[1] consists of Introduction by L. Lessig and The GNU Project by R. Stallman. The Introduction begins by giving us background of Richard Stallman and his ideal. Throught his work, Stallman is trying to convey "free software" concept to the public. Since the software affects the life of users who use it, Stallman claims that the software should be "free" in the sense that the users should have control over the software and modify the software to fit their needs. Free software is given a "copyleft" by means of a licensing method called GPL. The copyleft allows the user to control and modify the free software, and, in addition, other software uses the free software must also be free. The author takes "free society" regulated by law as a example and explains that no society is free if its law is kept secret. In the America law practice, lawyers write briefs to advance their clients' interests in the course of litigations. These briefs are open and free for others to copy and quote by other lawyers in their litigations. On the other hand, if these briefs and arguments were kept secret from public, a society cannot be known as a "free society". In the free society, free source remains open and allows modification and creativity to take place. This should be the same in code writing
[1] also consists an essay by Richard M. Stallman which states the history and development of GNU project. Stallman is the founder of the GNU project who used to work in MIT's AI Lab. Stallman believes that computer users should be free to modify program to meet their needs and free to share the software. Thus, he has developed a Unix-link operation system called GNU, and he also recruited a group of developers to create components and software in GNU. In GNU, software has a "copyleft" which allow the software to be "free". By definition of “free software”, users are given the permissions to run the software, copy the software, modify the software, and distribute the modified version, but no permission to restrict other users to access the software. Through the GNU development process, Stallman has avoided using proprietary software, because he thought the idea of using proprietary software is against his philosophy of free software.
Stallman also mentioned a number of challenges in free software development. First at all, the hardware manufactures tend to keep hardware specification secret, which makes it difficult to write free driver to support these hardware for GNU. Stallman has proposed reverse engineering and use of hardware that is supported by free software. The second challenge is the software using non-free library, because other software using this software would not work in GNU because of missing non-free library. Stallman has proposed to find a free replacement for this software using non-free library. As the third challenge, software patents forbidden certain patented features to be used in free operating system. The proposed solutions are to search for evidence that a patent is invalid, or to find alternative ways to perform the job. As the final challenge, the lacking of documentation makes good software difficult to use. Therefore, when people modify the free software, they need to be conscientious and modify the software manual accordingly.
In 1998, a part of free software has replaced "free software" by "open source" to avoid the confusion of "free" with "gratis". Among these who favored "open source" within the free software community, Stallman has claimed that there are these people who place profit as the priority and set aside the freedom of the software. In conclusion of Stallman’s essay, he has shown his concern that the existence of free software community is threatened by proprietary software manufacturers, and he will keep fighting for the freedom of software.
[2] begins by describing an event in 1997, where leaders in the free software community were assembled to define and to promote "open source" standard. The "open source" licensing allows greater freedom than GPL [1] does. As an open source example, an proprietary software such Netscape browser source code can be modified and then distributed, and, as a return, more users use Netscape browser which give Netscape advantage in its commercial offerings. [2] describes an alliance between industry and academic computer scientists. Even though the new idea may come from the academic computer scientists, [2] has suggests that the industry is the true driven force to produce innovation.
The idea of open source allows replication to be possible. In term of computer science, open source allows users to share source code by means of replication. Through replication, many software developers can inspect the software development and spot any possible bugs, and, thus, it results more robust and stable software. Another advantage of open source is that the software development would not stop when its developer ceases to work on it, because there are always others to carry out the job since all the information relevant to this software development is shared. Hardware brand names such as IBM and Sun have seen this opportunity to sell more of their product by deploying open source Linux and other software into their hardware.
Stallman’s essay in [1] shows that Stallman is in favoured of idea of “free software”, while [2] is in favoured of “open source”. In the principle of “free software”, the software developers are not supposed to make profit from helping others by sharing their source code and use of non-free software would cause problem in the “free software” operating system. On the other hand, “open source” idea is trying to balance between the user and industry and hopefully benefit both. Even though Stallman made his goal of “free software” into reality by founding GNU project, he can achieve his goal quicker with support from industries and their funding. However, industries always want to maximum their profit and make their works secret, and, thus, the software would loss the degree of freedom when involving industries.
Reference
[1] also consists an essay by Richard M. Stallman which states the history and development of GNU project. Stallman is the founder of the GNU project who used to work in MIT's AI Lab. Stallman believes that computer users should be free to modify program to meet their needs and free to share the software. Thus, he has developed a Unix-link operation system called GNU, and he also recruited a group of developers to create components and software in GNU. In GNU, software has a "copyleft" which allow the software to be "free". By definition of “free software”, users are given the permissions to run the software, copy the software, modify the software, and distribute the modified version, but no permission to restrict other users to access the software. Through the GNU development process, Stallman has avoided using proprietary software, because he thought the idea of using proprietary software is against his philosophy of free software.
Stallman also mentioned a number of challenges in free software development. First at all, the hardware manufactures tend to keep hardware specification secret, which makes it difficult to write free driver to support these hardware for GNU. Stallman has proposed reverse engineering and use of hardware that is supported by free software. The second challenge is the software using non-free library, because other software using this software would not work in GNU because of missing non-free library. Stallman has proposed to find a free replacement for this software using non-free library. As the third challenge, software patents forbidden certain patented features to be used in free operating system. The proposed solutions are to search for evidence that a patent is invalid, or to find alternative ways to perform the job. As the final challenge, the lacking of documentation makes good software difficult to use. Therefore, when people modify the free software, they need to be conscientious and modify the software manual accordingly.
In 1998, a part of free software has replaced "free software" by "open source" to avoid the confusion of "free" with "gratis". Among these who favored "open source" within the free software community, Stallman has claimed that there are these people who place profit as the priority and set aside the freedom of the software. In conclusion of Stallman’s essay, he has shown his concern that the existence of free software community is threatened by proprietary software manufacturers, and he will keep fighting for the freedom of software.
[2] begins by describing an event in 1997, where leaders in the free software community were assembled to define and to promote "open source" standard. The "open source" licensing allows greater freedom than GPL [1] does. As an open source example, an proprietary software such Netscape browser source code can be modified and then distributed, and, as a return, more users use Netscape browser which give Netscape advantage in its commercial offerings. [2] describes an alliance between industry and academic computer scientists. Even though the new idea may come from the academic computer scientists, [2] has suggests that the industry is the true driven force to produce innovation.
The idea of open source allows replication to be possible. In term of computer science, open source allows users to share source code by means of replication. Through replication, many software developers can inspect the software development and spot any possible bugs, and, thus, it results more robust and stable software. Another advantage of open source is that the software development would not stop when its developer ceases to work on it, because there are always others to carry out the job since all the information relevant to this software development is shared. Hardware brand names such as IBM and Sun have seen this opportunity to sell more of their product by deploying open source Linux and other software into their hardware.
Stallman’s essay in [1] shows that Stallman is in favoured of idea of “free software”, while [2] is in favoured of “open source”. In the principle of “free software”, the software developers are not supposed to make profit from helping others by sharing their source code and use of non-free software would cause problem in the “free software” operating system. On the other hand, “open source” idea is trying to balance between the user and industry and hopefully benefit both. Even though Stallman made his goal of “free software” into reality by founding GNU project, he can achieve his goal quicker with support from industries and their funding. However, industries always want to maximum their profit and make their works secret, and, thus, the software would loss the degree of freedom when involving industries.
Reference
[1] FSFS: pp. 1-32
[2] OSV:Intro
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