the man behind linux
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page 5: Open Source as Democracy
Upside: And they know there are alternatives.
Torvalds: The fact that you question means that suddenly
you start looking at alternatives. People didn't look
for alternatives [before]. Even if you're not willing
to switch from Windows to Linux or do anything radical,
you're still saying, "Maybe I don't take Microsoft for
granted anymore." I think that's important.
Open vs. proprietary
Upside: How would you contrast the open source approach
under which you developed Linux to Microsoft's proprietary
approach with Windows and Windows NT?
Torvalds: With Linux, the people who use the system get to
[affect the way] the system [develops]. It's democracy
in the sense that you don't surrender control. Anybody
can do anything. It boils down to [the fact that] you
must be [competent], but that's a good way of separating
the people who do the work. And even the [people who]
don't make changes can make suggestions and can do
testing and things like that.
I think that as a development model the open source
model is superior--especially [compared with] the
traditional commercial proprietary setup. It [comes]
down to motivating people to [create] certain things.
But there's a lot of work that doesn't fill the
[criterion] of being interesting, and when something
doesn't fill that [criterion], you [must] have some other
motivational factors. The obvious one [is] money. It's
easier to make money to some degree in a proprietary
setup. A proprietary model takes advantage of the fact
that you limit competition by not giving everybody access
to all the pieces of the puzzle. And limiting competition
is nice for a company.
Upside: Do you have an analogy that illustrates the
differences between the open source and proprietary
approaches?
Torvalds: I'd say something like this--that you'd
have a printing press where the presses own not the
language but the letters of the language. So, you could
have an English printing press that owns the English
letters. Users can read or write whatever they want, but
the person who controls the printing press controls what
is made widely available. You can read or write by hand,
but when you want to make improvements, you'd better
make them yourself or find favor with that printing press.
Upside: On the other side--the open source version of
the analogy--one printer wouldn't control everything.
Torvalds: Then you could have any number of printers,
and they can share the same letters.