Software development as a creative process

Our ancestors had very little differentiation between specialties and were able to design and manufacture everything necessary for living from start to finish with their own hands: spoons, forks, knives, plates, jugs, suits, boots, furniture, and even houses were fabricated and built by individuals or small groups of people.

Such a manufacturing process gave the producer ample opportunities to express his or her creative qualities.

There is a thought from the history of art that mankind could not have had the Renaissance and geniuses like Leonardo, Titian, and Michelangelo without the thousands—indeed, tens of thousands—of unnamed craftsmen who, over centuries, made countless everyday items (jugs, wineglasses, furniture, clothing, etc.) for themselves, their relatives, and their neighbors.

All those countless unknown creators laid the foundation for the later rise of artistic giants.

Individually crafted masterpieces were vivid and powerful expressions of their authors’ fantasy, enthusiasm, motivation, and creativity.

But centuries of growing trade changed the manufacturing process. People began producing parts instead of complete products, which left them with fewer and fewer creative opportunities.

Once those who made things could no longer express themselves in their work, they began to lose motivation and enthusiasm.

Finally, as John Perry Barlow—the author of Cybernomics: Toward a Theory of Information Economy—asserted, the post-industrial world and the Information Economy adopted the very rules under which life itself had always operated.

Software development, as a mass manufacturing process in the 1970s and 1980s, began—along with the personal computer (PC) revolution—to return those advantages of creative activity to countless people.

Thousands, then tens and hundreds of thousands of software developers around the world gained creative opportunities that were perhaps unknown to most working in other industries at the time.

Many in the IT industry know about Linus Torvalds and his Linux operating system (OS). Over the past 20 years, it has made fantastic progress and become the platform for most Internet and database management system (DBMS) servers worldwide (see LAMP). It also powers mobile phones, serving hundreds of millions of people globally—the Android OS is based on the Linux kernel.

But not everyone may know why and how the Linux kernel development began in the early 1990s.

In fact, Torvalds—the author of the first Linux kernel version for x86 processors in 1991—seemed to have no realistic chance of continuing its development. After all, he was only a second-year student at the University of Helsinki and may not have had the qualifications for such a large-scale project.

Fortunately, he was a student of Andy Tanenbaum and one of several thousand participants in the Fidonet forum for users of Tanenbaum’s Minix OS.

Minix OS for x86 processors was used as study material for Tanenbaum’s students learning UNIX. It was distributed by the author for about $500 per copy, in the form of a book and PC diskettes containing the installation and source code.

It seems Torvalds could not have developed the Linux kernel without the knowledge gained from the MINIX course. But even more interestingly, he might not have had the desire at all had Andy Tanenbaum pursued a clearer development strategy for Minix and accepted the patches suggested by its many users (see the Tanenbaum–Torvalds Debate).

Since Andy never accepted external patches, Linus decided to develop his own UNIX-like, POSIX-compatible OS for x86 processors.

Moreover, knowing about Richard Stallman’s Free Software Foundation (FSF) and its GNU UNIX-like applications, Torvalds realized that to create a full-fledged UNIX-like OS, he only needed to develop the kernel.

So, after completing the first version of his Linux kernel, Torvalds posted its source code to the Fidonet MINIX forum with a short message:

Many believe that a new era of software development began at that moment!

Dozens, then hundreds, and eventually thousands of UNIX enthusiasts began contributing to the Linux kernel and later the full GNU/Linux OS (kernel + GNU software), sending patches and modifications to Linus Torvalds, who became the project’s coordinator.

This process also revitalized the GNU Foundation, as its tools—bash, sed, awk, C/C++ compiler, libc, and other UNIX-like applications—became increasingly in demand among the rapidly growing community of GNU/Linux users worldwide.

The creative potential of thousands of UNIX professionals, who had previously worked on repetitive tasks in the IT industry, exploded into the free, creative development of GNU/Linux OS and its applications.

The architecture and source code of GNU/Linux were opened to anyone who needed them. Every participant gained the feeling of being a real creator—not a mere IT worker on an obscure fragment of an unknown whole.

The unprecedented progress of GNU/Linux distributions over the past 20 years has radically transformed the IT industry. Now IBM, SUN, HP, and other UNIX vendors offer their own Linux distributions alongside proprietary UNIX systems—distributed free of charge under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Leading software companies like Oracle, Novell, CA, and many others have Linux strategies. They develop and distribute products for Linux under the GPL as well.

GNU/Linux has been ported not only to x86 but to many other processor architectures, including SMP systems and supercomputers. Numerous companies and government organizations use it as their primary platform.

And all of this has been made possible by the largely unpaid work of dozens—perhaps hundreds—of thousands of highly qualified, talented, and above all, very creative individuals who remain largely unknown to the public.

It is clear that the free and open-source software development model is gradually conquering the IT world.

It is now evident that proprietary (closed-source) software companies cannot hire staff as numerous or as highly skilled as their open-source counterparts—for both economic and social reasons.

Though the competition between these two software development models may have only one winner, the future of the proprietary model looks increasingly dim.

This supports John Perry Barlow’s assertion that anyone who wants information in the modern world will eventually get it. You can read Cybernomics here: http://ge.tt/1gnq3JX/v/6.

Horizontal networks, formed by mutual agreement, are gradually becoming the dominant management method in the corporate world—replacing vertical, hierarchical structures.

Finally, the innate human desire to be a creator has a profound influence on the mindset of developers in the software world—and in the IT industry as a whole.