Do pay attention to the software behind the curtain editorial cartoon (companion article) color rendering of 3D computer model See a detail, a close-up, or the entirety of this image.
20 Years of Digital Liberty	The year 2004 marks the twentieth anniversary of free software, an apparently odd idea now enjoying sweeping success. More surprising still, what began as a strictly-for-techies issue is today relevant to everyone in a modern democracy. In 1984 Richard Stallman, a computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, quit his job so he could program a computer's fundamental set of instructions (the operating system) and make it completely free. Stallman was reacting to the rise of the software industry, which he saw as taking away productive collaboration between programmers. He wanted to keep the "recipe" for each program (the source code) open, which means available for review and modification by anyone. Shrink-wrapped software boxes on store shelves, instead, locked away the ideas that powered computers and their users, much like barbed wire had fenced off the land that fed earlier pioneers. Stallman and his Free Software Foundation (www.fsf.org) gradually advanced and refined their goals. They drew a distinction between free as free speech and free as free beer. While free software customarily can be downloaded without charge, its driving ideal is liberation from legal and technical constraints. This ideal separates "free as free speech" software from mere freeware -- the latter is offered to the public at no cost, but its source code is closed. In other words, it remains a secret. While creating many useful programs, the FSF lagged in building a complete system. The turning point came in 1991, when Linus Torvalds, a student in Finland, started work on the crucial missing link, the esoteric innards known as the kernel. With remarkable speed he completed an early version and, just as important, succeeded in attracting an informal group of collaborators to keep the momentum going. Combined with the prior work of the FSF and others, the Linux operating system (www.linux.org) was soon ready -- and spreading rapidly to computers everywhere (by the tens of millions, according to estimates not inclusive of other free systems since released). The notion of attracting highly marketable skills to complex projects, all without financial incentive, has grown from one feisty individual's quest to a massive global phenomenon. One site alone, sourceforge.net, lists over 80,000 free programs in some stage of development, and aimed at a wide variety of uses. Even corporations with financial muscle are taking notice: as Forbes magazine reported in June 2004, "IBM has created 45 Linux tech centers in 12 countries, where programmers crank out Linux code." Without realizing it, you may be using free software yourself, every day: over half of the web sites worldwide operate on the free Apache server. That any of this should matter to ordinary citizens seeking information is not obvious at first. The news as seen on television and on the web appear largely the same: assuming the source is truthful, the public should be well served by either medium. But there is a major difference between the delivery of TV programming and web content, and openness of the source code affecting webcasts becomes critically important. While television is simply a pipe between sender and receiver, a lot more goes into Internet connections. TV sets passively soak up broadcast signals that direct them to put pictures on the screen. Computers actively intervene on every bit of data received, applying multiple conversions to it before it reaches the display. If you ever found a web site that was non-functional or seemingly incomplete, you know that these conversions at times fail to convey the intent of the author. This is the result of incompatibilities and mistakes, but it is entirely possible to induce malfunctions on purpose, surreptitiously distorting or suppressing some sites. If willful deception were embedded in closed software, the result would be information manipulation far more subtle and extensive than broadcasters could ever accomplish. Software liberation has become established at a critical moment in politics, as election campaigns rely increasingly on computer communications. Free software is an asset for all citizens precisely because its operation is scrutinized by countless individuals. Todays's voters must be alert to the software lurking inside home PCs, and the free variety is on their side.
Links	and Addresses
	A shorter version of this article was published in the August 2004 issue of the Fullerton Observer. To subscribe, write: P.O. Box 7051, Fullerton, CA, USA; or call: +1-714-525-6402.
	This document is at <www.sanedraw.com/CARTOONS/PIXEXTRA/SFTCRTX.HTM> Last revised 2005-01-18. Copyright 2005 by Sandro Corsi. SaneDraw home