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The View from the Desktop
Free or Freeloading?
The words "free" and "freedom" are used a lot in the Linux sphere. They are used with definitions that are sometimes obvious and sometimes not, and when the definitions aren't obvious the explanations -- "beer," "speech" -- don't do much to illuminate the obscure.
Those distinctions -- beer and speech -- mean this, respectively: Free of charge and free to do with as you please. Nice notions, both of them, that can be taken to ridiculous extremes, as is true of all but a very few ideas.
I propose to talk about the former kind of free -- the kind that implies that you don't have to pay for it -- and why it may prove to be a bad idea for those who favor the desktop use of Linux.
If you've been following the activity among distributions, large development efforts, and even community web sites over the last few months, you may have noticed a trend that is at least disquieting: There has been increased movement toward enterprise Linux, often at the expense of the standalone machine or small network user. Where the desktop is mentioned at all, the word "groupware" is sure to be lurking nearby.
Ximian, the provider of a commercial GNOME desktop, has achieved considerable success with a groupware email program, "Evolution," as well as a product called "Connector," which is free by no definition of the word and which makes Evolution a Microsoft Exchange client. This from a company whose chief technical officer sits on the board of the Free Software Foundation. Even KMail, the dandy little KDE email client, has removed the flat, one-line-per-address addressbook entirely, in favor of bigger, more bloated, more groupware-like alternatives.
A well known Linux site, a mainstay of the community for many years, is soon to change its focus, contentrating now not on items of interest to the broader group of Linux users but instead, as an official with the site told me, "articles that help server administrators." The site's editor explained it further: Linux users don't buy anything, so advertisers aren't interested in reaching them. Enterprise IT people spend money. The change is necessary.
As noted elsewhere, Loki Software breathes its very last gasp this week. While a strong argument is to be made that things weren't run very well over at Loki and that a lot of people who weren't responsible for the company's ills were nevertheless made to suffer, the inescapable fact is that not very many people bought what by most accounts were very good games at reasonable prices. That is a loss to us all, even those of us who are not gamers, because it furthers the perception that commercial software producers would be wise to sit Linux out.
Corel, the Canadian company, contributed considerably to the fit and polish of KDE in the course of putting together its ill-fated distribution. It also offered a suite of competent applications, some of which offered sophistication not available in other Linux applications of the same category. Not many people bought them, and they are no longer readily available. Applix, now VistaSource, produces a nice little suite that at first resembles the various "works" packages for Windows, but which is very configurable and which offers its own ability to produce custom applications for specialized purposes. At less than $100 retail, it seems like the kind of thing that would reside on just about every Linux desktop. It doesn't, and what we once knew as Applixware Office 5.0 is now "Anyware Desktop for Linux," and is marketed to businesses.
Word is that Sun will charge money for new versions of StarOffice for Linux. Hancom, a Korean company, is about to introduce a new office suite that may prove just right for the standalone and small office user. They are probably right in targeting the enterprise customer, though, based on our unwillingness to pay for things.
Distributions are moving more and more toward the enterprise. Caldera, a superb distribution, no longer offers a boxed-set workstation product for retail sale. Others are concentrating on businesses in other ways. And who can blame them? The $1.95 copies of the distributions greatly outsell the boxed sets produced by the distributions themselves.
Yes, new distributions pop up here and there -- Gentoo has gained some notice, for instance -- and there will always be a Debian (though last year saw the failure of its founder to get us to pay for a commercial version, called "Progeny," in sufficient numbers to make the effort worthwhile).
The community of Linux developers has done a tremendous job in bringing us a stable, secure, and generally useful operating system. The sense is that they all did this in their spare time, motivated solely by pure altruism. The sense in this case misleads -- a substantial number of them have been subsidized by companies that have an interest in Linux, and companies being companies, that means an interest in making a profit from Linux. If we are not a market, then they will look elsewhere -- and the Linux work they will pay their people to perform may not take it in directions of much use to us. Corel contributed generally to KDE; people did not buy Corel's distribution or applications; the Corel people contributing to Linux are now gone. Projects once heavily populated by people from Red Hat and Caldera are in some cases less so, as those companies take a greater interest in backoffice operations.
Keeping Linux as an obvious choice for a desktop operating system depends on us, and on our willingness to support the companies that provide applications directly and provide a great deal more indirectly. We have gotten the reputation that we are freeloaders, there to scoop up anything we don't have to pay for, but unwilling to fork over the relatively few dollars -- compared to other operating systems -- to keep the companies that support us alive.
When the gravy train leaves the station, it will be because we sent it on its way. It is within our power to keep that from happening.
We should.
Posted 10 March 2002