Free Source Code Has Little Value

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January 26, 1998 (5:03 PM EST)

By Andy Patrizio,

Software vendors have recently begun posting source code on the Web -- a move some say is simply bait to lure developers to a platform.

The fad hit a new high last week, when Netscape said it will give away the source code to Communicator 5.0 when the Internet browser is released later this year.

Although the Unix community has operated this way for decades, giving away the code with the program is unheard of among Windows application vendors.

Other source code giveaways are less significant both as code and in terms of the potential impact. Game vendor id Software has given out the source code to its earliest games, Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, and also gives out the none-core code to its current games, Quake and Quake 2, so users can make their own modifications to the game. Another game vendor, Parallax Software, last week released the source to an old, but popular game called Descent.

On a higher level, FreeBSD and Linux are freely available. The FreeBSD source comes on the CD with the operating system. Linux's creator released the source code to the kernel so others could create the necessary add-on applications.

In the five years since Linux first appeared on the Internet, it has grown into a commercial effort for vendors such as Red Hat Software and Caldera.

Free source code may draw hackers like bees to honey, but professional developers want something they can work with, according to Evan Quinn, an analyst with International Data, in Mountain View, Calif. "[Free source code] can create some groundswell momentum, but what's proven to work in the marketplace has been a level of abstraction up," Quinn said.

While providing source code free is intriguing, Quinn added, "Microsoft and Sun with Java have already proved that the best way to draw developers to extending your platform is to provide them an API-level interface, such as class libraries or objects or components, and let people start off at a level of abstraction so they don't have to start ripping through source."

Giving out the Communicator source code may garner some interest among developers, but Netscape needs tools and a developer support network -- something Microsoft has spent years building -- to keep those developers interested.

Mark Surfas, president of Critical Mass Communications, a Web design and development company in Costa Mesa, Calif., believes Netscape's move is nothing more than a ploy to gain market share.

Nor is Surfas interested in the source code to Internet Explorer, even though he uses it. "The browser has become a non-interesting piece of software for most of us," Surfas said. "From a Web shop perspective, we just want simple things to happen, like supporting the same kind of style sheets."

But source code, while not particularly useful to the $100-per-hour C++ programmer, may be what a young programmer needs to cut his or her teeth on.

Giving away the Descent and Doom source "are basically big PR events," said Surfas. Nevertheless, Surfas said he knows of at least 15 people who have obtained jobs at game companies by creating modifications for id's games.

Both id and Parallax have said the source code they release can only be used for non-commercial efforts. That's probably irrelevant, since the games have disappeared from the market long before, and their developers have moved on. Their only use, then, is for education.

"It's a learning market," said Quinn. "It turns folks into professionals. Five years from now, maybe they're writing operating systems."