Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 17:07:29 -0800
From: Tracy R Reed <treed@ultraviolet.org>
To: letters@lwn.net
Subject: An "Un-American" essay

Following is an essay I wrote and cc'd to a couple dozen friends. They
have suggested I send it here so here it is. Feel free to publish it,
trash it, laugh at it, whatever you like. :)


Read this first:

http://news.cnet.com/investor/news/newsitem/0-9900-1028-4825719-RHAT.html?tag=ltnc

Microsoft is speaking to lawmakers to have open source software outlawed.

Open source software is computer software created by a bunch of people
from all over the world working together on the Internet to program
computers for the fun of it and then release the software to the public
free of charge. Linux is a classic example.

Their immediate goal in Washington is to poison our leaders on the idea of
open source software and prevent it from ever becoming officially accepted
and supported software in government offices. If the government starts
using open standard software (as opposed to closed proprietary software)
they would save a lot of time and money but Microsoft would lose its
biggest customer.

Open source software is already seriously eating their profits. Only
through creative book keeping (counting proceeds from their investments as
bottom line revenue to make up for shortfalls in software sales) can they
keep up their appearance of profitability and stock price.  Of course they
will never succeed in outlawing open source software (I hope) but the idea
that they are even spending time thinking about such things is
frightening.  Remember that corporations are amoral.  Not moral or immoral
but amoral. They logically determine how to make the most money. They make
decisions without regard to compassion or ethics much like a computer.
Individuals don't work this way but when you put a bunch of individuals
together and call it a corporation they do. They are legally obligated by
their stockholders to do this. If the stockholders found out that a big
company gave someone a break and didn't do everything they could to
maximize shareholder value they would get their pants sued off. It has
happened.  Not to mention the problems caused by the large egos and greed
in the executive ranks of many companies.

Microsoft VP Jim Allchin says that he "...can't imagine something that
could be worse then this [open source software] for the software business
and intellectual-property business." Of course this is rather
short-sighted because it appears that the entire concept of intellectual
property is about to be destroyed by another new technology: Freenet 
( http://freenet.sourceforge.net ).

Automobiles were the worst thing for the horse and buggy. Surely the buggy
makers were annoyed. Perhaps if they had $50B with which to lobby
government and society via clever marketing such as Microsoft does we
would still be riding in buggies! But the advantages to society by letting
them be replaced has been incalculable. One astute person wrote on
slashdot.org that "Amish barn raisings should be declared illegal because
they threaten the innovation of contractors across our great land." If it
weren't for open source software the Internet wouldn't even be possible
and Microsoft is attacking those who did this great public service.

When one company controls all of our critical computer resources such as
MS does and won't let anyone see what their software is really doing you
would think people would be worried. But it seems that nobody is. There
are foriegn governments using Linux instead of Windows because they can
audit exactly what Linux is doing and they don't want to have to rely on
an American company for such important computing tasks.

"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." -- Samuel Johnson

Appealing to patriotic values by painting open source software as
"un-American" and inferring that it is somehow related to fascism or
communism is an embarassment to anyone who values their freedom and
understand what this country has gone through to get it. It is unfortunate
that most Americans do not care to understand the computer and business
world even though our future (and our freedom) relies so much on both of them.

If this continues I may one day be sitting in front of the House
Un-American Activities Committee with a modern McCarthy asking:

"Are you now or have you ever been an advocate of open source software?" 

History repeats itself and we can look back at another popular freedom
movement that was ultimately successful. A motto of the Open Source/Free
Software community for years now has been:

"First they ignore you, 
 then they laugh at you, 
 then they fight you, 
 then you win." 

 -- Gandhi

This is the exact path Microsoft has taken with open source software. When
I first got involved with Linux 8 years ago we were in the ignore stage.
We are definitely in the fighting stage now. 

Also see:

Life, liberty and the pursuit of free software
http://www.salon.com/tech/log/2001/02/15/unamerican/index.html

Rant Mode Equals One: The Linux Reality Versus the Microsoft Dream
http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-02-15-003-20-OP

--
Tracy Reed      http://www.ultraviolet.org