From the web page:

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

February 21, 2000

Old Apple Macintosh Team Aims to Put Linux on the Desktop
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.


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