LIFE HACKS INSPIRED LIVING No free lunches for me CHARLES ASSISI

My once-socialist-now-capitalist heart skipped a beat the other day. The catalyst was a news report. Apparently, the V S Achutanandan-led communist government in Kerala has decided to put its might behind the free software movement. Achutanandan, it seems, dislikes monopolies. And free software sounds a hopelessly romantic idea which his government is in love with.

What it means is this: children in the 12,500 high schools across the state will be weaned off proprietory software of the kind Microsoft builds. Long-time friends will impale me for saying this. It is a bad idea.

As far as ideas go, free software is too damn nice an idea. And nice guys finish last. For that one reason alone, my guess is free software will always remain on the fringes of the mainstream.

Having said that, I must confess that until a few years ago, I swore by free software and all that it stood for. My interest was stoked after I first heard Richard Stallman talk at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR). His contention was a simple one. If something goes wrong with your car, you take it to a mechanic. He opens the hood, peers under it, figures out what’s wrong with it and doesn’t waste much time fixing the car. With software, things don’t work that way. If something goes wrong with an application, software companies don’t let you look at the lines of code that have gone into building it. This means you can’t figure out where the bugs are to re-write the code. So you just wait until the company issues a fix.

“Would you buy a car if you couldn’t open the hood?’’ Stallman thundered. “Nooooo,’’ I screamed with the rest of the crowd. “Then would you buy software you can’t rewrite?’’ he thundered again. “No friggin’ way,’’ the crowd screamed again. If I’ve paid for software, I ought to have the freedom to fix it if it’s broke. That, Stallman said, was free software. “Free as in freedom, not free beer,’’ he said and pumped his fists into the air. I was sold.

Over the years, I’ve mellowed down. I don’t care much today whether I can fix software. I don’t fix my car when it’s broke. In any case, there is a fundamental difference between fixing a car and fixing software. An analogy I can think of is what I do for a living. While writing, what emerges is the outcome of ideas that have occurred to me. When somebody tinkers with it, two things happen. Firstly, while the kernel may be mine, what finally emerges may not necessarily be mine. In fact, it may turn out to be a highly evolved version of what I had originally thought up. The collective is always better than the individual.

But by thinking something up and offering it to the collective to improve upon, I stand to lose my livelihood. In fact, for somebody as selfish as I am, it leaves me with no incentive to write. On the contrary, I’d think up something else to earn a living. I’m willing to bet most people think the way I do.

It’s much the same thing with software. Take away their incentive to create it and the world will have fewer pieces of software to work with. Cars are a different proposition. I wouldn’t mind too much if a few thousand mechanics tinkered with what I built. They wouldn’t have the muscle to build cars in the first place. And I wouldn’t want to waste time fixing what’s broke. Maybe, I’m not a nice guy. I don’t care.

"Nagarjuna G." nagarjun@gnowledge.org wrote: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Nagarjuna G. Date: Sep 1, 2006 3:49 PM Subject: Response to Charles Assisi's Article To: toieditorial@timesgroup.com

Dear Editor,

This is in response to the article "No Free Lunches for Me" written by Charles Assisi, Times of India, 31th August 2006. The author is either 'blind' or irresponsible or both. If this article were written by a newbie journalist, I would not have reacted this way, but Charles Assisi is a known name, also because he interwiewed me once or twice. He may be a popular technical writer, he may claim that he was once a socialist now a capitalist, or he was once convinced about free software but not now anymore etc. This style of writing informs some readers that the author has experienced both worlds and then writing with experience. What this journalist lacks, now I realize after reading the article, is a sense of responsible journalism.

He is essentially reacting to the decision Kerala Govt is going for free software in place of proprietary software. The only reason that he says free software should not be used is because it is backed by a very good ethical principle of sharing and "nice guys finish last". So this irresponsible journalist is asking people to be bad guys and finish first. If this wasn't the message, what was it?

Let me demonstrate how blind this journalist is. First: he assumes that nice guys don't finish. The already successful operating system, the only competitor for the proprietary software today, is the GNU/Linux operating system with a large number of applications for almost every purpose, including computing in Indian languages. If this operating system is not complete, how is this system being used by millions all over the world. Which concept of computing does this operating system does not implement, except possibly viruses, that the system be declared unfinished? The system is not only finished, several millions all over the world use it exclusively. That is not to say that the system is not evolving, it is evolving at a pace that people already began to call it a revolution.

The second point of the argument made by the author is that it does not feed programmers, or why would software programmers work for free software without incentive. Again, this is entirely baseless. Save one major company, which other major company does not use or depend their business on free software? If there is no money why did RedHat, Novell, IBM, Sun Microsystems etc. ventured to business by supporting free software. Even the exceptional major company, saved above, is known to use whatever is borrowable from the free software world.

True, free software business doesn't happen by selling what is essentially and eminently shareable entity called code. But, people who make money in free software make money by providing various services: making a free software accessible in the form of distributions, helping in installation, customization, maintenance, documentation, training and so on. In the case of propreitary software both the things happen, namely selling what is not sellable, as well as servicing. In free software only one of them is possible. Therefore it is true that one cannot make as much money as one would make with propreitary software. The reason why free software community chose to give up on the additonal profit is due to ethical committment, to live a moral life. A lot of service business in propreitary software also happens by providing service to fix vulnarabilities, such as software viruses, which were fixed by free software by choosing a secure multi-user file system. It is an open question: Why wouldn't a proprietary company doesn't fix a fixable vulnarabilty?

It is true that several hackers (not crackers) who contributed to free software were hobbyists and worked out of their free time and without much in expectation. That is because they were intervening in a system that is ridden with evil practices. They are sacrifycing their time to give the world and its people freedom, a better and healthy place to live in future. No freedom movement will win without sacrifice. This jounralist is pleading the Govt and people not to go for free software because good things never win. What a hopeless irresponsible suggestion?

He writes: "Take away their incentive to create it and the world will have fewer peices of software to work with." The author assumes that their incentives were taken away, which is a baseless. If you ask the users of proprietary software, who created the application they are using, they will be mum. You ask the same question to the users of free software, they will tell who the original contributors are. Even if they are ignorant, may be they didn't pay attention to it, they can find out by visiting their favourite search engine and will answer in a jiffy. In the case of proprietary software, even if you give them the library and also the Internet, it is very difficult to find out who contributed what. Acknowledgement and maintaining authorship is the real incentive any author, including journalists, would ask for. How many journalists will find their job worthwhile if they were to write articles without their names printed along with the articles. Reporters on the street do not get enough attention, true. But they continue to report with the assumption that one day when they become a known writer they can imprint their name with each article they write. This is the incentive that an author always asked for, which makes each of the authors immortal, for they wish to make their mark in the history. Proprietary software companies don't create any history by masking the code as well as the contributions of millions of programmers who work for them. This is the culture that free software movement is trying to correct in the society, among others.

As scientists, we may never publish a paper in a journal if the publisher asks us to be anonymous, or intends ot use another person or company's name instead. The incentive we get is citation, readership, and name, apart from the salary that we draw for our service. Thisculture already exists in the traditional knowledge business, free software business follows and embellishes this tradition. Thus, the author's view that there exists no business model for free software is not true. What is true is, free software does not produce billionaires in half a generation time.

Proprietary software was created by converting knoweldge into a commodity. This happened by encoding electronic documents in a format that only their systems can decode. By asking people to pay for decoding these documents for life is unethical lockin policy. This is, by ethical standpoint, an illegal activity, for knowledge doesn't continue transmission by privately locked code. Free software momevent is asking the policy makers, Government bodies all over the world, to correct this mistake too, and that is why we demand for all electronic documents to be in open standards.

An unrepairable technology is evil. Proprietary software is unrepairable since the source code is not made public. No 'garages' are possible in this model. But we need garages for software too, since no software can be perfect. Free software is repairable just any system of ideas. Unless people at large participate knowledge does not evolve.

If Kerala Govt. took the decision to change their schools to free software, that is a very wise decisiion. We wish that all other governements all over the world follow them to create a better digital world.

I would request the editor to publish this response to correct the misunderstanding the article by Charles Assisi would create about free software movement.

-- Dr. Nagarjuna G. Scientist, Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Eduation, TIFR, Mumbai Chairman, Free Software Foundation of India, http://www.gnu.org.in/