Bill Hilf clarifies his statements

I recently posted about Bill Hilf speaking of the death of the free software movement. He has clarified his stance towards the free software movement, even going so far as to say that he is rethinking his stance on free software: “But I’m rethinking that last part.   Mostly because I don’t think it matters.  If the software is open, it’s open, that does not change based on who developed it or why.” I assume that when he speaks of “open software” he’s confounding it with “free software”.

Free Software is Dead

Bill Hilf, Microsoft’s general manager of platform strategy, has apparently said that the free software movement is dead:

“The Free Software movement is dead. Linux doesn’t exist in 2007. Even Linus has got a job today.”

He goes on to say, “They [linux kernel developers] are full-time employees, with 401K stock options. Some work for IBM or Oracle. What does that mean? It means that Linux doesn’t exist any more in 2007. There is no free software movement. If someone says Linux is about Love, Peace and Harmony, I would tell them to do their research. There is no free software movement any more. There is big
commercial [firms] like IBM and there is small commercial [firms] like Ubuntu.”

Now the main goal of the free software movement is, of course, the freedom of the software — which I suppose could be very loosely characterised in a snide and unrealistic manner as being about “Love, Peace and Harmony” — but focusing only on the freedoms around the free software movement misses the point: free software is still just software. It’s developed for all the reasons that software can be developed for, and while most free software — especially that software developed under the banner of open source software, such as Linux — is not developed just for “Love, Peace and Harmony”, it is, nevertheless developed and released as free software.

But just because free software is developed for reasons other than to have a free alternative does not make the free software movement dead. Indeed, the movement’s philosophy remains a major driving force behind open source development. Open source development is about how developers can relate to the software while it’s being developed; the free software movement is an enabler for this as it concerns itself with how people — including the developers — relate to the software and one another. Free software, however, says nothing about how the software was developed, or who developed it.  Developing software in a commercial environment, and for commercial reasons, whether at IBM or Ubuntu (or rather, Canonical), does not make the software non-free. It does not mean that free software — or the free software movement — is dead. In fact, just looking at the large commercial interest and participation in the drafting process of GPLv3 — the GPL being a cornerstone in the movement — shows how the free software movement is still very much with us.

Commercial interest in — and use of — free software licenses is a sign that free software and the free software movement is becoming entrenched. Developing free software for reasons other than having a free alternative is even a larger sign of its entrenchment: the free software movement has become integral and pervasive.