David Le Page An unprecedented alliance between top computer companies and anarchic Internet fundis looks set to produce the first serious competition to Microsoft’s Windows family of operating systems. On Tuesday IBM, Compaq, Sun, Hewlett-Packard and nine other United States companies announced the Gnome Foundation, which will speed the development of the Gnome desktop system.
Gnome runs on the Linux operating system and has been in development for two years. At present it is in limited circulation, partly because Linux is a newcomer and partly because it does not yet match the user- friendliness and consistency of Windows. Gnome can be compared with those early versions of Windows that piggy-backed on MS- DOS: essentially it is the visible, graphical user interface part of an operating system. But Linux, the more invisible software that supports Gnome, is far more powerful and stable than DOS. Linux was created in 1991 as a student project by a Finn called Linus Torvalds. It was adopted and developed by programming enthusiasts around the globe, who collaborated over the Internet, working without pay. What makes Linux and Gnome particularly unusual is the way they are licensed – under the GNU Public Licence or GPL. (Linux is a clone of a 30-year-old operating system called Unix. GNU stands for Gnu’s Not Unix. )
The GPL stipulates that the programming code for Linux must always be freely available. This means that programmers can see “under the bonnet” of Linux, which they cannot do with proprietary systems like Windows. They can make their own changes, which they do, constantly. So updates, improvements and bug fixes for Linux arrive literally on a daily basis, while Windows users wait months and years for upgrades or “service packs”. This means the companies supporting the Gnome Foundation are pouring money into a project that they cannot force people to pay for – Gnome and Linux are available free on the Internet and the nature of the GPL makes “pirate” copies a legal impossibility. In practice, a number of companies already sell Linux packaged in much the way as is Windows – on CD-ROMs with documentation. But those who buy are paying for the convenience of not having to download it. Linux may not be familiar to the average computer user, but among the professionals who run the Internet, it has already become the second most popular operating system after Microsoft’s Windows NT. Approximately a third of all websites are powered by Linux and other GPL, or open-source, software.
The Gnome desktop will include more than just the applications familiar to Windows users: a file browser, image viewers, text editors, Internet browser – and Solitaire. Sun Microsystems is contributing its Microsoft-compatible StarOffice suite to the project.
This means that Gnome users will get – for free if they wish – the power of Windows 2000 and MS Office combined, as well as a host of other open-source software applications.
Meanwhile, the Gnome Foundation companies will attempt to make their money by selling Gnome pre-packaged, by providing support and hardware, and through selling other software that will run on Gnome systems. Because the programming code for Gnome will remain public, it should be easier to create programs that run smoothly in the Gnome environment than it is for the Windows environment.
At present, the Gnome environment still has distinctly arcane aspects to it, but the stated aim is to make it even more user- friendly than the Apple Mac. Though it represents competition for Windows, if successful the Linux-Gnome combination may actually help Microsoft evade the break-up planned for it by the US Justice Department. Astonishingly, the Gnome Foundation was formed without contracts or wrangling – the GPL means none of the companies can withhold anything from its partners. As one of the CEOs involved says: “There’s been a fundamental problem of getting industry consortium to work together … But we don’t have a single corporate lawyer in the room. We haven’t signed a single licence among any of us … With the GPL, we have eliminated the need for trust.”