Wouldn't it be great if, instead of spending time and money testing your programs, you could just have a few hundred thousand eager, savvy users test them for you? It would be better yet, of course, if some of those users would fix the bugs they find.
Some developers have realized this dream. They place their source code on the Internet, announce it in a few newsgroups, and wait for people to download, test, and even fix their programs. The Free Software Foundation's highly respected GCC compiler and Emacs editor were developed in this fashion. Free operating systems-Linux, FreeBSD, the GNU HURD, and the like-have also benefited from generously contributed error reports and bug fixes. It's "no secrets" attitude about source code has some definite advantages for their clients: Some people consider Linux more secure than many commercial operating systems because its source code has been more widely scrutinized. This belief underlines an important point: Though free, these programs are not toys. They are large, complex projects that rival the stability and feature lists of their commercial counterparts.
In fact, development strategies for free software have been so successful that commercial developers are beginning to emulate them. It's becoming common for companies to release beta-test software over the Web. Even IBM, once dominated by a proprietary, inward-looking worldview, has set up a special web site (http://www.alphaworks.ibm .com) specifically to disseminate prerelease software and elicit feedback. The news-making Netscape versus Microsoft "browser war" is also being fought with freely downloadable beta software. Development-tool vendors, like neologic, Rogue Wave, Borland, and even Microsoft, now include full source code with their development libraries.
Caldera (http://www.caldera.com) has taken this free software-development model especially seriously. The company has managed to improve its software extensively by soliciting source contributions over the Internet. Because the Caldera Network Desktop is based on Linux, there's an abundance of talented developers eager to contribute sophisticated features. Many of these contributors ask for little more than a copy of the software and a T-shirt in return. As they contribute improvements to the wider Linux community, Caldera is generating a lot of good will (and press), as well as helping to encourage non-Caldera development that directly benefits Caldera.
This strategy has been so successful that Caldera is going to try to duplicate the Linux phenomenon with DR-DOS. Caldera recently obtained a collection of DOS technologies from Novell, including CP/M, DR-DOS, PalmDOS, Multi-User DOS, and Novell DOS 7. Caldera plans to add a variety of new features to this base and release a new OpenDOS operating system. To encourage use, it plans to post the source code on its web site. Some of the code will eventually be released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). This means that those portions will be freely available to whomever wants to use them, and it ensures that Caldera (and everyone else) will be able to use any improvements other people might make to that code.
Another company using free software to its advantage is Cygnus (http://www.cygnus. com). It started by supporting GNU GCC and other Free Software Foundation tools. Cygnus customizes and extends these tools for clients, improving the freely available versions in the process. For many Cygnus clients, it's an ideal situation. The software is stable and high-quality, with good support. Just as importantly, since the software is free, clients aren't locked into a single vendor. Even if Cygnus were to suddenly stop supporting a particular tool, the client would have full source and could contract with someone else.
The framers of the GNU GPL (http://www.gnu.org) might look upon the success of Caldera and Cygnus as being a prelude to an era in which all software is free, and companies compete for support and maintenance services. I don't believe this will happen; commercial software isn't going to go away. However, free software isn't going to disappear either. As commercial development budgets and schedules tighten, anyone who can develop software for free (or nearly free) deserves to be taken seriously.
Tim Kientzle
technical editor