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Tuesday November 24, 2009 4:46 PM AEST
Skip Navigation LinksPC Authority > Features > Free software... and why we avoid it.
Free software... and why we avoid it.
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FEATURE

Free software... and why we avoid it.

by Clive Webster , Barry Collins  on Sep 22, 2006
Tags: freeware | open | source | software | free
Free software has been available since computing’s year dot. The Free Software Foundation, formed by the evangelical Linux co-creator Richard Stallman in 1985, formalised the concept of code that is ‘free as in free speech’ rather than ‘free as in free beer’. Yet the free software movement had an image problem.

Led by ‘the beard and sandals brigade’, its near-communist approach to software development scared off businesses, which still associated it with zero cost and thus zero professionalism.

Then in 1998, the free software movement changed its image. Netscape, which at the time was taking a battering from Microsoft in the infamous Internet browser wars, decided to make the source code of its Netscape Navigator browser freely available. But, in a crucial strategy meeting before the code was released, a team including the influential Eric S. Raymond – who just a year before had written an essay espousing community development of software – decided an image make over was necessary. The group rejected the ambiguous ‘free software’ moniker and instead opted for the more neutral ‘open source’ tag.

Raymond and the Netscape team overhauled the image of open source and made free software palatable to business. The Open Source Initiative, led by Raymond, sidelined the likes of the anti-capitalist, Microsoft-hating Stallman and openly embraced business, explaining the benefits of freely available code to big corporations and tempting software vendors into the open source tent. The open source movement had begun and, with a well-respected company such as Netscape on board, the bandwagon quickly gained momentum.

Within months, the likes of Intel, IBM and Netscape were pumping millions into the open source Linux variant Red Hat. The company floated in August 1999, and its market capitalisation is now at a staggering $5.5bn – not bad for a business selling software with no intrinsic value.

Now, as any IT manager will know, Linux is prevalent in the business community. ‘There is a very powerful, evolving open source movement,’ says Simon Moores, managing director of Zentelligence Research. ‘It’s moved
out of the beard and sandals to suits in corporations.’

Operating systems are just a part of the open source picture – over the past couple of years, demand for open source software that runs on Windows has rocketed. Firefox (a by-product of Netscape’s decision to go open source) now has about 10 percent of the Internet browser market, providing Microsoft’s Internet Explorer with some much-needed competition. In fact, Microsoft has craftily swiped tabbed browsing, one of Firefox’s most popular features, for Internet Explorer 7.

‘There’s no doubt in my mind that the IE 7 project is a direct result of the work we’ve done to provide people with a better Web experience through Firefox, and IE’s inclusion of Firefox features, from tabbed browsing to Web feed (RSS and others) support and pop-up blocking, is a validation of the pioneering, user-focused work we’ve done in building Firefox,’ said Asa Dotzler, co-founder of the Spread Firefox campaign, on his blog.

OpenOffice has also proved hugely successful over the past couple of years, with an estimated user base of more than 40 million. ‘At the start of 2005, the OpenOffice.org community set itself the target of having a market share of over 40 percent by 2010. Today, it looks as though we’re going to get there sooner,’ says John McCreesh, marketing project co-lead for OpenOffice.org.

Yet despite the impressive figures, analysts say open source software still has a mountain to climb in the consumer market. ‘If you talked to anyone down my street and asked them whether they want open source or Microsoft, they wouldn’t have heard of open source. On the consumer side, it’s non-existent,’ says Moores.

OpenOffice.org’s McCreesh acknowledges that open source still isn’t on most people’s radars. ‘The biggest barrier is that people don’t know there’s an alternative,’ he says. ‘Open source enthusiasts are aware of the problem. We need to get out of the ghetto – I need to be having this interview with a columnist for OK! magazine.’

Open source software, such as OpenOffice and the GIMP imaging suite, has also come under fire for stifling innovation by aping commercial products such as Microsoft Office and Adobe’s Photoshop respectively. ‘The trouble with OpenOffice and older versions of Office, which they emulate, is that they’re built to tackle last era challenges,’ says Nick McGrath, director of platform strategy at Microsoft.

‘Microsoft has been forced to delay the launch of Office 2007 so that it can introduce a new look and feel. I don’t hear users asking for this,’ counters McCreesh. ‘I do hear them complaining about the costs of having to go back to school to learn how to use Office all over again. Microsoft’s “innovation” is driven by a desire to look different from OpenOffice.org. That’s based on Microsoft’s need to make more profits, not because it benefits its users.’

Free software isn’t always open source, of course (in fact, the likes of Richard Stallman would argue that even open source isn’t free by his definition). Google, for example, has been particularly aggressive over the past 18 months in distributing desktop software free of charge. The Google Pack contains the Picasa photo album software, a desktop search application and the much-heralded Google Earth among other things.

Google funds the giveaways from advertising and marketing tie-ins within the products, and Moores claims this approach could win over consumers’ hearts quicker than open source. ‘People are becoming confident in Google as a brand and will start using its software,’ he says.
click to view full size image
Team effort: there are dozens of developers behind the open source graphics software GIMP.

click to view full size image
OpenOffice backers claim innovations in the design of Microsoft's Office 2007, such as the new Ribbon interface, have been driven by the desire to be different from OpenOffice.
Copyright © 2009 Dennis Publishing
This article appeared in the October, 2006 issue of PC Authority.
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