[lug] ... and move it to the world of Linux software

[bill ehlert]

here's the link to the article whose first few
paragraphs appear
just below.  not sure it will work, though, because
getting into
the site requires registration and password.

http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/02/biztech/articles/21eaze.html

(on the page with the article, a picture of three of
the people)


and here's the company's website.

http://www.eazel.com/






By JOHN MARKOFF

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- The Beatles never got back
together, but
four members of the original Apple Macintosh team are
regrouping. And they mean to take the best of the
quirky Apple
computer and move it to the world of Linux software. 

Andy Hertzfeld, Mike Boich, Susan Kare and Guy Tribble
are busy
trying to re-create the innovative tone originally set
by Apple Computer's founder, Steven Jobs, when he led
a band of renegades to design the Macintosh in the
early 1980s. 

They work in a low-slung,
nondescript office building
here, filled with Silicon
Valley-style cubicles and
adorned with the ubiquitous
penguin mascot of the Linux
free software movement. They
plan to take some of the best
ideas on computer ease of use
and blend them into a new
visual desktop interface for
Linux. With others in the
movement, their goal is to
transform the Linux operating
system, which has been designed and maintained by a
rag-tag group of
computer hackers, into a direct desktop competitor to
Microsoft's
Windows. 

The group founded Eazel Inc. last fall with financial
backing from the
Silicon Valley angel investor Ron Conway and the
former Apple and
Macromedia executive John Colligan. Mike Homer, a
former executive
for Apple and Netscape, is also on the board. This
summer, Eazel plans
to begin offering a free user interface -- an
icon-based software control system that can be
downloaded from the Internet -- that they say will
give Linux an ease-of-use advantage over Macintosh and
Windows-based computers. 

Eazel's biggest coup to date has been in persuading
Tribble to leave Sun
Microsystems, where he had been chief technology
officer for Sun's
alliance with Netscape. Known as a brilliant software
designer who made
significant contributions to the original Macintosh,
introduced in 1984,
Tribble followed Jobs two years later to Next Inc.
There, he led the
design of the software interface for the Next system,
before joining Sun in 1993. 

Eazel faces a serious challenge. Microsoft has just
begun shipping a more robust version of its Windows
operating system, Windows 2000, and
Linux has only a minuscule share of the market for
desktop personal
computers -- the primary market for Eazel's Linux
interface. 

Linux's strength to date has been in the market for
server computers --
network machines on which the user interface and
popular desktop
applications are much less important. Currently, Linux
has a 25 percent
share of the server market, compared with 38 percent
for Windows. But
on the desktop, only 4 percent of the 99 million
operating systems sold in the United States last year
were Linux, according to International Data Corp., a
market research company. 

But for Andy Hertzfeld, a programmer whose business
card reads
"software wizard," market share is not necessarily
what matters. 

Along with the hardware designer Burrell Smith,
Hertzfeld was the very
soul of the original Macintosh development team, a
group of computer
designers who professed a passionate belief that their
new computer
would change the world. But after Jobs was forced out
of Apple by its
former chief executive, John Sculley, in 1985,
Hertzfeld became
disillusioned by the company's corporate politics. 

He left Apple and began pursuing software design for
non-PC based
computing devices, like intelligent stereo systems. In
1990 he helped
found General Magic, a design effort underwritten by
Apple, Sony and
other consumer electronics companies intent on
devising a hand-held
wireless computer. 

After General Magic failed, Hertzfeld turned his
programming
explorations to the World Wide Web. Then, in January
1998, he noticed
Netscape's announcement that the company would freely
distribute what
it called the Mozilla version of Netscape's browser
software for use by
the so-called open source programming community. 

Open source code -- free distribution of the
underlying program
instructions for software, so that other programmers
can pursue further
development -- is one of the basic principles behind
the open or free
software movement that Mozilla and, even more
important, Linux, came
to represent. 

Hertzfeld had known Richard Stallman, one of the
founders of the free
software movement, for more than 15 years. But
Stallman had always
struck him as a "kook," he said. When Hertzfeld
himself began to rethink
the idea of free software, he concluded that Stallman
was a visionary. 

"It became so obvious to me," Hertzfeld said. "The
shared software
infrastructure should be owned by the community. It's
beautiful and it's
correct. And so I started working in the free software
world." 

Completely free software, of course, will not pay the
rent. So last
summer Hertzfeld began to think about the idea of
turning his passion into a business. With Mike Boich,
another early Macintosh programmer who
had gone on to start several Silicon Valley computer
hardware
companies, Hertzfeld searched for a way to combine the
free-software
philosophy with a for-profit business. 

Along with Bart Decrem, a Stanford law school graduate
who had
created a nonprofit technology access center in East
Palo Alto, Calif., the two former Macintosh designers
struck upon the idea of designing a free user
interface for Linux and then selling a highly
automated form of Linux service and support on a
subscription basis. The Eazel team persuaded Susan
Kare, a graphic artist who designed icons for the
original Macintosh and also for Microsoft, to join
their effort. 

There are now at least 140 competing distributors of
the Linux operating
system, and both Microsoft and Apple are already
pursuing similar
Internet-based software-support ideas. So Eazel could
have trouble
distinguishing itself in an already crowded field. 

But Hertzfeld contends that by automating many of the
system-configuration and management tasks that are now
barriers to
ordinary computer users, the Linux community can
achieve the same kind
of growth on the PC desktop that it is now seeing in
the computer and
Internet server markets, creating a market big enough
for many players. 

Some industry analysts say that Eazel's timing may be
right, if the Linux movement can build the kind of
popular applications that are now largely dominated by
Microsoft in the PC industry -- programs like word
processors, spreadsheets and databases. 

"Eazel is at the right time," said Dan Kusnetsky, an
operating system
analyst at International Data. "Nobody has made a
major impact on the
desktop with Linux yet because the barrier has been
applications." 

Eazel has formed an alliance with the group of Linux
programmers who
developed the Gnome interface for the Linux operating
system. Under
this pact, the Eazel team has taken responsibility for
the appearance --
the "look and feel" of the program that serves as the
control panel for the Linux operating system -- while
the Gnome group will concentrate on the internal
plumbing. 

The Gnome programmers are led by Miguel de Icaza, a
Mexican
software programmer who is the guiding light behind
one of the two main
user interfaces in the Linux world. The other main
interface is a desktop manager system known as KDE --
for K Desktop Environment -- which is also widely used
by Linux programmers. But Hertzfeld's programmers
decided that the Gnome team more closely matched their
style and perspective. 

"Gnome just resonated with my spirit," Hertzfeld said,
while
 acknowledging differences between the older, original
Macintosh people
and the younger, free-software hackers. "It was a
little bit strange
meeting them," he said. "We felt like graybeards and
they seemed like
teen-agers." 

In fact, the year-old relationship has not been
painless. The two groups
talked about, then rejected, the idea of merging, and
they have quibbled
over various technical issues. In the end, though,
Hertzfeld said he
believed that the two teams' ability to reach an
accommodation illustrates the strength of the Linux
programming movement. 

De Icaza, in turn, has started his own company, aiming
at the heart of
Microsoft's dominant Office suite of
business-productivity application
programs. His company, Helixcode, based in Boston, is
finishing a free
Linux competitor to Office that includes a word
processor, spreadsheet
and mail and calendar program. 

But de Icaza remains cautious about how quickly the
Eazel-Gnome
alliance will be able to mount a direct challenge to
the world's largest
software company in the operating system market. "I'm
not so sure how
vulnerable Microsoft is," he said. 


Related Sites

These sites are not part of The New York Times on the
Web, and The Times has no control over their content
or availability.

               Eazel Inc. 

               Gnome 

               KDE 




    Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company 


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