. By the time of the first O'Reilly conference, there were dozens; now there are probably thousands. Also, open-source software has received substantial mainstream acceptance. 10 years ago, people were suspicious or afraid of it; now it is widely embraced.'"
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  • Huge success (Score:5, Insightful)

    by moderatorrater (1095745) on Monday April 07 2008, @11:03AM (#22989718)
    Even without the acceptance of Linux on the desktop, there's no doubt that open source has been a ridiculously huge success since then. Equal acceptance (at least) as a server OS, it runs the majority of web servers and web scripting languages. Overall, a very successful life so far. I'm excited to see where it ends up ten years from now.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by jgarra23 (1109651)

        What acceptance, where?

        Let us see...

        In industry?
        Lots (I'm not going to bother to list, we all know where to look) of companies use OSS technologies for routing, traffic shaping, VPN, etc...

        In commerce?
        I've seen countless websites run on Apache which I've bought products from, you?

        In the media?
        In the home?
        Tivo uses Linux, plenty of games use Vorbis...

        I'm sure plenty of people could come up with better examples than I have. Maybe you're looking for huge sweeping changes at once but generally these changes are

        • Re:Huge success (Score:5, Informative)

          by gnick (1211984) on Monday April 07 2008, @11:52AM (#22990392) Homepage
          To be fair, GPP was referring to Linux on the desktop. With the exception of gaming, the examples you game were not desktop apps - And most gamers use Windows.

          I'm a huge Linux fan but, despite the progress it's making, the truth is that it has not yet gained widespread acceptance as a desktop OS.

          Of course, it does appear that GPP misunderstood moderatorrater's post as implying that Linux had desktop acceptance when in fact, he'd admitted just the opposite...

          • To be fair, GPP was referring to Linux on the desktop. With the exception of gaming, the examples you game were not desktop apps - And most gamers use Windows.

            Fair enough :) Though I doubt we'll foresee much headway into the gaming market anytime soon what with the prohibitive entry price points on graphics cards these days, only rich kids can afford to play computer games (let alone console games!) unless the market moves towards the Apple crowd (doubtful, they are too busy being cool) we probably won't se

          • Re:Huge success (Score:4, Interesting)

            by PitaBred (632671) <slashdot.pitabred@dyndns@org> on Monday April 07 2008, @12:59PM (#22991438) Homepage
            True. But to provide a completely anecdotal data point, we now have 3 Linux laptops running in my company of 35 people, as compared to one a year ago (and that was on the lead developer's box. Java app). We're a software company, but it's more than there have been in the past. Linux is rapidly approaching desktop usability for most people, and is past it for someone with Linux knowledge.

          • Re:Huge success (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Orange Crush (934731) on Monday April 07 2008, @01:33PM (#22991832)
            Still, saying Linux (and FOSS in general) isn't a huge success because it hasn't taken over the desktop is kindof like saying ants are an ineffective species because few people keep them as pets.

            • Re:Huge success (Score:4, Funny)

              by gnick (1211984) on Monday April 07 2008, @01:41PM (#22991900) Homepage

              ...ants are an ineffective species because few people keep them as pets.
              This is slashdot. We use car analogies around here. Saying Linux (and FOSS in general) isn't a huge success because it hasn't taken over the desktop is kind of like saying tractor-trailers are an ineffective vehicle because few people keep them in their garages.

      • you're dumb (Score:5, Interesting)

        by moderatorrater (1095745) on Monday April 07 2008, @11:46AM (#22990300)

        Ok, I'm a heretic
        And a jackass. I said that linux hasn't been accepted on the desktop. Firefox is the only app that has had much success with the average user, and it's not very high.

        I don't think spin and wishful thinking furthers anyones aims
        I was referencing its success in the server/web/language market, where it's the leader. Apache's the #1 server on the web, php is the #1 language on the web, with ruby and perl also in the rankings. If you work on the web, you can't get away from open source.

        I may be trolling or flaming you, but that doesn't change the fact that you're dead wrong and missed the meat of my post.

      • Re:Huge success (Score:5, Informative)

        by junglee_iitk (651040) on Monday April 07 2008, @11:47AM (#22990316)
        Well, all the computers in my institute run on Linux.

        Almost all of the supercomputers run Linux or BSD.[1] [top500.org]

        As John Ousterhout said: "The second problem I have seen (really more of a limitation) is that open-source software hasn't broken out of the "tools and systems" arena."
        So while I can give you that, it makes me think about Apache, Firefox, MySQL etc.

        So, yeah, "open source has been a ridiculously huge success".

      • Re:Huge success (Score:5, Informative)

        by bzipitidoo (647217) <bzipitidoo@bigfoot.com> on Monday April 07 2008, @01:18PM (#22991642) Journal

        No, I don't think the picture is like you paint it.

        I don't work for free. I prefer to write code that is released under the GPL, but not for free. Someone pays me to write such software because they have a use for it. In the past, too much of the code I've written for employers ends up rotting. They change systems, and bury or destroy old stuff for a variety of reasons that are mostly antisocial. It can be good to make a fresh start, but that's not what concerns them. They worry that competitors or lawsuit minded customers could do something with any such info. They are dismissive of reasons why it would be to their benefit to not lock up or destroy old software.

        Avoid reinventing the wheel? That's the broken window fallacy. We don't like that when businesses try to pull that crap on us. A good example of that is being pushed to buy our music collections all over again to get them in a new format, as happened in the move from vinyl to CD, but which shouldn't be necessary to go from CD to mp3 or even worse from mp3 on old computer to same mp3 on new computer. Except possibly some tit for tat retaliation, most of us are not going to be hypocrites and try to pull that on businesses! We will show them a good example by not being antisocial. Yes, there can be some short term gain to sharp dealing, but long term, it's foolish. Just look at Microsoft. Yes, I know they've been very successful, but where are they going? You should not fear that we'll run out of work to do either.

        Don't own our own work? Darn right! But no one else owns or can own it either. Unlike some businesses, we relinquish control and require they do so too, so that all our customers need not fear that someone will make abusive but legal (maybe) use of copyright to deny them use of software they have purchased. Otherwise a rival may be able to hurt them by acquiring the rights in some fashion, either by forcing them or us to sell the "ownership" of the software, or by buying us. Or fear that there will be no choice but to start over if the main programmer is "hit by a bus".

  • *Amazing* spinoffs (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2008, @11:18AM (#22989904)
    I'm a huge fan of OSS, but what I love even more are the spin-off movements, namely the open content [wikipedia.org] projects. Of those, the two I love most are Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] (of course) and the just ramping-up Metagovernment [metagovernment.org] project. Together, these are in the process of completely transforming how human society operates.
    • You have noticed that Wikipedia is 'open', but not 'free', right? There have been numerous leaks, especially over at wikileaks.org, about the cabal of Wikileaks editors who fairly arbitrarily censor and edit content? It's been written about repeatedly, such as the article at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/04/wikipedia_secret_mailing/ [theregister.co.uk].

      This sort of thing is why I prefer 'free source' to 'open source'. We encounter internal politic and lobbying poisoning the well for developers and authors with different

  • I remember those days (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zappepcs (820751) on Monday April 07 2008, @11:22AM (#22989966) Journal
    There was also freeware, trialware, crippleware, shareware, talk of varying types of licenses, and anything you didn't pay for normally came with caveats that fall into the 'you get what you pay for' category. So, yes, there was a lot of suspicion about OSS because of all that it was competing with.

    That was even before MS had killed off all of its serious competitors.

    Then there was just MS and Windows developers. There were a few areas of competition but Windows was just a far cry above what DOS programs were doing at the time. Do you remember paradox? Qbase? WordPerfect? WordStar? Novell? 10Base5 ethernet?

    I'm quite glad that OSS has made it this far and one so much.
    • I think 10Base5 was pretty much on its deathbed when Microsoft appeared on the scene. The cable was thick and unwieldy to install. It was costly, as you needed active devices to connect to the cable. 10Base2 was a lot cheaper, and it offered the flexibility to re-wire a network. 10BaseT was cheaper still, and much more fault tolerant.

  • List your project (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Foofoobar (318279) on Monday April 07 2008, @11:22AM (#22989982)
    Think it would be cool if every Slashdot reader listed the open source project they have released along with the Sourceforge, Freshmeat or or repo address. I for one haven't updated my project, PHPulse (a highly scalable lightweight MVC framework for PHP) or about a year even though I have code updates on my machine at home. Get busy helping corporate customers and forget the main project. http://code.google.com/p/phpulse/ [google.com]

  • following, not leading (Score:4, Interesting)

    by petes_PoV (912422) on Monday April 07 2008, @11:30AM (#22990104)
    They might have given it a name but there was a great deal of free software around 10 years ago. My impression from those times (and it was only 10 years, we're not talking a lifetime here) is that the primary driver for free software was the internet - not a bunch of people at a conference, even if they call it a summit.

  • Last ditch effort for companies going south (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Rabbit_Fish (526184) on Monday April 07 2008, @11:32AM (#22990130)
    The one quote that really bugged me is the following one from Ousterhout:

    > The third thing that has negatively impressed me is
    > that open source is often used as a desperate last-ditch
    > effort for loser software. If a product is doing poorly
    > in the marketplace, sometimes companies release it as
    > open source, hoping that will somehow magically revive
    > it and make it widely used. This almost never works.

    Does this guy not realize that Firefox was born from Netscape going south? I'm sure there are other examples out there, but how obvious does one need to be?
    • I don't see how his statement ("This almost never works") and the anecdotal case of mozilla's success are mutually exclusive. Or are you asserting that a success like Firefox is the common case?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Kjella (173770)

      Does this guy not realize that Firefox was born from Netscape going south? I'm sure there are other examples out there, but how obvious does one need to be?

      Well, unless I've completely missed my Firefox history classes the original Netscape Navigator code that was supposed to be NN5 was so horrible that it was all scrapped, rather than released. So yeah, it became the rallying flag against IE but I would hardly call Mozilla a revival of the Navigator in the sense he's thinking of. Still, from the business side you can always try to fly when falling off a cliff and from the community side the alternative would be that it went quietly into the abyss. Worst case

  • Preaching to the choir (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pla (258480) on Monday April 07 2008, @11:38AM (#22990200) Journal
    now it is widely embraced

    Er, no.

    I still, on a daily basis, run into people who would rather buy software than use OSS alternatives because they firmly believe "you get what you pay for". And this in the "Joe Sixpack" crowd, not even talking about fellow IT professionals.

    Among them, I get much more polarized attitudes - They either embrace it, or shun it (with reasons ranging from the "viral" licensing BS, to (yes, seriously) tirades about damned hippies trying to buck the system).

    Me, I'll just use what works. Sometimes that means paying for software, but I can usually find something comparable and Free (and with a price tag of "free", I give "comparable" quite a bit of leeway).

  • Correction to the article title (Score:5, Informative)

    by Macthorpe (960048) on Monday April 07 2008, @11:40AM (#22990218) Journal
    Just one letter, nothing big:

    Ten years ago this week, the Free Software Summit arguably marked the beginning of today's FOSS movement.
    Considering the BSD license was published about 8 years before that, I think the only thing the summit marked was the politicisation of the Open Source Software movement, not it's creation.

  • The open source movement was already well under way before the Open Source summit. It was already well on its way before the GNU manifesto and the founding of the FSF. There's a perception that it's big events like these that "created" the open source movement. That's not so, it's the open source movement that's created the possibility of big exciting events.

    Even people talking about f/l/oss before these events seem to miss it. for example, Ousterhout's comment "When I made my first open-source release in the early 1980s (VLSI chip design tools from Berkeley), there were probably less than five open-source projects in the world."

    The Software Tools applications and libraries date back to the '70s. So does Emacs. So do the enormous collection of software published in Dr Dobbs' journal. So do the DECUS and other user group tapes. Much of this was game software, but it also included free compilers and interpreters (Forth, Small C, Tiny C, Tiny Basic, Tiny Pascal), editors (including emacs), operating system monitors (and early attempts at UNIX workalikes), and networks. Usenet was an open source project, and there were soon open source gateways between Usenet and networks like Fidonet... and one of the earliest Usenet groups was "net.sources".

    I would say the first open source decade was the '70s, though in a way it's as old as the computer industry: "in 1971, I became part of a software-sharing community that had existed for many years" -- Richard Stallman. It's been argued that it wasn't really until the '70s that closed source really got under way, so one might say that it was the creation of a binary, non-shared, closed-source software industry that created what became the open-source movement (under whatever name you like).

    So depending on whether you include the '60s, we're coming up on the end of the 4th or 5th "open source decade", the '00s. Not the first.

  • So YOU'RE the guy to blame... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Kozz (7764) on Monday April 07 2008, @12:03PM (#22990578) Homepage

    John Ousterhout, creator of the Tcl scripting language...

    I realize that a creator is not responsible in any way for the various ways in which is creation is used. But I have to wrestle with Tcl code every day because it was packaged with a large commercial application my team supports. Its strength is also its weakness: almost anyone can learn to use it (and frequently badly).

    And why is the Tcl interpreter so brain-dead? Consider the complaints from the interpreter when encountering "unbalanced grouping symbols" that are contained within a comment. Most parsers throw out all contents of a comment as soon as it's identified. But if you have an expression like
    set foo "bar"; # (oops forgot a closing paren
    it will refuse to work. WTF?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by tclgeek (587784)

      The only WTF is that you've failed to fully grasp how Tcl works. Tcl requires something of an experienced and open-minded perspective. You can't take what you learned in your C or Java class and expect Tcl to work the same way.

      There's a reason why comment parsing is the way it is, and generally speaking it's a good reason. Much like there's a reason Python uses whitespace for indentation. Maybe it's not your cup of tea, but it serves a purpose. And much like Python's use of whitespace, Tcl's comment beha

    • And why is the Tcl interpreter so brain-dead?

      Because it's simple. Deliberately so. It's inspired by Lisp.

      There's 11 rules that define the complete syntax for Tcl, everything else including control structures is built up on top of that.

      I'm responsible for some of the complexity that IS in there, originally there wasn't a distinction between {...} lists and "..." strings at all: I'm the one who suggested that variable substitution be allowed inside "...".

      But if you have an expression like
      set foo "bar"; # (oops forgot a closing paren
      it will refuse to work.

      No, that one's OK, but if you have
      set foo "bar"; # {oops forgot a closing brace
      it may not work.

      The reason is that the parsing of comments happens at the block level, but the parsing of blocks happens at the list level. So {# this list happens to start with "pound sign"} is a list. The fact that that list might happen to be code as well doesn't make a difference when it's parsing lists.
        • Those are the same case. A comment comes at the beginning of a statement.

          set foo [list {#valid list item} {bar} {baz}]; # { unmatched brace in a comment produces error here

          There's no distinction in Tcl between {#valid list item} and {#a code block starting with a comment}.

          Here's another example that might help you understand:

          ### chunk one
          set separators {# ! @ % --}
          if {[lindex $separators $token] >= 0} {# It's a separator
          lappend seplist $token
          set token [next_token]
          }

          #

  • Open Source is new? (Score:5, Informative)

    by jc42 (318812) on Monday April 07 2008, @12:14PM (#22990760) Homepage Journal
    When I made my first open-source release in the early 1980s ..., there were probably less than five open-source projects in the world.

    You've missed a lot of computing history. Maybe the capitalized phrase "Open Source" was new, but the practice wasn't. For instance, before the mini/micro-computer "revolution", I worked on a number of IBM mainframes, all of which used VM as their main OS. VM originated in academia, and its source was always available to anyone interested. Of course, not too many people wanted it unless they had an IBM mainframe. Most such installations had a VM guru on the staff, and the VM gurus I knew were quite open with their source.

    Around the same time, on one such machines, the engineering staff brought in Amdahl's unix system, which ran on VM of course. When we asked about source, the reply was "That's not an option; you get it whether you want it or not." "Open Source" may not have been a catch phrase yet, but Amdahl was happy to have customers with employees who could read the source, since that made their support job a lot easier. In fact, I sent them a kernel bug fix about a month after we got the system installed; I got back a nice "Thanks!" letter and was added to their published list of code contributors.

    A more accurate history would be that open source was quite common before the mid-1980s, but it didn't need a name. Software vendors routinely gave source to customers who wanted it, with the expectation that customers would find and fix bugs and maybe add new features. One of Microsoft's innovations was to hold their source as proprietary, so as not to allow customers to improve the software. A lot of people were amazed that customers actually accepted this. You heard a lot of questions like "Would they buy a truck or car that couldn't be worked on by any mechanics except the manufacturer's?" But then, when it became clear that Microsoft had gotten away with such a dodgy scheme, it was quickly adopted by others, so that customers would have to pay them for patching up the bugs.

    It still sorta amazes me that customers can be so dense as to pay money for products that can't be repaired by anyone but the manufacturer (and usually now not even by them). So much for the economists' idea of a rational marketplace.

  • Computer Magazines (Score:3, Insightful)

    by slapout (93640) on Monday April 07 2008, @12:45PM (#22991252)
    Does anybody remember back when computer magazines used to print programs in source code form for you to type in? That was certainly one way of making the code available.

  • After the announcement, Netscape assembled a group experts to participate in a strategy session at which the term "open source" was first conceived. The participants also assembled a new philosophy that reconciled the ideological principles of software freedom with the pragmatism of commercial software development. The Open Source Initiative (OSI) was then founded to supply and maintain an official definition for the open source philosophy.

    No part of this paragraph is true. The OSI had existed for two months when this summit convened. The term Open Source was concieved in a meeting at VA Linux Systems by Christine Petersen.

    Bruce

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by nomadic (141991)
      No part of this paragraph is true. The OSI had existed for two months when this summit convened. The term Open Source was concieved in a meeting at VA Linux Systems by Christine Petersen.

      Bruce, as people have repeatedly pointed out to you on slashdot, the term "open source" predates the OSI by several years. I know that people have repeatedly pointed out to you that the term "open source" in terms of available, distributable source code was used years before OSI purportedly came up with it. A search on
      • Hi Nomadic,

        Before the Open Source Initiative was founded and the Open Source Definition was published, the term "open source" was commonly used to refer to a form of military intelligence, and that meaning still survives. There are a few references - not a ton - before that date to "open source code" to refer to published source code, but with no rights connected with it. The campaign started in February 1998 and "Open Source" gained a specific meaning at that time.

        I understand your point. I just don't feel it's important, because until the start of the campaign the phrase was not particularly important. So, you can stop now. Also, please do me a favor and don't try to remind Richard Stallman that the two words "free software" were said in combination before his campaign, and meant something else. Of course they were. But you'd just be annoying him for no reason and he might not be as nice about it as me :-)

        Thanks

        Bruce

          • Take a look at my speech to the UN World Summit [wikimedia.org] in which I give Richard credit. Note what Richard does :-)

            Free Software was the first campaign to clearly associate rights with source code. Publicly distributed source code existed even before then, and sometimes had rights that complied with the OSD. The OSD was written to fit existing licenses, primarily BSD, GPL, and Artistic. Although Richard had published an article about the four freedoms in GNUs Bulletin number 4, he didn't maintain any publication ab

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Bruce Perens (3872) *
        Actually, I was not at the meeting. Eric Raymond brought me the results of the meeting the next day. I proposed to change the Debian Free Software Guidelines to be the Open Source Definition at that time.

        Interestingly enough, the Open Source Definition - and thus the "philosophy" of Open Source that the article discusses predates the founding of OSI by some 8 months, and thus the summit referred to in the article by 10 months. It was complete by the end of June, 1997, as part of Debian's promise to the com

      • No it wasn't, Bruce

        Dear AC,

        The reference you refer to [google.com] uses the words "open source" in a sense closer to the sense of "open source military intelligence", which was a well-known usage at that time and still continues to be used. It means something that has value but wasn't taken from a secret source. In early February 1998, the phrase gained a new usage which was promoted by the Open Source Initiative.

        I will not, however, take any credit for the usage of "Open Source" in a series of articles by one "Viole

    • Re:Long Live OSS (Score:5, Insightful)

      by moderatorrater (1095745) on Monday April 07 2008, @11:21AM (#22989956)
      The most expensive OS ever developed by the largest OS maker in history was produced just to allow Microsoft to buy an overall mediocre online company? Vista's not doing as badly as it could, but it will cost the company millions in revenue at least, and the loss of brand prestige will do millions if not billions of dollars of damage if vista's widely considered a failure. I'm going to guess that your guess is wrong.
      • I pretty much completely agree with you, and the moderators did correctly identify my post as a thinly veiled troll and adjusted it as such. I just wanted to talk to somebody ;p Looks like you took the bait.

        • I just wanted to talk to somebody

          Sounds like an extrovert who got lost.. Ever heard of IM [slashdot.org]? ;-)

    • Re:Long Live OSS (Score:4, Funny)

      by Paralizer (792155) on Monday April 07 2008, @11:53AM (#22990418) Homepage
      Are you suggesting Microsoft is pulling a Coca-Cola? Change their formula to suck then bring back the original and make billions? I guess it could work...

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by DescData (196712)
        You understand that the whole idea of New Coke was change the type of sugar without people noticing/complaining? They took the original off the selves. When original code was reintroduced, it was not exactly the same.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by sumdumass (711423)
      Well, yahoo could fix all that if they wanted too. All they have to do is make a contract with an extremely large payout with an OSS company for a discount on Linux servers and support in exchange for GPLv3 and GPLv2 development on on OSS products over the next ten years. Make the discount something like a mandatory purchase over so many years which they will likely do because of growth anyways and set the traded development work for 10% or something off or a cost plus contract or something of the sorts. T
    • From the figures, I'm guessing that he's counting licenses, not projects. So why is license proliferation a good thing again?
    • Indeed. I go into that in more depth here [slashdot.org]. I think that you're being unfair to Ousterhout, though. I don't think he's "Ignoring the people who came before [to] look like a visionary", but rather he was simply unaware of what was going on outside his group in Berkeley.

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