Lots of people know Leo Laporte. You might have seen him as one of the hosts on Tech TV's Screen Savers show, or heard his podcast, which is the number one or two most downloaded podcast currently, depending on who you talk to. If so, you know that Leo is the consummate pragmatist. He's not an open source advocate per se, but a best-of-breed kinda guy. He's recently gone on record [website, MP3 link] saying that GNU/Linux is not ready for his mom or the prime time desktop just yet. He's not a UNIX advocate, although he is enthused about the power of the UNIX-type way of doing an operating system. He likes Macs, but he is not anti-Windows and specifically denies that he is a Mac bigot. He is willing to help people get the most out of Windows, and, for example, recently talked to a local PC users group about how to make their Windows more secure (to the extent that's possible).
And yet, as this interview shows, Leo is a prominent media personality who is willing to talk about life after Microsoft dominance, and how that might come about. The mere fact that a highly popular, “non-partisan” tech media personality is willing to take the risk of publicly musing about such a topic is itself a type of watershed in the growth of open source.
In his talk with Mad Penguin™, the ever-pragmatic Mr. Laporte said he sees the proliferation of free open source software and open content as hugely positive trends, and even a possible bulwark against the really nasty kind of social control that George Orwell worried about in his book, 1984. Leo thinks that central control is going to be challenged by the power of the distributed production and marketing models of open code, whether that central control appears in the form of a monolithic government like China, or a juggernaut like Microsoft.
Ultimately, Leo thinks that the general purpose PC platform and open code will survive the Windows platform, in much the same way that the PC survived IBM's massive withdrawal from the consumer market segment. He thinks that it is the inherent flexibility of the PC and open source that will make sustain them beyond the twilight of the Windows platform. Again, Leo is not the first person to take this position, but among prominent tech media personalities, he is an early leader in being publicly vocal on this point.
Mad Penguin: Leo, how did you get into open code and content in the first place?
Leo Laporte: It's ironic, because my background isn't open content, it's proprietary content, if you want to make that distinction. It's working for mainstream media companies, and that's what my career has always been. It funds everything else that I do. I still have to make a living. The books that I write, the radio show that I do, the television show that I do are all traditional mainstream media. But on all three of those venues, one of the things that I really advocate for and believe in is the opportunity for everyone to have a platform with digital media, to have a voice through open code and content.
You made a distinction between code and content before we started recording, but I don't think that necessarily there is a distinction. Code is just a kind of content. Whether you're writing an open source browser or you're righting a symphony, I don't think there's that much difference. In fact, maybe there's more long term utility and creativity going into open source browsers, for example. So the real promise of open code and content is that anyone can create and have a voice and use these tools to express themselves.
MP: But are people really going to use computers for expressing themselves, as opposed to work tools?
LL: Yeah, they already are using computers for creating. As soon as you put tools in people's hands, they create. You give a kid a piece of chalk, and he's gonna draw. What's great about open source is that people who can't afford $800.00 for Photoshop can use the Gimp. People who can't afford $300.00 for Adobe audition can use Audacity. Computers are expensive enough. You don't have to spend additional couple thousand dollars on software. A computer is just a tool. It's just a hammer. Let's get these tools to as many people as possible, let's teach them how to use it, give them an idea of what they can do with it, and then let 'em go. And that's really exciting.
MP: In George Orwell's book, 1984, computer monitors with built-in cameras gave the government near perfect knowledge of its citizen's lives and near perfect control over would-be dissenters. How does open source and open content thwart that kind of stuff?
LL: We were just talking about creativity, but the next step is power, and it's not just the power to create, but the power of self-rule. That's what's really great about all of this stuff. It's a lot harder to imagine a Big Brother in a world where we all have access to the Internet, where we all have access to these tools. A country like, say, China, that does its best to limit what its citizens can do with technology, can only do that at a very high cost, a cost to the government, a cost to the economy.
Ultimately, I think that no government and no economy is going to be to sustain to that kind of control. Totalitarianism is threatened by this kind of open stuff, and in the long run, it's power to the people. You're giving people power not just to create, but power to self rule. That bodes poorly for totalitarianism. Totalitarianism requires control of speech, control of what people know. The antithesis of totalitarianism is open digital technology. Really, it's very pro-freedom. You could try to control it in the long run, as China has, but in the long run, it's gonna fail.
MP: Speaking of control, Microsoft, Disney, Comcast, and Verizon Wireless have made some progress recently in getting important players like Intel to jump on board lock-down with stuff like Intel's “East Fork” chip. Should we be worried that Linux might be locked out of access to content, or is open source already too well established to be locked out?
LL: There's a role for proprietary commercial development. The desire to make money on what you do, and to control what you do, and to charge people for it is natural. I don't think it's wrong. There's a completely appropriate role for private enterprise in this area.
On the other hand, it's like the political situation we talked about before. It's gonna get increasingly difficult for private enterprise to compete against open source, because open source combines the goodwill and efforts of thousands of people in all different areas in a way that they can marshal so much more brainpower than any private company can. What open source teaches us is that while money is an important motivator for people, it's not the only motivator.
What really motivates people is the ability to create on your own terms, and the ability to get recognition for what you do. As long as you can feed yourself, those things become more important than making a buck. Ultimately, that's why closed proprietary companies as well as more open companies, at least in the software space.
Imagine a world where music is created only by people who work for a giant, monolithic company in a little cubicle. They throw you into the little cubicle and say, “Okay, you're responsibility is to create a symphony every month for us. We'll profit on it, and maybe we're going to give you some stock options. Go!” You're not going to get the same kind of quality that you're going to get if you let somebody be open, honest, and in charge of their creativity, and let someone be an artist. .
Now, in a dictatorship, the trains run on time. It is easier for a monolithic company to establish a standard than it is for an engineering committee to establish a standard, and it might even be a better standard if the dictator does it. But in the long run, they can't succeed, because the natural human urge is not to submit to dictatorships.
In many ways, Microsoft has done us a favor by creating a standard that developers can write for. IBM created a hardware standard that software developers can create for. IBM did us a favor my making it open. Microsoft hasn't done that. I think that in the long run, the PC platform will outlive Windows, and for a very good reason: because it's open.
MP: Where do handhelds fit into that evolution of open beating closed, generally speaking. Is this scenario with handhelds interfacing with the PC going to be the Carterphone decision all over again, which created the possibility for open, modular attachments to a closed network, resulting in the decline of ATT's monopoly? In other words, are handhelds ever going to suck all the juice out of the desktop?
LL: I don't think so. Contrary to my media reputation, I'm not a gadget guy. I like the general purpose computer tool that can do so much more than any individual particular-purpose device. A dedicated device is always going to be a proprietary, closed thing that is made by a single company, running software made by that company, which that company controls with some degree of absoluteness. You could put Linux on devices, but it doesn't really matter that Linux is running on those devices. Look at TiVo or look at Linksys routers, it doesn't really matter that Linux is running on those devices. Those are dedicated devices that do one thing well. Whether they run on a proprietary or non-proprietary operating system, it doesn't matter that much. For a very small group of people, it makes it much easier to hack the Linksys router or the TiVo, and there's some really great stuff done by some people on those platforms if you understand Linux, but I don't think it makes a big difference to the mass audience.
To the mass audience, these are tools. They really just want them to do what they do, and they don't expect a whole lot more. That's where the PC is really different. The PC is a much more free-form tool, and much more open to a person's creativity. It's inherently an open box. I think you're going to see a lot more creativity on that kind of a platform than on gadget platforms.
But if some gadgets are just really small computers, then maybe it's a different story. Yet if you're talking about a cell phone, or an MP3 player, it's fine, you can hack away at the code, but I don't think it's going to make a whole big difference in the marketplace for that product.
