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Software development is an inherently cumulative and collaborative process. It is cumulative in the sense that new software is created by assembling existing software constructs into ever more complex and powerful constructs. And it is collaborative in the sense that it is readily amenable to joint, collective development by large numbers of organizations and individuals.
For this reason software has a unique capability to undergo rapid and complex evolutionary growth. This is nowhere better demonstrated than by the extraordinary growth and vitality of the Internet itself.
However, this evolutionary capability depends critically on freedom of action. It depends on the freedom of the software engineering community to reuse existing software constructs, and engage in collaborative development, without restriction. Any restrictions placed on this freedom inhibit the growth potential of the software and Internet industries.
By contrast, the conventional business model is based on asset ownership, and denial of that ownership to competing companies. In the case of the software industry, asset ownership is effected by means of a proprietary software model, in which software ownership is maintained by means of patents, copyright, and trade secrecy.
However, these ownership mechanisms cut directly across the essential freedom of action that gives software its unique evolutionary capabilities. All three mechanisms explicitly deny access to existing software constructs. They prevent software reuse and collaborative development, and therefore inhibit the natural software development process.
The proprietary software model is in fundamental conflict with the nature of software itself.
Twenty years ago Richard Stallman understood this very well, and he and others formulated the principles of free software, a completely non-proprietary software model []. Under this model software is a communal resource, freely available to the entire software development community without any restrictive ownership mechanisms.1.1
In 1985 Stallman and others founded the Free Software Foundation [], an organization dedicated to the promotion of free software. They did the necessary intellectual work to formalize the principles of free software, created written materials to define and promote the free software concept, and established a framework for collaborative development of free software projects.
This early work led eventually to the creation of GNU/Linux, the foundational software for the entire free software movement [].
Twenty years later, this movement is mature and robust. It is fully proven as a viable development model that can equal or exceed the capabilities of the proprietary model.
We believe that the intellectual property ownership mechanisms of patents, copyright and trade secrecy, as they exist today, have virtually no legitimacy at all within the digital domain.
Many of our laws and practices serve to balance rights between potentially conflicting constituencies. As originally conceived, and as practiced within the material domain, these intellectual property mechanisms may well serve this purpose. But within the digital domain, they do not.
These ownership mechanisms confer unquestionable competitive advantage on their owner. But they do so at unacceptable cost to society at large. Patents, copyright and trade secrecy explicitly prevent the cumulative and collaborative development processes that give software its unique potential. As a result society is denied the full realization of this potential.
We believe that the proprietary model is the wrong basis for the software industry. Instead, we are advocates of the free software model, in which software is treated as a communal resource, subject to complete freedom of action by anyone.
We further believe that the free software movement as we see it today is only the beginning. It is the first manifestation of a much bigger cultural shift: a shedding of the traditional conventions of material capitalism, and the adoption of a new set of conventions based on non-material capitalism. Western capitalistic societies are rooted in the historical conventions and institutions of material products and materially-based services. In the digital domain these conventions appear in the form of the proprietary software model.
But in the non-material world, there is a better way of doing things. The power of free software derives from a relinquishing of the traditional intellectual property conventions. Instead, free software is based on a set of principles that allow powerful generative forces to come into play. Thus traditional copyright is rewritten in the form of copyleft; ownership of software via patents is relinquished in favor of patent-free protocols and software; self-interested software hoarding via trade secrecy is relinquished in favor of a convention of openness and sharing.
The result is a culture of creative freedom and collaboration, based on collective pooling of resources. Twenty years after the fact the premise appears very simple: in the digital domain there is more to be gained by collective pooling than by individual ownership.
We believe that these principles apply, not just in the digital domain, but throughout the non-material domain in general. We believe that these principles have equivalent power and can bring equivalent benefits in many fields throughout the sciences and humanities. We invite other professions to look critically at the free software movement, and consider applying its principles to their own field of endeavor.
But one thing at a time. The next natural extension of free software is its extension into the domain of Internet services.