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But a search on "Peter Brown"--the executive director of the Free Software Foundation--and "free software" produces only 14,000 hits on Google and little information about Brown's past.
So when we visited the foundation's headquarters in Boston, it was a surprise to discover a clean-cut, business-suited Englishman from Oxford--very different from FSF founder Stallman, with his impressive beard and baggy clothes.
Their backgrounds are also totally different. While Stallman is a programmer, having almost single-handedly developed the original version of applications such as Emacs and the GNU C Compiler, Brown has a background in business and finance, and he only dabbled with coding when he was in his teens.
Despite these differences, the two men share the same goal--in basic terms, freedom around software, but more specifically, to give people the freedom to run software for any purpose; to study and adapt that software, passing on the improvements to the public; and to freely redistribute copies of the software.
Both men are responsible for the overall direction of the Free Software Foundation and seem to offer complementary skills, with Brown coming across as more of a pragmatist than Stallman, whose idealism and drive to fulfill his goals has led him to spend his life telling people across the world about free software.
ZDNet UK met with Brown to learn more about some of the foundation's upcoming projects, how it's run and funded, and what he feels makes it so special.
Q: Tell us a bit about how you came to be the executive director of the FSF. Do you have a technical background?
Brown: I'm not a programmer, and I'm not a hacker. The last time I programmed was when I was 14 years old.
When I was a kid, I had a Sinclair ZX-81, with 1KB of memory. At the time--back in 1984 or '85--if you wanted to play a game, you couldn't buy a CD, so you had to buy one of the listing magazines, like Sinclair Programs. You had to look at the listing of computer code and type it into your machine. The keyboard was terrible--it was simply a flat piece of plastic. At the end you would try to run the program, and if it didn't run, you would have to correct any syntax errors.
Over time, I slowly worked out why errors occurred and started to learn how to program in Basic. At one point, I sent a game I had written to Sinclair Programs, and they accepted it for publication and sent me a check for 25 pounds. As soon as I sent off the first game, I started writing the next one.
So the magazine arrived, and my game was inside, and they'd drawn a nice big cartoon for it. Unfortunately, when I flicked to the editorial for the magazine, it said, "This is the last ever edition of the magazine." It was basically saying that in the future, people will not share source code and won't type code into computers--they'll buy games on physical media instead.
What was funny was that this was the September 1985 edition of the magazine, which was a month before the Free Software Foundation was created, in response to the fact that people were taking (open) computer code and turning it into proprietary code.
Looking back at it now, overnight, my world was destroyed, because the listing magazine was destroyed. It just became about playing code, rather than writing code. That was the last time I ever did any programming.
What jobs were you doing before you came to work for the FSF? How did you end up in Boston, working as its executive director?
Brown: I've always been in management or finance. I have mainly worked for nonprofits, including Oxford City Council, the BBC and New Internationalist magazine. I was at New Internationalist for several years, then my wife, who worked for Oxford University on a genotyping facility, saw a position offered here (in Boston).
We weren't looking to move, as we were pretty settled in Oxford, but decided to come over here in January 2001 so she could take on the job. I took a seven-month sabbatical before looking for a job. At the time, the FSF was looking for a part-time person, so I came to work here. Initially I helped with the administration, and as we expanded, I took on more duties, such as managing the GPL compliance lab. Last February, I was appointed as the executive director.
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--Marilee V.
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Thank you for spotting this and for bringing it to our attention. We appreciate your feedback.
But wont the marketplace also determine what's good?
For example, Adobe's CS is a robust tool well liked by designers. As the company strives to improve its product for its customers, making the tool even more robust, new users and existing ones seek to purchase the tool and upgrades. That code is continually updated.
Isn't the marketplace also a venue which determines what "code will never die?"
--Marilee V.
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Example...OS/2 at the time and for a while it was an infinitely better OS than Windows was and yet strictly due to marketting and not the marketlace and even less technical merit the product was "killed".
In this case good code died.
Adobe will keep updating and upgrading CS only as long as it can reap profits and I would argue they even build in obsolescence and withhold features for the sake of the next upgrade.
If this is marketplace driven code then it's not good code or at least not the best possible code.
So in answer to your question...."I don't think so".
Abandoned free and open-source software is still available for people to use and even update.
Do a web search for the SeaMonkey web browser. It's an updated version of the Mozilla Application Suite; the interface still bears a striking resemblance to its ancestor, Netscape 4. The Mozilla Foundation abandoned the App Suite in favor of Firefox and Thunderbird, but for whatever reason there's still a community devoted to this relic. Because of the software's free/open-source license, a small group of programmers was able to add the latest rendering engine to their old interface and make this new piece of software that appeals to a certain group of consumers.
Free software isn't anti-market, despite the penchant for a number of its true believers to pitch it in revolutionary terms. The phenenom can also easily be described in market terms. I'll start with one: commoditization. Microsoft has been commoditizing software with a proprietary model too, by including products in the operating system. Netscape and Real Networks saw their original business models dry up when this competitor commoditized their market segments.
But when Microsoft did it, it created vendor lock-in. And that led to stagnation. Look at how outdated IE got, with all its security holes and lack of support for so many modern web design techniques. They're just now playing catch-up, and who can say if they would have done it at all if Mozilla Firefox hadn't been doing so well!
Software freedom seems to be serving consumers very well.
I think that this license more determines what type of ownership is good or bad; not the consumer end. The Better Business Bureau is more for consumer rights.
He says code wont die but I think more realistically that free software and free media (creative commons) will ensure that BAD code or Art will surely die, I sincerely hope so as I'm sick of people humping their way to the top. So consumers decide in the end. Places like www.musicnow.com are a good start by putting most of what's out there in front of your face well categorized, but still, there are too many restrictions that are limiting the true innovation that I see over at the Creative Commons websites. Check out the CC's free media bin. I think there are some CC tools to categorize music as well or there working on it.
I'm sick of artists and musicians allowing the service industry to run their music. Record companies are a service to record your music. They are supposed to be a paid service working for you. I think if a musician wants to NOT allow people to own their work after you purchased it, then he should state it himself and contract it himself instead of hiding behind the skirts of the music industry. Stop being a wimp.
The GNU allows the original author to maintain ownership by insisting that and holder retain the original contract and release the code freely.
I am against a company purchasing something and then deleting the original intent or author who created it. It's counter-industrial.
So I think a good protest term for GNU would be AUTHOR'S INTENT for CONSUMER'S RIGHTS.
or GNU: AVOID STINKY SOFTWARE
or CREATIVE COMMONS: ALLOW GOOD VIBES TO REACH YOUR EARS.or CREATIVE COMMONS: STOP PAY TO PLAY. We will not pay EXTRA to release our music anymore! We will not allow our music to be filtered by non-consumers!
I envision a solid future where products are very quality because on efficiency (think about the spaceships and other high end tech) of original intent, while other companies help each other out by not being redundant and recreating the same design over and over;.because they destroyed the original one. Everyone usually agrees that there's nothing better then the original.
Also we are living in a society of waste and redundancy. This can't happen anymore because tech has become too fast, as we build houses and things so quick, we need to slow down and promote more quality if we are to survive.
Instead of thinking about what we have we are thinking how much more we need all the time. This 'more' stuff has to stop.
non-free products is just a preemptive move by companies to maximize their profits by limiting resources with false scarcity.