Software Holdups

Holdup problems in software created the open-source movement. For a long time AT&T let people use its popular Unix software for free.^[3] After AT&T was broken up by the antitrust police, it started charging for Unix. Unix programmers felt betrayed by AT&T’s new pricing policy.^[4] They had spend massive amounts of time mastering Unix when it was free, and now, after they were dependent upon programming in Unix, AT&T started charging for its use. Many of the programmers might not have spent the time needed to become proficient in Unix had they known that in the future it wouldn’t be free.

To stop this holdup problem from occurring again, a programmer developed an alternative to Unix called GNU, “a recursive acronym meaning ‘GNU’s Not UNIX.’”^[5] GNU was designed to always be free, and thus programmers could use it without fear of someday being exploited. GNU is considered open-source software because its source code is available so that it can easily be modified by users.

^[3]Lessig (2001), 53.

^[4]Ibid.

^[5]Ibid. My emphasis.