(A letter to Andy Patrizio of TechWeb, www.techweb.com, Cc: to cypherpunks@toad.com, malda@slashdot.org and gnu@gnu.org. May I remind the audience to use the technique which will benefit your goals rather than harm them: politeness.) Sir, I beg to differ regarding your assertion in "http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19980126S0015" that open source code has little value. While your article makes the very good point that a higher level of abstraction (the API level) is a better platform for most "interoperation" or "extension" uses, you omit several important considerations. I will attempt to describe three of those considerations here. The first consideraton is that open source code is of unparalleled value in ensuring security and stability of a complex system. Witness the fact that when the Pentium "F00F" bug was discovered last year, the Linux operating system had a fix distributed within 7 calendar days, while Microsoft took more than twice as long to issue a fix. This is doubly important for mission-critical systems and triply so for security-critical systems which may be subject to hostile attack. Indeed, many computer security professionals of my acquaintance say that they _will_ _not_ use a system to protect valuable data unless they and their peers are able to examine the source code. The second consideration is that an open software development model can (sometimes) generate a surprising amount of quality code at high speed. The pre-eminent example of this phenomenon is the Linux operating system, which in many ways has outstripped comparable proprietary operating systems in performance, features, stability, _and_ in time-to-market. The third value in open source code is more controversial-- it gives your users more control over the product. An all-too- common business tactic in the software industry is, as Scott McNealy calls it, "proprietary lock-in", in which a company deliberately makes their product incompatible with competing products in order to ensure that the customer can't use that product in conjunction with a competitor's product. With the current trend towards a convergence of interoperating software products, this tactic is becoming increasingly oppressive to customers. This tactic is not possible with open source code, because competitors, customers, or free-lance hackers can use the open source in order to make the two products interoperable. Needless to say, not all in the business community would consider this last feature to be a benefit. (Although I think that all in the business community would consider the first two features to be a benefit.) I hope that this letter has been of interest to you. I have been a software developer, industry-watcher, and open-source- code enthusiast for years, and I was grieved to think that your article might deter open-minded readers from considering the full implications of an open source code strategy. The idea of open source code has been a "fringe" concept for decades (see seminal open-source advocate and hacker Richard Stallman, www.fsf.org), and I'm delighted to think that with Netscape's move, and with the rumored possibility that Sun will open some of its Java source, that this idea could finally get a fair hearing before the business community. Regards, Zooko, Journeyman Hacker P.S. Among software professionals that I know, the only ones who make USD 100K/year or more are the ones who consider themselves to be "hackers". :-)