Draft, NOT FOR PUBLICATION OR REPRODUCTION PLEASE!
Sorry for the awful formatting. I've just put this up, it's being fixed.
This isn't a real interview, but a series of e-mails; perhaps i'll make
a proper standalone interview out of it soon.
Note that this was conducted in October 1996.
Text Copyright ©1996 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh. All rights reserved.
For more on Cooking Pot Markets: an economic model for free goods and services on the Net, click here.
From rishab@CERF.NET Wed Oct 2 05:52:14 1996
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Subject: Writing a book on "Linux economics"
To: torvalds@cs.helsinki.fi
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1996 05:51:50 -0700 (PDT)
Cc: rishab@dxm.org
From: rishab@dxm.org (Rishab Aiyer Ghosh)
Reply-To: rishab@dxm.org
Organisation: Deus X Machina, New Delhi
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Status: O
Linus,
I am writing a book for HarperCollins New York on economic models
for the information society, using the Internet as a present-day
working example. Although not many people may be actually making
_money_ on the Internet, I do not believe we should dismiss the
"free" stuff as something bound to change as the Net grows up.
This is something too many books and articles on this topic have
done. OTOH I argue that the "economy" that has over the years created
such products as Linux and Perl and rec.music.early, if valued
monetarily, be worth well over $100 billion. In my book I am
trying to take the Net seriously, as it were, and the section
on economic models is almost entirely devoted to informal or
unconventional "payment" systems and notions of value, scarcity,
demand and supply.
Where do you come in? Well, for starters, why on earth did you
write Linux - and give it away free? Why do you continue to develop
it, as do several others, without charging money from all users?
How can you seem so blase about copyright?
These aren't really my questions, but they will be of my readers.
Most people would think you crazy or stupid for creating Linux
for free. But I would like to show in my book how you are _not_
working for nothing; that people value products, and pay for
what appears to be free, rewarding producers, even if no money
directly changes hands. So I'd like to discuss with you your
own reasons, as a case study of sorts.
- what did you want out of releasing Linux publicly, the first time?
did you get it? (money, fame - "reputation", a nice set of libraries
written by others that helped your other work, etc)
- how did Linux, as a product, benefit by being released as it was?
if you were Bill Gates, would you have been able to make Linux a
better product through commercial, in-house development, or is
there something unique about the free-for-all developer+user+distributer
model - what I call the "cooking-pot market"?
- how do Linux users benefit from this model (apart from not having to
pay cash)?
- if you have been "paid" for Linux, in terms of reputation capital
and a better library of tools to choose from, can you trade this
for stuff to live on? do you want to? if you can't buy pizzas with
reputation capital and freeware code, what do you eat?
- does the brickspace-cyberspace currency barrier matter? don't
most of your "earnings" from information products such as Linux
go into "purchasing" other information products (also freeware)?
This incomplete list of points probably tells you where I want to lead.
Do you think you could answer them briefly in e-mail? In any case I
would like you to write an article for First Monday, the peer-review
journal on Internet socio-economics (see my other mail).
I look forward to your reply, hopefully before my deadline!
Best,
Rishab
First Monday - The Peer-Reviewed Journal on the Internet
http://www.firstmonday.dk/ Munksgaard International Publishers, Copenhagen
International Editor - Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (rishab@dxm.org)
Pager +91 11 9622 162187; Fax +91 11 2209608 or 2426453 or 2224058
A4/204 Ekta Vihar, 9 Indraprastha Extn, New Delhi 110092 INDIA
From rishab@CERF.NET Wed Oct 2 05:55:30 1996
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Message-Id: <199610021255.FAA04595@nic.cerf.net>
Subject: Invitation to write paper on Linux
To: torvalds@cs.helsinki.fi
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1996 05:55:17 -0700 (PDT)
Cc: rishab@dxm.org
From: rishab@dxm.org (Rishab Aiyer Ghosh)
Reply-To: rishab@dxm.org
Organisation: Deus X Machina, New Delhi
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Status: O
Linus,
First Monday is a peer-review journal covering the technology,
socio-politics, law and economics of the Internet. Its editorial
board includes Esther Dyson, Ed Valauskas and Vint Cerf, and its
published in on-line form from Copenhagen by Munksgaard Intl.,
one of the world's biggest publishers of academic journals.
I'm International Editor, whatever that means in a trans-national
publication of this sort. Essentially I try to get the interesting
techie articles, and I would like you to write a paper on Linux.
Not exactly a Linux how-to, but a Linux why-and-what. Linux history.
Stats on Linux usage over time. The "marketing" of Linux - why, and
how, has a free-source-code language become, if my facts are right,
the most popular scripting language of the Net? I am _not_ looking
for technical reasons. Although most FM readers are technically
aware, our target audience includes academics, bankers, govt
officials, corporate senior management and others who are interested
in serious discussion of Net issues, but may not understand too
much tech. I would like your article to tell them how Linux as
a phenomenon, rather than a programming-language pseudocode interpreter,
reached the levels it has. I.e. how the way Linux (and libraries)
were developed and distributed - by disorganised volunteers around
the world, free on the Net - made it uniquely capable to address
market needs, more so than a regular commercial product.
If this interests you, please have a look at the First Monday
web site at http://www.firstmonday.dk (which has back issues
and writers guidelines) and then send me a short (20-30 line)
abstract of what your article will contain. Please send a copy
to Esther (edyson@eff.org) and Ed Valauskas, our Editor-in-Chief
(ejv@uic.edu). We usually carry articles between 20 and 40k
text/html, and welcome lots of URL references, and FM has a very
liberal non-exclusive copyright policy.
We are also planning an issue on copyright and IPR, so if you
could add a bit in your article on what programmers can do to
keep off starving if there are no copyright laws, that would be
nice.
Incidentally, I have heard about your dislike of documentation.
If you find this interesting, but couldn't possibly write an
article, we could do an e-mail interview.
Please let me know about this ASAP, as we need to decide when
to schedule it. BTW our final deadline for any monthly issue is
the 15th of the previous month - October 15 for the November issue.
Best,
Rishab
First Monday - The Peer-Reviewed Journal on the Internet
http://www.firstmonday.dk/ Munksgaard International Publishers, Copenhagen
International Editor - Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (rishab@dxm.org)
Pager +91 11 9622 162187; Fax +91 11 2209608 or 2426453 or 2224058
A4/204 Ekta Vihar, 9 Indraprastha Extn, New Delhi 110092 INDIA
From torvalds@cs.Helsinki.FI Wed Oct 2 07:56:08 1996
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Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1996 17:53:14 +0300 (EET DST)
From: Linus Torvalds
To: Rishab Aiyer Ghosh
Subject: Re: Writing a book on "Linux economics"
In-Reply-To: <199610021251.FAA04413@nic.cerf.net>
Message-ID:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Status: RO
[ double duh. I had my modem line drop on me during my original reply. I
hate it when that happens in the middle of a longish reply, now I might not
have the stamina to write as much the second time around ]
[ I also got your second mail about writing an article, but I'm afraid I
don't really have the time or the inclination to do a good job of it. I
could do email interviews, though, especially if you keep the per-email
questions short enough that the emails can be answered reasonably quickly ]
On Wed, 2 Oct 1996, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh wrote:
>
> - what did you want out of releasing Linux publicly, the first time?
> did you get it? (money, fame - "reputation", a nice set of libraries
> written by others that helped your other work, etc)
Originally it wasn't any of the above, although I did ask around for other
peoples work that I could use (and thus there was a kind of "quid pro quo"
there). Originally Linux was just something I had done, and making it
available was mostly a "look at what I've done - isn't this neat?" kind of
thing. Hoping it would be useful to somebody, but certainly there is some
element of "showing off" in there too.
The "fame and reputation" part came later, and never was much of a motivator,
although it did of course to some degree enable me to work on it without
feeling guilty about neglecting my studies ("hey, this is much better for me
than getting a degree quickly").
A large motivator these days (and this started to happen pretty quickly after
making it available) was just that people started using it and it feels good
to have done something that other people enjoy using.
> - how did Linux, as a product, benefit by being released as it was?
> if you were Bill Gates, would you have been able to make Linux a
> better product through commercial, in-house development, or is
> there something unique about the free-for-all developer+user+distributer
> model - what I call the "cooking-pot market"?
Making Linux freely available is the _single_ best decision I've ever made.
There are lots of good technical stuff I'm proud of too in the kernel, but
they all pale by comparison.
Essentially, making it free is what made a difference between a system that
was something one person was able to write in half a year, and a system that
rivals (and surpasses) commercial operating systems.
There are lots of advantages in a free system, the obvious one being that it
allows more developers to work on it, and extend it. However, even more
important than that is the fact that it in one fell swoop also gace me a lot
of people who _used_ it and thus both tested it for bugs and tested it for
usability. The "usability" part comes from the fact that a single person (or
even a group of persons sharing some technical goal) doesn't even think of
all the uses a large user community would have for a general-purpose system.
So the large user-base has actually been a larger bonus than the developer
base, although both are obviously needed to create the system that Linux is
today. I simply had no _idea_ what features people would want to have, and if
I had continued to do Linux on my own it would have been a much less
interesting and complete system.
> - how do Linux users benefit from this model (apart from not having to
> pay cash)?
Well, the quick development is another and often more important thing.
People who are entirely willing to pay for the product and support find that
the Linux way of doing things is often superior to "real" commercial support,
partly because there is less of a "buffer" between the user and the
developer. The user can often _be_ the developer, and even when he doesn't
want to do any development himself he still doesn't have to fight the
marketing and management layer to get the attention of the developers.
In fact, one of teh whole ideas with free software is not so much the price
thing and not having to pay cash for it, but the fact that with free software
you aren't tied to any one commercial vendor. You might use some commercial
software on _top_ of Linux, but you aren't forced to do that or even to run
the standard Linux kernel at all if you don't want to. You can mix the
different software you have to suit yourself.
(Obviously you can just run a plain standard-install that you bought from one
of the commercial Linux vendors if you don't _want_ to customize your sites,
but with free software you have the choice of doing whatever you want with
your computer).
And with all the development happening on the internet, and all the tools
being found there, if you have a problem with something you have a large
community to help you (and ultimately you can even email the primary
developers themselves, although for understandable reasons "us developers"
tend to be pretty busy doing other things and sometimes insensitive to a
single users needs ;)
> - if you have been "paid" for Linux, in terms of reputation capital
> and a better library of tools to choose from, can you trade this
> for stuff to live on? do you want to? if you can't buy pizzas with
> reputation capital and freeware code, what do you eat?
Well, I've been employed by the University of Helsinki, and they've been
perfectly happy to keep me employed and doing Linux. Doing Linux hasn't
officially been part of my job description, but that's what I've been doing,
and they obviously know and support that. So in a sense I do get my pizzas
paid for by Linux indirectly.
Also, I don't exactly expect to go hungry if I decide to leave the
University. "Resume: Linux" looks pretty good in many places.
So yes, you can trade in your reputation for money. And the _good_ thing
about reputations (and intellectual property) is that you still have them
even though you traded it in. Have your cake and it it too..
> - does the brickspace-cyberspace currency barrier matter? don't
> most of your "earnings" from information products such as Linux
> go into "purchasing" other information products (also freeware)?
It doesn't work that way. I get the other informational products for free
regardless of whether I do Linux or not. The cyberspace "earnings" I get from
Linux come in the format of having a network of people that know me and trust
me, and that I can depend on in return. And that kind of network of trust
comes in very handy not only in cyberspace..
Linus
From rishab@CERF.NET Wed Oct 2 12:46:29 1996
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Message-Id: <199610021905.MAA16204@nic.cerf.net>
Subject: Re: Writing a book on "Linux economics"
To: torvalds@cs.Helsinki.FI (Linus Torvalds)
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1996 12:05:21 -0700 (PDT)
Cc: rishab@dxm.org
In-Reply-To: from "Linus Torvalds" at Oct 2, 96 05:53:14 pm
From: rishab@dxm.org (Rishab Aiyer Ghosh)
Reply-To: rishab@dxm.org
Organisation: Deus X Machina, New Delhi
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Status: RO
Thanks for your quick reply! Your stamina was enough for the 'seed-quotes'
I need for my book, and largely confirmed my argument. If you don't mind,
I'll use your response as the first bit of the interview for First Monday,
so I can get on to other questions. Here's one - do you know, or can you
tell me where to find out how many Linux users there are worldwide?
Preferably with some previous years' figures and projections, and if possible
a break-up between servers, end-users, developers, etc...
Meanwhile I have a few comments on your reply.
> there). Originally Linux was just something I had done, and making it
> available was mostly a "look at what I've done - isn't this neat?" kind of
So you clearly didn't think you would lose some 'intellectual property'
by releasing it.
> The "fame and reputation" part came later, and never was much of a motivator,
In my book I'm using this to try and pin down notions of value; in this
sense, when you say it "feels good to have done something other people
enjoy using" I take their enjoyment of your product as a gain in your
reputation capital. You have, after all, made it impossible for them
to forget that you created Linux ;-)
> Making Linux freely available is the _single_ best decision I've ever made.
That makes a lovely quote, and you concisely defined a good "business" model
in the following paras that Netscape is trying to steal these days.
> So the large user-base has actually been a larger bonus than the developer
> base, although both are obviously needed to create the system that Linux is
One of my sections on the nature of value is on the value of readers. Usually
one assumes that readers (users) should pay writers (developers) but it
often works the other way round. With Linux, as with many things, it
worked both ways in balance, so nobody gets paid!
> Also, I don't exactly expect to go hungry if I decide to leave the
> University. "Resume: Linux" looks pretty good in many places.
Heh. Yes, that's the point I'm trying to make, to counter those
who claim that real money is needed for everything. With reputation
capital and similar Internet-only currencies, you could get real money
whenever you really needed it, for pizzas.
> It doesn't work that way. I get the other informational products for free
> regardless of whether I do Linux or not. The cyberspace "earnings" I get from
> Linux come in the format of having a network of people that know me and trust
> me, and that I can depend on in return. And that kind of network of trust
> comes in very handy not only in cyberspace..
Actually I include such informal (but valuable) things as "trusted networks
of people" in the term "product" - so most of your cyberspace "earnings"
remain "banked" in cyberspatial reputation capital, and only small amounts
need to be converted to dollars and markkas.
BTW in my model, where implicit transactions count, you are _not_
getting other informational products - from USENET posts to source
code - free. If _nobody_ produced free stuff on the Net, if _everyone_
charged, I expect you would probably _not_ have given Linux away.
In the old days of Compuserve, there was shareware, never freeware,
certainly never free _source_ code. But on the Net, everyone
(or almost everyone) is producing free stuff, because everyone
else is doing it. The prospect of getting far more free stuff out
of the Net than they can possibly put in encourages people to
contribute in the first place. I call this implicit-transaction,
common barter market a "cooking-pot" market, comparing it to
the tribal common cooking-pot.
I first wrote about this in a (pretty sketchy) column 2 years ago - I've
attached it in the next mail.
Best,
Rishab
First Monday - The Peer-Reviewed Journal on the Internet
http://www.firstmonday.dk/ Munksgaard International Publishers, Copenhagen
International Editor - Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (rishab@dxm.org)
Pager +91 11 9622 162187; Fax +91 11 2209608 or 2426453 or 2224058
A4/204 Ekta Vihar, 9 Indraprastha Extn, New Delhi 110092 INDIA
From torvalds@cs.Helsinki.FI Thu Oct 3 00:58:44 1996
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Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1996 10:56:09 +0300 (EET DST)
From: Linus Torvalds
To: Rishab Aiyer Ghosh
Subject: Re: Writing a book on "Linux economics"
In-Reply-To: <199610021905.MAA16204@nic.cerf.net>
Message-ID:
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Status: O
On Wed, 2 Oct 1996, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh wrote:
>
> Thanks for your quick reply!
Note that if you don't get a reply from me within a day or two, you simply
won't get one at all. With 100+ emails a day, I either have to answer the
emails immediately of I can't do it at all (and the latter does happen -
don't think I'm especially good at answering mail).
The correct action to take if you don't get a reply is to just re-send two or
three days later..
> Here's one - do you know, or can you
> tell me where to find out how many Linux users there are worldwide?
> Preferably with some previous years' figures and projections, and if possible
> a break-up between servers, end-users, developers, etc...
No way of knowing. The guesstimates are in the 1-5 million machine region,
but there isn't really very much hard data to back it up. There is a lot of
incidental evidence that the community is largish, but all that can give is a
ball-park figure. Things like the usenet newsgroup statistics etc..
> > there). Originally Linux was just something I had done, and making it
> > available was mostly a "look at what I've done - isn't this neat?" kind of
>
> So you clearly didn't think you would lose some 'intellectual property'
> by releasing it.
Well, I obviously kept a copyright on the code, and the initial copyright was
pretty strict. It essentially said something like: "You cannot distribute
this for money, and you may not make any changes without sending those
changes to me for potential future inclusion in my sources".
So I did want to protect myself from people who would use my code to create
something that I couldn't use myself, or to sell it onwards..
The copyright changed within just half a year: it didn't take long before
people started asking for permission to make floppy distributions for people
who didn't have internet access, and they obviously didn't want to do this at
a loss (the original copyright didn't even allow copying charges).
As I was heavily dependent on the GNU C compiler to actually do any work on
Linux, I changed the copyright to the GNU "Copyleft", the GNU Public License.
That one allows you to sell it freely and do whatever you want with it, but
obviously still requires that any modifications will have to be made
available too.
> BTW in my model, where implicit transactions count, you are _not_
> getting other informational products - from USENET posts to source
> code - free. If _nobody_ produced free stuff on the Net, if _everyone_
> charged, I expect you would probably _not_ have given Linux away.
Sure. There has been a reasonably strong "academic and open" community on
USENET, and in fact in the UNIX world in general. It's a lot different from
the shareware mentality in the DOS/Mac world. And that obviously makes a huge
difference for people who would potentially join the community. So the act of
making Linux freely available wasn't some agonizing decision that I took from
thinking long and hard on it: it was a natural decision within the community
that I felt I wanted to be a part of.
> In the old days of Compuserve, there was shareware, never freeware,
> certainly never free _source_ code.
Shareware was never an option for me: I really prefer to call the whole
concept "guiltware", because I feel that that name is much more
representative of what the thing is all about. The "share" in shareware would
imply a sense of altruism that is much lacking in the real thing. And I never
want to create that kind of software.
I much prefer software that is out-and-out commercial, and admits it up
front. And commercial software can have _demo_ versions that are available
for free on the internet, but that's a totally different thing from
"share"ware (the demo versions are usually crippled some way, but there is no
guilt associated with using the demo version - you just don't get all the
features you'd get from the commercial "real" version).
Linus