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<H1><font color="maroon">Paradigm Shift</font></H1>
<H4>By <a href="mailto:joe@pjprimer.com">Joe Barr</a></H4>
</center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<P>
<B>paradigm shift</B> <I>paradigm shift (pair uh dime
shift) 1. a profound and
irreversible change to a different model of
behavior or perception. 2. an
epiphany with staying power. 3. a sea change of
such magnitude that it alters
the course of all who pass through it. </I>
<P>
Paradigm shifts. Thinking back over my years in
the industry, there haven't been
that many. Especially when you consider the
thousands of times the term has been
used. The move of the center from the glass
house to the desktop certainly
qualifies. Likewise the rethinking of systems
analysis and design, from the physical
to the logical, was echoed by structured
programming.
<P>
But programming was to be swept by a second,
perhaps even more fundamental
change in perspective as we moved from
procedural languages to object oriented.
And to put it in everyday terms, there is a
whole new mindset today when you
connect to the internet than there was when you
reached out to touch a BBS.
<P>
There have been plenty of impostors: bubble
memory, the death of mainframes,
quality management, cold fusion, new Coke and
"push content" on the web. It's
<P>
often impossible to tell the difference
between la buzz de jour and the first stirrings
of a new-born, honest to baud, as real as the
day is long, paradigm shift.
<P>
The incubation period can last for years.
Eventually, though, a thing either emerges
and changes everything or it quietly fades
away. Only then can you know for sure. I
believe we are at the edge of the largest
paradigm shift in the history of the industry.
This one will smash the current model beyond
recognition. Our children and our
children's children will look back at the first
age, the first 30 years of personal
computing, and see it for the barbaric,
archaic, self inhibiting, self impeding dinosaur
that it is.
<P>
A paradigm shift does not mean one thing is
simply replaced by another. A new
force field appears, draws attention to itself,
and may coexist with, perhaps even
languish alongside for some period of time, the
model that it will replace.
<P>
There may even be a longer period of time
during which the original gradually fades
away. The shift occurs, quite simply, when you
wake up one day and find yourself
seeing things in a new way, from a new
perspective.
<P>
The glass house and the personal computer? That
one has been underway for many
years. Microsoft has eclipsed IBM as the
largest seller of software in the quarter
just ended.
<P>
The shift, by definition, never occurs in
isolation. There must be related spheres,
energizing pulses, co-dependent orbs circling
the prime. It is when the catalyst
works its magic that you are transported.
Suddenly you are "there."
<P>
Object oriented programming has been around for
quite awhile now. I remember in
the early 80's my brother asking if I had taken
a look at Smalltalk yet. He seemed
quite taken with the language and what it was
about. I toyed with the turtle and got
some inkling of objects and inheritance, but I
really couldn't see that much would
ever happen in the real world with Alan Kay's
brainchild.
<P>
Years later C++ would begin to move into the
mainstream. Not replacing Cobol
and C but just establishing its own place in
the landscape. OO methodologies
<P>
began to abound as more and more people
crossed the line. But the big push hadn't
even happened yet, Oak hadn't even dropped the
acorn that became Java.
<P>
Today, with the wildfire popularity of Java
among developers, with its entry into the
enterprise not only assured but an established
fact, with its continued maturing and
fleshing out, it is Java that is carrying the
banner of object oriented programing to
the dwindling herd of procedural programmers.
<P>
Of course, in the time between Kay's
conceptualization of objects, GUIs and
cut-and-paste, and where we are today, it has
not always been clear that this was
the kind of stuff that would have profound,
far-reaching impact on the way we look
at software and design, the way we look at the
tasks to be done and how we plan
to do them.
<P>
To many of the brightest and the best, at least
to many outside of the Learning
Research Group at Xerox Palo Alto Research
Center during the 70's and 80's,
bubble memory was much more likely to be the
next big thing. And so it is with
some trepidation that I hereby formally and
officially predict that we are today
awash in the first tides of a sea change that
will once again change everything.
<P>
But keep in mind, my dweebs, that my track
record as a Karmac for Computing is
something less than perfect. It was in the fall
of 1978 that I told Sam Skaggs, then
president of Skaggs-Albertsons superstores, the
first marriage of drug and grocery
emporiums, that scanning technology would never
work in a grocery store.
<P>
And in 1994 I predicted OS/2 would win the
desktop from Windows. So don't bet
the digital dirtfarm on this just yet. Your
narrator is guessing, just as every other
pundit who looks out past the breakers for
first signs of the swell that will become
the next big wave.
<P>
My hunch is this: free/open source software
will emerge as the only sensible choice.
Feel the tremors in the Northwest? This one
could be killer. There has been much
debate over which term ("free software" or
"open source") is the best choice, the
most descriptive, and the truest to its
philosophical roots. I am not going to go
there. I will compromise by using both terms
interchangeably.
<P>
But please note that the word free in "free
software" applies to a state of being, not
to its price. It is about freedom. Also note
that the hottest software product in the
world today, Linux, qualifies as free software
under this definition, whether you
download it for free from the internet or pay
anywhere from $1.99 to $99.99 for
specific distributions.
<P>
Linux is the only non-Windows operating system
in the world that is gaining market
share. How hot is it? It's almost impossible
these days to keep up with articles in
the press about Linux. A mailing list dedicated
to Linux News recently had to split
into three separate lists in order to handle
the load. Linus Torvalds, its creator, is on
the cover of the August issue of Forbes.
<P>
Every major computer trade publication is
showering it with attention. Oracle,
Ingres, and Informix have just announced they
will be porting their database
products to Linux. Caldera has just announced
(and has available for free
download today) a Netware server for Linux. And
that's just the news from the
past two weeks. Linux has cache, bebe.
<P>
The roots of Linux-mania began in the early
80's when Richard Stallman founded
the GNU Project. Stallman had worked at MIT
during the 70's and witnessed the
destructive (in terms of group productivity and
effort) nature of restrictive licensing
of proprietary software. He wanted to create a
free, modern operating system that
could be used by everyone.
<P>
In the GNU Manifesto (1983), he explained why
he must write GNU: "I consider
that the golden rule requires that if I like a
program I must share it with other people
who like it. Software sellers want to divide
the users and conquer them, making
each user agree not to share with others.
<P>
I refuse to break solidarity with other users
in this way. I cannot in good conscience
sign a nondisclosure agreement or a software
license agreement.
<P>
For years I worked within the Artificial
Intelligence Lab to resist such tendencies
and other inhospitalities, but eventually they
had gone too far: I could not remain in
an institution where such things are done for
me against my will.
<P>
So that I can continue to use computers without
dishonor, I have decided to put
together a sufficient body of free software so
that I will be able to get along without
any software that is not free.
<P>
I have resigned from the AI lab to deny MIT any
legal excuse to prevent me from
giving GNU away."
<P>
By the time (almost ten years later) Linus
Torvalds had a good working Linux
kernel available, the GNU project had most of
the non-kernel essentials ready. It
was a marriage made in free/open source
software heaven, and Linus converted the
original Linux license to the GPL (GNU's
General Public License).
<P>
After all, it seemed the obvious choice to the
young college student who had
wanted to create a free version of Unix that
everyone could use. Not only is Linus a
true code wizard, he is delightfully perfect
for his role today as poster boy of the
free/open source movement.
<P>
Every interview, every public appearance, each
bit of history about him and Linux
unearthed reveals a warm, wise, friendly,
candid and particularly unpretentious
personality. How else could someone whose views
are so diametrically opposed to
those of Bill Gates and the money mongers end
up on the cover of Forbes? But
Linux is not the only success story in the
world of free/open source.
<P>
Netscape rocked the commercial world earlier
this year when it announced it
would free the source code for its browser and
make it available for download to
<P>
anyone who wanted it. Netscape now claims that
the browser has been improved
as much over the past couple of months as it
would have in 2.5 years in its closed
source environment.
<P>
FreeBSD, a rival for Linux in the UNIX like,
free/open source sector, has its own
fanatical users and supporters. Just this past
week it shattered an existing world
record for total bytes transferred from an FTP
site in a single day. CRL Network
Services, host of the popular Walnut Creek
CD-ROM ftp site, announced on July
30th that they had moved over 400 gig of files
on July 28, 1998. The previous
mark of about 350 gig had been set by Microsoft
during the Win95 launch period.
<P>
Oh, one other thing. The FreeBSD record was set
on a single 200Mhz Pentium
box. The Microsoft record was set using 40
separate servers. Results like those are
probably the driving force behind the emerging
model. The performance just blows
away what Windows is able to deliver in their
closed, sealed, NDA protected,
shoot you if you see it source code,
proprietary model.
<P>
Eric S. Raymond, keeper of the tome on
internetese called "The Jargon File" and
author on the must read essay "The Cathedral
and The Bazaar," talks about the
success he had with FETCHMAIL using the Bazaar
model of development. Lots
of eyes on the code: bugs are found more
quickly, enhancements made more
quickly, design becomes more normalized.
<P>
But Linus is the candle for the moth. Leo
LaPorte had him as a guest on his ZDTV
show the night that Win98 was launched. I
caught him in chat on the way out and
asked him how SMP was looking for the next
release. He said it looked very good.
<P>
It seems he is always this accessible, and that
is part of his magic and part of the
reason for the success of Linux and shift in
thinking about software development.
For open software to not only flourish but
become the norm, at least for those
essential bits, like operating systems, that
everyone needs to run, there must be
huge successes to attract the rest of the crowd.
<P>
Linux and FreeBSD are two of those attractions.
Linus is the advantage that Linux
holds over FreeBSD, not in a technical sense,
but in a human sense. To get a sense
of what Linus is like, it's interesting to
follow his exchange of USENET messages
with Andy Tanenbaum, the creator of Minix.
<P>
Linus began his 386 experience with Minix and
began to extend it to create Linux.
He and Andy exchanged a series of messages in
comp.os.minix over the issues of
microkernel architecture, truly free software,
and the relative merits of Minix and
Linux.
<P>
It began with a post by Tanenbaum which said in
part:
<P>
"MINIX is a microkernel-based system. The file
system and memory management
are separate processes, running outside the
kernel. The I/O drivers are also
separate processes (in the kernel, but only
because the brain-dead nature of the
Intel CPUs makes that difficult to do otherwise).
<P>
LINUX is a monolithic style system. This is a
giant step back into the 1970s. That
is like taking an existing, working C program
and rewriting it in BASIC. To me,
writing a monolithic system in 1991 is a truly
poor idea."
<P>
To which Linus replied:
<P>
"True, Linux is monolithic, and I agree that
microkernels are nicer. With a less
argumentative subject, I'd probably have agreed
with most of what you said. From
a theoretical (and aesthetical) standpoint
Linux loses. If the GNU kernel had been
ready last spring, I'd not have bothered to
even start my project: the fact is that it
wasn't and still isn't. Linux wins heavily on
points of being available now.
<P>
>>MINIX is a microkernel-based system.
>>LINUX
is a monolithic style system.
<P>
If this was the only criterion for the
"goodness" of a kernel, you'd be right. What
you don't mention is that minix doesn't do the
micro-kernel thing very well, and has
problems with real multitasking (in the
kernel). If I had made an OS that had
problems with a multithreading filesystem, I
wouldn't be so fast to condemn others:
in fact, I'd do my damndest to make others
forget about the fiasco."
<P>
Notice what is missing from the post? Even
though his pet project, the fledgling
Linux, has been slapped around pretty hard by
the man who created its
predecessor, Linus did not fall into the trap
of name calling and hysterics that too
often goes hand-in-glove with online debate.
<P>
Notice what is present in the post? Concession
of valid points made by
Tanenbaum. Factual assertions that represent
Linux quite nicely, thank you very
much. And even for this well behaved defense,
Linus closed with this:
<P>
"PS. I apologize for sometimes sounding too
harsh: minix is nice enough if you have
nothing else. Amoeba might be nice if you have
5-10 spare 386's lying around, but
I certainly don't. I don't usually get into
flames, but I'm touchy when it comes to
Linux :)"
<P>
For all his dweebness, Linus is a people
person. He is likable. He is brilliant. He is
passionate about Linux but not to the point of
resorting to bashing its detractors or
alternatives to it. Earlier I mentioned an
ongoing debate among proponents of the
terms "free software" and "open source
software." That is really symptomatic of a
deeper argument over what type of licensing
free/open source software should
have.
<P>
There is the GNU GPL that Linux uses, and there
is the BSD model. Listen to
Linus the diplomat walk that tightrope (while
still making his preference known) in
an interview with Linux Focus's Manuel Martinez:
<P>
"I'd like to point out that I don't think that
there is anything fundamentally superior in
the GPL as compared to the BSD license, for
example.
<P>
But the GPL is what _I_ want to program with,
because unlike the BSD license it
guarantees that anybody who works on the
project in the future will also contribute
their changes back to the community. And when I
do programming in my free time
and for my own enjoyment, I really want to have
that kind of protection: knowing
that when I improve a program those
improvements will continue to be available to
me and others in future versions of the program.
<P>
Other people have other goals, and sometimes
the BSD style licenses are better for
those goals. I personally tend to prefer the
GPL, but that really doesn't mean that
the GPL is any way inherently superior - it
depends on what you want the license to
do.."
<P>
His views on the Evil Empire? Strong, perhaps,
but certainly not inflammatory or
angry. In his words, from the same interview:
<P>
"I can certainly understand the "David vs
Goliath" setup, but no, I don't personally
share it all that much. I can't say that I like
MicroSoft: I think they make rather bad
operating systems - Windows NT is just more of
the same - but while I dislike their
operating systems and abhor their tactics in
the marketplace I at the same time
don't really care all that much about them.
<P>
I'm simply too content doing what I _want_ to
do to really have a very negative
attitude towards MicroSoft. They make bad
products - so what? I don't need to
care, because I happily don't have to use them,
and writing my own alternative has
been a very gratifying experience in many ways.
Not only have I learnt a lot doing
it, but I've met thousands of people that I
really like while developing Linux - some
of them in person, most of them through the
internet."
<P>
Three potentially disasterous discussions on
red button issues: Linux versus Minix,
the GNU GPL license versus that of BSD, and
Linux versus Windows. In each he
makes his points politely but with utter candor.
<P>
One last example. There is finally an official
Linux logo. It is the cute, fat and
friendly Penguin you often see on Linux sites.
There was heated debate among the
Linuxites on the choice of the logo. Many
wanted something other than a cute, fat
penguin. Something more aggressive or sleek,
perhaps.
<P>
Linus calmed these waters at the release of
Linux 2.0 by saying:
<P>
"Some people have told me they don't think a
fat penguin really embodies the grace
of Linux, which just tells me they have never
seen an angry penguin charging at
them in excess of 100mph. They'd be a lot more
careful about what they say if they
had."
<P>
He is completely believable, obviously
passionate about the project, and possessed
of a contagious good humor. Linux could have no
better leader from a technical
point of view, and it couldn't have a better
poster boy either. Its success more than
anything else is pulling the rest of the
world's mindset towards the notion of
free/open source software.
<P>
Nicholas Petreley raised the issue of open
source software recently in his forum at
InfoWorld Electric. It triggered a huge number
of responses about the
phenomenum. There may even be an Open Source
magazine in the works. I credit
my rethinking on this software dynamic to the
reading I did there. I believe it is what
finally made me realize that a paradigm shift
has already occurred. That we are no
longer discussing a possibility, but simply
what is.
<P>
The conclusion to the Forbes article behind the
Linus cover calls for the
Department of Justice to take note of the
success of Linux in growing market share
and to call of the investigation of Microsoft
as unregulated monopoly. While I
consider that a lame conclusion, the DOJ should
be interested in enforcing antitrust
law whether Linux is flourishing or not, I
can't help but wonder if there's not some
truth to the inspiration for that thinking.
That it won't be government intervention or
regulation that busts up Microsoft, but a
revolution in our thinking about software.
<P>
The Dweebspeak Primer, <A HREF="http://www.pjprimer.com/">
http://www.pjprimer.com/</A>
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<center><H5>Copyright © 1998, Joe Barr <BR>
Published in Issue 32 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, September 1998</H5></center>
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