Los tiempos de adopción de una nueva tecnología son siempre más largos de lo previsto. El cambio de paradigma hacia la cultura en abierto y hacia el software libre en particular supone, a mi entender, un cambio de era, algo demasiado grande como para no hacernos transitar por un terreno abrupto. Hay grandes empresas bien posicionadas que difícilmente permitirán ceder su terreno a otros.
En los noventa se hablaba de una nueva tecnología que cambiaría el mundo, la inteligencia artificial se llamaba por entonces aunque ahora parece más propio hablar de sistemas inteligentes; los ordenadores conseguían identificar, o más bien extrapolar, patrones de comportamiento de modo que se abrían nuevas posibilidades. Lo cierto es que aquellos años pasaron y aquella fiebre pasó también con ellos, pero Jeff Bezos, el fundador de Amazon.com fue incorporando recomendadores basados en sistemas inteligentes diez años después de aquella fiebre y hoy van, poco a poco invadiendo el Mercado, entre otras cosas porque Amazon.com es La Tienda de Internet y nadie se permite el lujo de dudar de ella. Esto es sólo un ejemplo de una tecnología que tarda mucho más tiempo del inicialmente previsto en llegar al gran público.
But the case of free software is much more complicated than that of recommenders because it attacks the foundations on which they are built: business, cultural and even social models. We are not prepared to understand that someone gives something away for free and much less to do it ourselves, we live, whether we want it or not, still in a paradigm of the nineteenth century, that of the patents by which you invented something, protected it and earned money; in a capitalist society like ours, we cannot understand that you can earn money by giving your creation for free; but of course, the copy and paste option offered by computing is still very recent and we have not yet managed to see all its possibilities. We doubt the veracity of the open gift because there must be a hidden cat in there; we are so ignorant that we do not believe it is possible that someone gives for free something for which they used to charge and free software companies support that premise by budgeting the consulting hour at double the price of proprietary software companies; no man, do not be innocent, budget the hour at the same price and then put additional costs to complete it and take the risk that the implementation of proprietary software is cheaper than the free one, nothing happens.
The Free Software movement has already changed the World, it has shaken its foundations and has inoculated its virus in the world of Culture and Biochemistry. It is neither a product nor a process, nor is it a fashion, it is a social change that relies on the possibility, until recently unknown, of copying and pasting that a computer gives us.
The world is moving much faster than the common mortals would like, we want to stay in our comfort zone and there we had proprietary software. It is curious that open source software is at home on large machines (servers) and small ones (mobiles and embedded) but it does not have the same success on medium-sized machines (PCs). Yes, it also triumphs on the mobile because Symbian and Android are massive. It triumphs in the large despite the fact that they are critical systems in which the installer is playing for his life and is beginning to triumph in the sector with the greatest future, that of mobility.
We are quasi-knocked out boxers so we only see blinding lights around us and those lights have logos of big proprietary software companies that have been with us for years, if we keep looking at those lights we are likely to go down, someone else will overtake us on the right because with less money and effort than us they get more and better things done.
As long as we maintain a more or less neutral Internet, the triumph of the open is served. The record companies arrived late to the Internet, just as it happened with the written press and radio; the same thing is about to happen to television and all the oligopolies of the traditional media are now turning to politicians for help on their knees. The Administration arrived, maybe late, but it arrived to free software but, for the moment, this arrival has only materialized in the big devices, to reach the medium and small ones it is necessary to demonstrate that free software works and until now what we have been trying to demonstrate is that it is good for everyone and cheap, and no, it is about demonstrating that it works and that is only achieved by example and with time.
The idea for this entry came from Luis Casasproposed it to a bunch of geeks and it will be published on Technology Gazette
