Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon Technology

Circus roboticus
A troupe of robots forces audiences to confront the terrors of late 20th century life.
By Mark Gimein
[09/27/99]

Technology: View from the top
Thinking outside the cube
Philippe Kahn programmed one of the first personal computers, now he's developing wireless Net technology that could unchain people from their PCs.
By Sean Donahue
[09/27/99]

Silicon Follies
Silicon Follies
Chapter 56: Barry's requiem -- Bill Gates, golf and marijuana
By Thomas Scoville
[09/25/99]

21st Challenge
21st Challenge No. 26 results
The ultimate high-tech résumé
By Charlie Varon and Jim Rosenau
[09/25/99]

Pat McGovern's "Technology Publishing for Dummies"
How did IDG's chairman build a $2.35 billion business?
By Chris Sandlund
[09/24/99]

Complete archives for Technology

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

barnesandnoble.com

Save up to 40% at barnesandnoble.com

Sure to ring a bell with any follower of Apple, the jibe made reference to a hallowed landmark of Apple history -- that moment when Jobs seduced Pepsi executive John Sculley into becoming Apple's CEO by asking him, "Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?"

How times change. Today, Jobs is the man pushing sugar -- ultrasweet bondi-blue iMacs and tangerine-orange iBooks. So don't look to Apple, implied Jensen's post, if you're really looking for excitement. Instead, look to the world of free software, the world of Linux and GNU, of Apache and Perl. Imagine a future in which software development is predicated on the democratic, idealistic and ultimately pragmatic notion that the best software will be created only by making the source code to software programs freely available to the general public. For free-software fighters, Apple -- the would-be giant killer, the onetime vanguard of the personal computer revolution, the Day-Glo knight in shining armor ever ready to face off against the dark forces of Windows hegemony -- is old news. Apple is history. Free software is the future.

You might expect, in the all-too-flammable environment of online discourse, that such a comment would ignite the flame war to end all flame wars. But no -- a few respondents chuckled, and a few made half-hearted claims that the next Apple operating system, Mac OS X, would reinvigorate the faithful. The dialogue was muted, in sharp contrast to the bile and histrionics that have accompanied every showdown between free-software fans or Mac devotees and Microsoft Windows defenders.

Maybe that's because the truth isn't as clear-cut as Jensen's joke suggested. It is easy to argue that Apple and Jobs have already changed the world -- that the computers the vast majority of us use look and feel the way they do because of Apple's innovations. Apple is even dabbling in free software, making portions of the code of an upcoming operating system release freely available under an "open-source software" license. Apple has also supported, albeit intermittently, efforts to rewrite Linux so that it will run on various Macintosh platforms. Most importantly, Apple and the free-software world don't see each other as natural enemies -- one deep and abiding programmer's dream, in fact, is an operating system with the power and stability of free software and the ease of use of a Mac.

But it's still worth paying attention to the free-software/Apple dynamic. Although the media and the general public fixate on setting free software, and its flag-bearing Linux-based operating system, as the ultimate opposition to Microsoft Windows, in some ways Apple provides a more compelling contrast. The Mac's strongest point, usability, is Linux's Achilles heel. Equally intriguing, the Mac -- a blend of both proprietary hardware and software -- is the polar opposite of an Intel-based PC running free software. Apple's failure to make its operating system more widely available has often been pointed to by critics as the root cause of its early '90s downturn -- while Linux's success, so far, comes from setting the code free. While Apple has lumbered slowly forward for most of the '90s, Linux and other free-software tools have leapt forward with constant, fast-paced improvements, fueled by the energy of a soaringly optimistic and ever-growing development community.

That freedom has inspired terrific passion -- the kind of passion that keeps programmers up all night hacking code, the kind of passion that draws attention and interest, the kind of passion that used to be associated with Apple. It's passion that changes the world, not colored plastic. If the free-software hackers have commandeered the computing world's driving motivation -- the passion to remake the world in a new, improved, upgraded image -- then what does that leave for Apple?

Next page | The end of advocacy?