If Linux Is Free, Why Is Bob Young Smiling? - By Craig Menefee, Newsbytes Red Hat, Inc., took a little over two years to go from 10 to 40 employees and it now has about half of the fast-growing corporate user base for Linux, a freely distributed version of the Unix operating system (OS). Venture capitalists were intrigued but baffled. Bob Young, president of Red Hat, says he doesn't completely understand why Red Hat has zoomed, either, but he figures it has to do with his respect for the US legal system, Harley Davidson motorcycles and Heinz catsup. "If I followed anyone's model, it would be those three," Young told Newsbytes in an interview. "Of course, the analogy breaks down if you look at it too closely. We're making this up as we go along." For background, Linux (pronounced "linnux" by insiders) is a free version of Unix created by Linus (pronounced "Linnus") Torvalds of Finland. Torvalds was helped by hundreds of programmers across the Internet and is now a full-fledged, Unix-like operating system (OS) complete with multitasking, high modularity, stability, and most of the other factors that have made Unix an operating system of choice for many who run computer networks. Torvalds' original intention was to create a Unix OS for Intel 386-based platforms but there are versions now for Alpha and Sparc based machines as well. The Intel version still runs on 386 and 486 machines, a characteristic used by many users to extend the life of older equipment. Young, 43, who hails from the industrial Canadian town of Hamilton, Ontario, started Red Hat in partnership with Mark Ewing, who holds a computer science degree from Carnegie-Mellon University. Ewing is the technician, Young the marketer. When Young brings up catsup and motorcycles, he is talking about creating a Brand. You can hear the capital "B" when he says the word. He says Harley Davidson and Heinz show how Brands can make money even when key products only break even. Heinz sells most of the catsup in the world but makes nothing on store-bought bottles of the stuff, Young explains. It makes money because, when you put catsup on something in a restaurant or buy a bottle of a no-name brand, what you get is bulk-packaged Heinz. It has the taste people got used to, so it dominates. Young wants Red Hat to be like that, the flavor of Linux that people like and trust. To encourage that attitude, Red Hat put its RedHat Package Manager (RPM), an innovative program that automates the touchy process of adding and subtracting modules at the kernel, under GPL licensing. RPM has spread all through Unix, a de facto standard because of freeware ports to more traditional, commercial systems like Sun Solaris. Users, not software houses, wrote the ports. Linus Torvalds apparently approves of Red Hat's approach. The prime mover of Linux has gone on record as preferring Red Hat Linux because he trusts the firm's technology. This is not a bad recommendation in the Linux world. But let's get back to motorcycles. Young says Harley Davidson, like Heinz, makes little on retail sales of its primary product. Rather, it hauls in money licensing the Harley name to everything from leather jackets to beer. And the legal system? Lawyers can't copyright their arguments. Anyone can use them later, free of royalties. But attorneys who create winning arguments before the Supreme Court are trusted as lawyers who win in a pinch. It's a Brand, says Young, and people pay willingly for it. There's that capital "B" again. Young notes that some people think companies should not be able to copyright their source code at all. The idea has picked up steam among "the ideologues in the free software world," he says, hastening to add that he is not one of those. Still, he says: "They have a point. A computer language is called a language for a reason." The Linux kernel -- its key, central part -- belongs to Torvalds, who placed it under the GNU General Public License, or GPL, out of MIT. Developers can freely copy, change or distribute it, but they can't impose restrictions on further distribution or keep the source code secret. And since Torvalds encourages others to copyright their own additions to the kernel under GPL terms, too many people now claim pieces of Linux pie for any single company ever to take ownership. But Young says he doesn't like to call Linux "freely distributed" because the term "creates more confusion than it solves." He likes to call it "distributed development" because it has been a cooperative, Internet-wide, distributed project. This is not a scheme to excite either investors or the giant software houses, which have been lobbying to put teeth into US laws protecting the value of software products. Young isn't fussed. He says GPL invites everyone into the programming pool who does not work at a traditional software company, and the depth of that resource occasionally amazes even him. "People don't realize, 80 percent or more of the actual programming is done by people with no commercial interest, no intent to sell. They just need something on their systems so they write a program and then they post it for others to use. You see tons of these programs out on the (World Wide) Web as freeware." How does that affect the way he runs Red Hat? Young says the key is to realize the huge base of developers for Linux guarantees it will stay a viable OS for everyone from students to large corporations. As long as Red Hat makes it easy to install, configure and manage, says Young, Red Hat will continue to grow. He adds that Microsoft, so far, is ignoring Linux. That's fine for now, but sooner or later, if Linux continues to grow at its current pace, the Redmond giant will have to "take official notice of Linux and start doing bad things to us." He adds almost wistfully: "I know I'm going to love being big enough to have that kind of problem." © 1994 - 1998 by Computer Currents Publishing Corp.