Two Leaders of the Free World

“In the New Testament, Matthew wrote that Jesus fed five thousand men, and more women and children with ‘but five loaves and a couple of fish’ (Matthew 14:13-20). In the cleanup, twelve baskets of leftovers were collected. How He did this was not divulged. It’s open to interpretation. Did He perform a miracle and materialize more food out of thin air? I have my doubts.

“I base my own interpretation upon the folktale ‘Stone Soup’ where a stranger arrives in a town where food is in scarce supply. Everybody claims to be starving, but all appear well fed. The stranger orchestrates an end to the famine that afflicts the town. He calls for everyone to help him make a large pot of soup. They gather the largest pot in town, fill it with water, and set it on a wood fire. Then the stranger adds a ‘magic’ stone to the pot.

“When the water is simmering, he tastes the broth and says that it’s almost ready, but it could use some herbs to improve the flavor. Somebody runs away and returns with some herbs, which are added to the pot. In succession the stranger asks for vegetables, and eventually meat. At each request the hungry townspeople retrieve the requested ingredients. When the pot of soup is ready, the stranger retrieves his ‘magic’ stone from the hearty soup, and all the townspeople sit down to a feast – the ‘famine’ is ended.

“Generosity can be contagious, and hoarding can too. I suspect that it is less likely that Jesus materialized food than that He was able to bring out the best in people. Through His charisma He motivated people to give of themselves and share what little food the pilgrims brought with them. A small quantity from many contributors is a large amount. A miracle? No. Miraculous? In some sense, yes.

“Do you know of anybody, alive today, whose leadership skills can bring out the generosity in people like that? Two people come to my mind. Two leaders of the free world. The first is Richard Stallman who started the free software movement in Boston, with his launch of the GNU Project to build a free Unix like operating system.

“The second person who comes to mind is Linus Torvalds who finished the final obstacle in the GNU Project with the Linux kernel, the core component of the GNU/Linux operating system. The legendary development strategy employed by Torvalds is described in the book The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

“Cathedrals are built by hierarchical organizations, like central planning. Proprietary software development operates the same way, with managers and workers following a plan passed down from above. Progress is measured, throwing more people at a problem often slows progress, results can be all or nothing, and bad plans lead to ruin.

“However, untold exchanges are made in a bazaar, at a personal level, on a voluntary basis, like a free market economy. In the free software community, the Internet and a ‘release early, release often’ fast paced development cycle made rapid progress possible. The Internet also made collaboration practical on an unprecedented scale ‘given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.’ Results aim from one stable build to the next, with unstable builds in between when new features are integrated. Torvalds’ kernel project successfully leveraged the collective forces of multitudes, on a collaborative effort, in a short amount of time, with outstanding quality, and no money changing hands. It was a high point in human history. Something we can all be proud of.

Excerpted from Gistmass Story: Context

How Microsoft is like Socialized Medicine

“And consider medicine... Now here’s where it really gets interesting. Here’s a question for you. The answer is opposite what you’d expect. Is free software or proprietary software more like socialized medicine?”

“You’re saying proprietary software is more like socialized medicine? I find that hard to believe.”

“It’s true, and here’s why. Think of software as a medical patient and a bug as a disease. First, with proprietary providers you cannot chose your own physician. You must seek treatment from the proprietary provider. So let’s say you call Microsoft and somebody takes down your symptoms over the phone and puts you on a waiting list for treatment. Triage determines the order that diseases are considered. Only when your disease turns into an epidemic does Microsoft act quickly. If you have a rare disease, or not enough people complain about it, then no effort goes into a cure. Treatment often amounts to workarounds to mask the symptoms rather than an actual cure. Even if you happen to be rich and are willing to pay the physician’s salary out of your own pocket, Microsoft has no public policy to offer that kind of service. Your only options are to live with the disease or find another provider, but be forewarned. All proprietary provider plans amount to the same thing, a lot like socialized medicine.

“The strategy of proprietary providers is to offer new services to sign up new medical patients, because patients pay up front to join the medical plan, like taxpayers in socialized medicine. Microsoft makes no money finding cures. Not only does Microsoft create diseases it will never cure, but Microsoft patients are susceptible to viruses. Anti-virus prevention for healthy patients degrades their performance, who slow down with age anyway. We’re talking chronic performance loss over years not decades. If you ever do get treated then chances are your doctor should have been sued for malpractice since he gave you the disease in the first place. Second opinions are not an option, and forget about Emergency Room visits. No ER option exists in proprietary provider medical plans.

“Now let’s consider free software. First the pool of physicians is much larger. When you discover symptoms you check a public forum for reports of similar symptoms. The cure may already exist, and you just need to apply a patch. If you happen to be the first to report new symptoms the cure may come quick or it may take awhile. If you’re in a hurry, then you can pay any physician of your choice to diagnose your disease and apply a cure. You can even pay any physician of your choice to make a house call. Not only are you allowed second opinions, but expert physicians from all over the world consult to diagnose and find a cure for your symptoms.

“When a cure for your symptoms is found, the cure is shared with all patients free of charge. So you can get patches for symptoms you never knew you had. If you have the skills, you can perform regular updates yourself, or you can buy a service contract from any physician of your choice to perform those updates at your convenience. That’s a lot like free market health care. Best of all, the cost of health care is free and a physician is always on call. You only pay for services that you request, and free software patients are immune from Microsoft viruses.

“So the two medical plans differ greatly. The incentive for proprietary providers is to sell defective products and spend money advertising. The incentive for free market health care is to sell effective services. As a consequence, free market health care offers patients a healthier lifestyle with greater reliability. Patients of free market health care improve with age. In the free software community the price of the software is free, like air or human languages or scientific knowledge, but we charge service fees. If you can manage your own software installation, then you pay with your own time. However, hardware is not free. Some companies like ours bundle free software with hardware to offer superior products. If you already own hardware then you can migrate for free and gain all the benefits of free market health care. Do you use a PC yourself?”

“I do, yes.”

“Home or office?”

“Both.”

“Do you use an office suite: word processor, spreadsheet, drawing, and presentation applications?”

“Yes.”

“Open office dot org does all that and it imports Microsoft file formats and exports PDF formated files. Do you use an Internet browser?”

“Yes.”

“Mozilla Firefox is free software based upon the Netscape browser. Do you use email?”

“Yes.”

“The Mozilla community also makes a free email client. Do you use a music player?”

“Yes.”

“Video player?”

“Yes.”

“Games like solitaire?”

“Yes.”

“A sophisticated image editor?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I wouldn’t use it enough to justify the cost.”

“But would you use it if it’s free?”

“Probably.”

“Then, no doubt, free software would automatically increase your productivity. Can you burn a CD on you PC?”

“Yes.”

“Then here’s what you do.” UV pulled out a Post-it pad and wrote down an Internet address. “Go to this website.” UV handed her the note.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

“Download the desktop software and burn it onto a CD. Reboot your machine with the CD in the drive and your computer should boot from the CD. That way you can test it out on your own hardware and make sure it all works before installing it. Any problems you encounter check online for help. Ubuntu comes standard with a graphical user interface, security, and a world renowned operating system.”

“What’s Ubuntu?”

“The Zulu word ‘ubuntu’ translates as ‘humanity to others.’ In a word ‘generosity,’ but it has deeper meanings of community. ‘I am what I am because of who we all are.’ A British company named Canonical supports the Ubuntu effort.

“If you have enough disk space you can dual boot between Ubuntu and other operating systems. That way you can immigrate to the free world at your own pace. The installation CD handles all that for you. Once you’re up and running you can easily add applications. Let’s say you want to manage your own finances. You click on the ‘Add/Remove...’ menu item. Search for ‘finance’ and get a list of applications. You read the descriptions and chose one. When you click ‘Apply Changes’ it installs the application automatically over your Internet connection, and you’re free to use it.

“But say an application you downloaded isn’t ready for prime time. It’s for testers and developers, and you need a working version. You can remove the application with the same interface and install another application. Often more than one application is available to perform the same task. Microsoft will never refund the price of their own defective product and give you a competitor’s product for free. Also free software applications tend to import file formats from proprietary products, but you need to check that out on a case-by-case basis.”

“Sounds simple.”

“It is.”

“But it sounds too good to be true.”

UV sensed that Blondie felt discouraged from past experiences. “Well, if you buy proprietary software then you encourage the behavior that supports it. The down side of proprietary software does not justify its up side. Using free software makes us all better citizens and better members of our community.”

Excerpted from Gistmass Story: Context