Tim Hardy

I received the proofs of my first article for Linux Magazine last night. It will be in Issue 56, July 2005. (Update: PDF online: Podcatching without an iPod)

Two years ago when I started playing with linux, I picked up a copy of this magazine and thought “This stuff seems fascinating - but I don’t understand a word of it.” Thanks to the hundreds of free tutorials online, the generous and patient advice of users of bulletin boards and a now well-thumbed collection of O’Reilly books, I’ve finally learned enough to start contributing back.

Neal Stephenson famously noted “unix is not so much an operating system as an oral history.” Linux has grown out of that oral history and the decision to make it open source has made every user part of a community, whether they realise it or not.

I once read a Buddhist parable in a book about the Dalai Lama by Claude B Levenson, Le seigneur du lotus blanc. In the story a monk goes to live in a house filled with selfish, slovenly, morally lax individuals. Rather than preach to them about the error of their ways, the monk just picks up a broom and starts tidying. He never passes judgement on his fellows, just cleans up without comment. After several weeks, his good influence makes itself felt and the others begin to be more considerate and slowly reform their ways. Without doing anything, the silent monk changes their behaviour through his own good example alone.

In the same way, the generous individuals who create, develop, debug and document the tools that together comprise a GNU/Linux operating system through their good influence alone encourage others to share their own growing knowledge and skills.

Yeah, I’m a hippy at heart, I know. Laugh and call me unrealistic but I’d still rather live in a world where people believed in co-operation not competition, where people were rewarded for what they created rather than what they stole, either directly or indirectly through gaming the system. I want a world where technology is used to extend humanity’s reach rather than the bank balances of a few lucky rights holders, a world where we put as much collective energy into meeting the material needs of the impoverished many as we now put into the generation of artificial desires for the overfed and bored few. Open source is part of that ideal world.

I’m not saying do away with money. I’m getting paid for this article. Writing articles is how I pay my rent. I’m saying we should stop looking to make a profit at the expense of others. Doc Searls is fond of quoting Walt Whitman to describe the enemies of open source: they are “demented with the mania of owning things”. GNU/Linux is the product of people who believe that they are enriched by giving away what they know rather than jealously hoarding skills and knowledge. Using the operating system brings you into repeated contact with that radical idea and with each repetition it seems a more and more desirable way of living.

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