Flossing software in a spicy Bangalore bazaar

Flossing software in a spicy Bangalore bazaar

Idaman Andarmosoko, Contributor, Jakarta

Amid spicy Indian food, around a hundred software developers and
social workers from all over Asia gather at a week-long camp in
Bangalore, India; "Open Source" is the buzzphrase that gathers
these subcontinental tech-folks together.

The terminology Open Source deals with software that makes
computer hardware come alive and do things. In order to function,
computer hardware needs programs, or software.

This software can be an operating system that manages the
computer, or any number of various application programs to do
tasks from typing articles to simulating inter galactic war.

Computer programs are initially written in a programming
language, readable by human programmers. This is called source
code.

This source code is then transformed into machine code that
only a computer can understand and execute. It is possible, but
extremely difficult, to convert machine code back into source
code. All major main-stream software is sold in machine code
format, so the user can only use it, and cannot modify it. Open
Source software refers to software that is distributed in source
code format, and in some cases also comes with rights for the
user to modify the source code and recompile it into a modified
program.

Some Open Source software is also distributed free of charge
through communities of enthusiastic programmers who share,
augment, improve and modify the source collection turning it into
growing set of software libraries, and propelling it into an
alternative domain in terms of software economics, with various
license and distribution mechanisms.

Open Source software folks believe in four freedoms in terms
of software -- the freedom to use, study, modify and share -
freedoms all lacking in major commercial software.

As the word "free" in English can mean no-cost (as in free
beer) and also freedom (as in free speech), this type of software
has been given a unique terminology: Free/Libre Open Source
Software (FLOSS), also known as Open Source Software (OSS) or
Free Open Source Software (FOSS).

Two Open Source gurus, namely Richard Stallman and Linus
Thorvald, laid the foundations for dynamic software freedom.
Stallman, unhappy with industrial software copyright systems,
worked on sets of programs called GNU, set up a free software
foundation, and devised legal licensing mechanisms that allows
software to be propagated and collectively worked on by large
programmer communities.

At the same time, Linus Thorvald of Finland started writing an
operating system, later given the name Linux. The GNU-Linux, a
significant initial FLOSS operating system in the early 90s, has
since evolved into a whole array of different FLOSS software.

FLOSS employs a spectrum of licenses that stipulates and
retains the freedom of software distribution. In a nutshell, the
licenses state that the software is free to be distributed and
modified and used (even for commercial purposes) but users must
always freely distribute the software.

The various GNU-Linux families of software then matured into
various versions, including corporate commercial versions.

In terms of performance, FLOSS software is very competitive
with commercial software. An Internet survey has shown that the
Open Source Apache web server software has gained majority market
share, larger than similar commercial software.

In Eric. S. Raymond's words, its the difference between a
cathedral and a bazaar. Proprietary software is developed in a
cathedral fashion, in which a very small number of minds work on
the software, while Open Source Software is much more like a
bazaar, where an unlimited number of people contribute to the
development of specific software, making for faster development
and improvement.

Commercial software companies argue that the price paid for
free software is lack of support, while FLOSS people counter
claim that support for FLOSS is unlimited as there are a
multitude of programmer communities that can provide such
support.

IBM, Silicon Graphics (a major producer of high-end computers)
and Apple have formally taken sides with FLOSS. Various
governments around the world have formally declared their stance
by saying that they will adopt FLOSS, including the government of
Indonesia that uses the slogan "Indonesia Goes Open Source"
(http://www.igos.web.id/) and is backed up by programmer
communities (http://opensource-indonesia.com).

UNDP has also supported the Open Source realm. However,
Microsoft and a number of software companies around the world
plead with governments to employ policies of "neutrality" in
choosing software.

FLOSS discourse has shifted from mere technical choices in
terms of performance and price, to an issue of freedom. It now
propels a titanic underground battle between Bill Gates and a
million Rastafarian programmers eating spicy Asian food.

Idaman andarmosoko can be reached through his email at
idaman_andr@yahoo.com

On the Net:
http://www.tacticaltech.org/asiasource
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html
http://www.apdip.net/projects/2003/iosn
http://www.softwarechoice.org