Group and self-interests coalesce

You might have heard of Linux - now Microsoft’s main threat. Linux “kind of” writes itself. How? First; start with some software that is written and then released to others. As other programmers use it, they enhance the code, often to meet their own needs.

Hacker Richard Stallman was incensed at the ease with which such software could be effectively “privatised”. Private firms could enhance publicly available software and then on-sell the product as private software.

Stallman developed “copyleft” - a special copyright licence. Copylefted or “open sourced” software gives anyone to whom it is distributed the right to amend it and to further distribute it to others, but only on condition that any subsequent distribution is subject to the same condition. Get it? This effectively creates a chain of programmers each using and, if they wish, enhancing software. But - and this is the key - it's difficult to benefit from keeping your enhancements secret.

But why would anyone develop the software if they couldn’t make it theirs? As the hacker slogan goes, “give a little, take a lot”. Programmers get the software for nothing. And if they enhance it they had an incentive to donate their work back to the open source community. Why? Because they can’t sell their handiwork without the buyers asserting their right to distribute it themselves. On the other hand, if they share the enhancement it can be incorporated into subsequent releases of the software.

And when the Internet threw off the shackles of geography, thousands of hackers could contribute. Software that “kind of” builds itself! Now the biggest computer companies around - think IBM, Novell, Hewlett Packard - are joining in out of the goodness of their selfish little hearts. They’ve bought into the open source movement distributing and developing software. Why? Because they don’t want to give their rival Microsoft a hand up. Oh, and it helps them meet their customers’ needs better. So they get to sell more of their hardware and consulting services.

Yet another case of one for one, and one for all.