From kragen@dnaco.net Thu Aug 13 23:25:44 1998 Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 23:25:43 -0400 (EDT) From: Kragen To: Frank Hecker cc: fsb@crynwr.com Subject: Re: A few thoughts. In-Reply-To: <35D37D24.82A10EC@netscape.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Keywords: X-UID: 1242 Status: O X-Status: On Thu, 13 Aug 1998, Frank Hecker wrote: > This is an important distinction that I was going to make in response to > your original message, but you have already done it for me. It leads in > turn to an interesting question: Under this definition, which of today's > "name brand" open source products represent actual "from scratch" > innovation? Such software products as Linux, Gnu Emacs, GCC/G++, GNOME, > Apache, and Mozilla seem rather to be (re)implementations of existing > product categories, namely Unix-like operating systems, text editors, > C/C++ compilers, desktop managers, web servers, and web browsers > respectively. Well, to some extent, you are correct. However, Emacs was one of the first screen editors, and definitely a pioneer in the field, and it was implemented primarily by the same guy who wrote GNU Emacs. I don't really know why there was a break between the two of them, but I know RMS resigned from the AI lab when he started GNU so MIT wouldn't have any legal title to his work, and I know GNU Emacs was written in C and Elisp instead of TECO, and for Unix instead of ITS. Apache was built on the open-source NCSA server, which was, I believe, the second general-purpose Web server program. The first web server program, CERN httpd, was also open-source. Mozilla isn't really relevant to this discussion, since it was not open-source for the first 80%+ of its existence, and hasn't changed much since then. It's true that the vast majority of software, including the majority of open-source software, consists mostly of reimplementations of existing designs. Here are some examples. A lot of Mosaic was reimplementation of features from Lynx and Viola, which were open-source; a lot of the commercial unices were reimplementations of features that were already in ITS, which was arguably open-source; a lot of Visual Basic was reimplementation of features that were already in Tcl (although, if the VB people had known this, it might have turned out better!); a lot of every commercial word processor consists of poor reimplementations of parts of TeX. In this light, it's not surprising that open-source software consists largely of reimplementations of existing software. But even such things as Linux have innovations in them. To address your other argument, which is a common one: it's true that people won't take risks on innovation unless they can see that their risks are likely to pay off somehow. That may be financially through licensing fees; it may be that they will build market share by being ahead of the competition by incorporating innovations into their products; it may be that they need to solve a problem, and don't care who else uses the innovations they come up with; or it may just be that innovating is its own reward to them. It is unlikely that anyone will make money selling open-source software they develop as if they are shrink-wrap software companies. In fact, these days, it's probably pretty hard to make money selling shrink-wrap software if you're a new guy. Kragen