Open Source Software Convention 2000: A Comfy, Seamless World

09/05/2000
by Edward Piou

This past July in Monterey, California, almost 2000 open-source technologists gathered for the O'Reilly Open Source Software Convention. Two keynote speakers and a panel of open-source company business leaders provided some particularly compelling visions of where open source is heading. We're heading, it appears, towards a world of seamless integration, where content and application logic can be plucked from multiple sources to develop personalized computer environments; where software that makes life easier for us replicates and evolves, but is constantly under attack; where how open-source software interfaces with the rest of the world is more important than its internal workings.

Keynote #1: Andy Hertzfeld, Founder of Eazel

Andy Hertzfeld got the open-source religion in 1998, when Netscape open-sourced its browser. This makes him, and the company he co-founded - Eazel, dedicated to making Linux more usable - relative newcomers to the movement. But he's put in his dues elsewhere in the computer industry, having joined Apple Computers in the late 1970s, where he worked on both the Apple II and the original Macintosh.

Hertzfeld gave numerous - and amusing - examples of the lengths to which innovators like Steve Wozniak, working in the 70s and early 80s, would go to tweak their computer systems, in a search for better performance or just more knowledge. One of the more impressive stories started with Wozniak creating a series of complex software copy-protection schemes, as well as the means to break them; and culminated with the Woz trying (unsuccessfully) to use the heat of a clothing iron to break his ultimate encryption scheme.

Much as the availability of source code lets open-source programmers alter and improve software, open standards and relatively cheap components let the early hardware hackers build, improve, and reconfigure machines to their hearts' content. The early hackers also shared a basic desire with today's open-source programmers: they bought components and built computers because they wanted machines for themselves, that they could take home and use on their own terms. There's a clear parallel in the way many of today's greatest open-source projects grew from one programmers' desire for useful, robust, and affordable software.

In putting together Eazel, Hertzfeld took another step with open source which mirrors his early days at Apple. Working at Apple, Andy and his compatriots moved beyond building computers for themselves; their goal was to build hardware and software simple enough for their non-technical friends and family. At Eazel, he and his team are developing software that will make Linux usable to a wider range of users, and may help it win the desktop war with Microsoft.

His keynote did contain a note of warning. While hackers can drive technology forward, it's business models that drive industries. Microsoft dominates the computer industry because it recognized, early on, that selling software was the wave of the future. IBM's opening up of the PC architecture made a lot of technical innovation possible; but software sales ended up determining the kind of experience people get from their computers.

A similar paradigm shift is happening today. The dominant technology business model will move from selling software to providing seamless networked services. Seamless networked services doesn't mean using web-based mail, chat rooms, and remote calendaring systems; it means letting users combine pieces of different remote applications and services to build their own local environment. Microsoft's announcement of its .NET initiative shows that they "get it." The ideas in .NET aren't new ones, and Microsoft may not be able to deliver on their promises; but they recognize the paradigm shift, and the open-source community must do so too to survive and thrive.

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