The Creation of Open Source

Once, in the Middle of Time, there was Town, and there was Gown.
In the Town were Merchants of all sorts, who bought Stuff from Craftsmen
and Peasants, and sold it for as much as they could to people who needed
Stuff. They spent much time helping people understand that they needed
a lot more Stuff than they'd realized, and Merchants who were good at
this became Rich, and their wives (who had been listening) bought a
great deal of Stuff from anyone they could.

Near the Town, or possibly within it, was the citadel of Gown.	The
Gowns lived in their own enclave, variously called a Monastery or a
School or a University or a College, depending on its location and its
era and on the proclivities and biases of its founders.  The Gowns
valued Learning; they did not generally buy a lot of Stuff because for
them Knowledge was wealth more precious than Stuff -- and also because
they didn't earn a lot of money through being studious.  Studiousness
and Accumulated Knowledge did not get the goats milked or the wheat
threshed or the yarn spun, and could not be sold in the market.

Town and Gown despised each others' weaknesses.  Townies mocked the
effete gownies, terrorized children, paraded their wealth, and sat in
the front pews of the churches.  Gownies derided the Townies for doing
foolish things in Ignorance, educated children, paraded their
learning, and ran the churches.

It would be pleasant to say that, despite their differences, Town and
Gown lived peacefully if not in Mutual Respect.  But they didn't,
always; sporadically there was violence between them, which hardened
their bad opinions of each other.

It came to pass, after many centuries, that the Merchant Class
prospered, and enlarged its coasts throughout the Whole World, and
sold Useless Stuff everywhere: Opium in China and Tobacco in Europe
and Whiskey in North America and Glitter everywhere -- as well as
Useful Stuff like china in Europe and machinery in North America and
down jackets in China.	And Wealth was Created and Wealth was
Destroyed, and Life continued Apace.

And through many centuries, the Gown Class prospered also in its own
way, and made many Discoveries, and valued Knowledge for its Own Sake,
and offered Knowledge Freely to each other and to the World.  And the
Scientific Method was developed, and from this spawned Technology and
Invention.

And from Invention was born a Great Deal of Marvelous Stuff, which
charmed the Hearts of the Merchant Class, who began to understand that
Gownism might be Useful to Society as long as it was confined to its
Proper Sphere; that is to say, it stayed at least metaphorically in its
Cidadel, and did not attempt to Run a Business.

And also from Invention was born the Mechanical Printing Press, a
primitive form of the Internet.  And Gown gave thanks, and worshipped,
and defended Freedom of the Press, and resolved to spread Knowledge
throughout the World.  And Town realized that books were Stuff, and
caused Copyright to be invented, and restricted ownership of Ideas to
the Originator.

And so it was that in the Universities, Knowledge was pursued; and
because Knowledge fueled Invention, a few Rich Merchants founded
Universities, and paraded themselves about, and became richer.

And then, in the End of Present Time, machines were invented in which
Thought could be encapsulated and cause Rational Actions to occur
through other machines; and these machines were called Computers, and
the encapsulated thoughts which they contained were called Programs.
And because the machines were made of brittle or metallic Stuff, they
came to be called Hardware, and the ideas they contained were called
Software.  This Software existed in two forms: one which could be
understood by humans, called Source Code, and one which could make the
machine seem smart, called, approximately, Compiled Code.

And it came -- but has not yet passed -- that the Town prevailed, and
they seduced the Gown with lucre, and Ideas were called Stuff, and
were named Intellectual Property.  Townies taught Gownies that this
should not properly be Bought or Sold, but Rented.  And the Townies
went in unto the Gownies, and Knew them, and they gave birth to
Proprietary Software. And they formed great alliances, the greatest of
which were known as IBM and AT&T, and they became Rich.

But, if the truth were known, though the Townies shared a philosophy,
they did not share markets or knowledge willingly, for they long knew
that Particular Knowledge was the Secret of Riches, and that
Commoditization was often the Road to Poverty.	Moreover, they
believed that Dog should eat Dog, and they Worked Diligently to
destroy each others' businesses through Competition.  And they called
this Good.

Twenty five and more years ago, two foolish lads who did not
understand all this nonsense, built and sold a computer that anyone
could use.  They made public the hardware specs, and it was cheap and
easy to program, and it became a commodity, and they named it after a
fruit, another commodity.  And some programmers could not afford to
start companies, and so cast their software upon the public -- on
floppies and through bulletin boards; and some of it they gave away,
and for some of it they begged payment.  The former was called
"freeware" and the latter was called "shareware."  And some of the
programmers became Rich, and some suffered Disappointment, and the
World was little changed.

The Great IBM Alliance saw the success of the Fruit, and was jealous,
and thought to do them in by doing them one better; and it came to
pass that IBM nearly did themselves in by making a commodity computer
and hiring a very shrewd man to supply the operating system, a man who
was very slick and sly with his competitors, and reduced most of them
to ashes and made the others servile.  And he Waxed Rich and became
Very Annoying and Hard of Spirit.  And the name of his Alliance is an
oxymoron, "Micro-Soft."

Now though Compiled Code went from these Alliances to the User with
the Machine, the Source was kept locked up in Secret Places, and was
not revealed to the User, but was kept in the Most Holy Place by the
Great Priests of Commerce.

Yet not every Gown was seduced by Stuff; a few rigid, narrowminded
Gownies clung to the outmoded belief that Knowledge should benefit
All, that it was a Common Good, and that to lock it away was
Antisocial and Selfish and Capitalist-Greedy, and furthermore it was
personally frustrating to them not to be able to get one's hands on
Good Code and play with it.

One Gownie, a brilliant and unkempt thinker, the Man who Stalls,
turned the Townie philosophy upside down.  If Intellectual Property
Rights could be used to keep ideas secret and to accumulate Money,
then they could also be used to force ideas into the public and to
accumulate Knowledge.

And so it came about that Richard the Stall-man invented CopyLeft, and
wrote the GNU General Public License and other codes to protect the
freedom of ideas -- to protect the freedom of intellectual property --
which required any Townie that possessed and sold copylefted programs
to also provide the source to the customer, who could then play with
it or hire someone else to improve or maintain it.

And Gownies who knew of this and undersood it rejoiced, for it hoist
the Townies on their own Petard, and skewered them with their own
sword, the copyright, for this liberated software from the
imprisonment of being Property and made it Free (but not gratis).

And among the geeks and users and other peasants, for as many as
understood, this was met with rejoicing and very much Collaborative
Work, and Great Things were done, and the Internet and the URL were
invented, and Linus Torvalds invited whomever was interested to join
the writing of a Really Good and Liberated Operating System, and the
Rest is History.

But because many people did not like Richard Stallman, or thought that
his GNU copyleft (verily, a copyright) was too restrictive, or not
lawyerly enough, other forms of permitted use were described by
others.

And a word became necessary to describe this new class of intellectual
property rights, which were devised with the idea of sharing for
public good rather than secrecy for the sake of riches, and this
phrase became "Open Source."

This is the fable of Open Source.  Long may it prosper.

Copyright (C) 2003, Daniel L. Johnson MD All rights reserved.