1 00:00:01,500 --> 00:00:09,000 Any comments, suggestions and bug reports regarding the subtitle. E-mail to: geek@geekbone.org 2 00:00:09,500 --> 00:00:11,000 I was at Agenda 2000 3 00:00:11,600 --> 00:00:14,400 and uh, one of the people who was there was Craig Mundie, 4 00:00:14,400 --> 00:00:17,500 who is some kind of high mucky muck at Microsoft, 5 00:00:18,000 --> 00:00:21,500 I think uh, vice-president of consumer products or something like that. 6 00:00:21,500 --> 00:00:24,300 And uh, I hadn't actually met him 7 00:00:24,500 --> 00:00:28,200 I, I, I, uh, bumped in to him in an, in an elevator... in an elevator 8 00:00:28,300 --> 00:00:32,300 And uh, I looked at his badge and said, "Oh, I see you work for Microsoft." 9 00:00:32,800 --> 00:00:36,300 And he looked back to me and said, "Oh, yeah and what do you do?" 10 00:00:36,400 --> 00:00:39,300 And I thought he seemed just a sort of a tad dismissive 11 00:00:39,400 --> 00:00:42,500 I mean, here's the archetypal, you know, guy in a suit 12 00:00:43,000 --> 00:00:44,500 looking at a scruffy hacker 13 00:00:45,100 --> 00:00:47,700 And so I gave him the thousand yard stare and said, 14 00:00:47,700 --> 00:00:49,600 "I'm your worst nightmare." 15 00:00:49,800 --> 00:00:53,400 Wonderview Productions PRESENTS 16 00:00:53,400 --> 00:00:57,400 A J.T.S. Moore FILM 17 00:00:58,800 --> 00:01:03,700 REVOLUTION OS 18 00:01:05,400 --> 00:01:07,600 For most its short, but colorful history, 19 00:01:07,600 --> 00:01:09,600 the computer industry has been dominated 20 00:01:09,600 --> 00:01:11,500 by the Windows operating system. 21 00:01:11,500 --> 00:01:13,500 But that could soon change, 22 00:01:13,500 --> 00:01:16,400 as Windows faces a strong challenge from Linux 23 00:01:17,800 --> 00:01:19,500 Silicon Valley has long been the place 24 00:01:19,500 --> 00:01:21,500 to develop new technology, 25 00:01:21,800 --> 00:01:25,300 start new companies and get really rich. 26 00:01:25,400 --> 00:01:27,800 Now The Valley is the front line in a revolution 27 00:01:28,000 --> 00:01:30,700 fighting for that most politically incorrect of ideas: 28 00:01:31,200 --> 00:01:32,500 individual freedom 29 00:01:33,200 --> 00:01:34,800 Day and night, a loose confederation of 30 00:01:35,000 --> 00:01:37,000 hackers and programmers zaps bits pieces of 31 00:01:37,100 --> 00:01:39,800 computer code around the world as it builds the tools 32 00:01:40,200 --> 00:01:42,000 to set computer users free 33 00:01:42,300 --> 00:01:44,600 using open information and the free exchange of technology 34 00:01:44,600 --> 00:01:46,000 to achieve its goals. 35 00:01:46,000 --> 00:01:48,600 This revolution began in the 1980's with 36 00:01:48,600 --> 00:01:51,300 the Free Software Movement and the GNU project. 37 00:01:51,300 --> 00:01:53,000 And now is most commonly associated 38 00:01:53,300 --> 00:01:56,600 with Linux and the Open Source Movement. 39 00:01:57,000 --> 00:01:59,600 What is Linux? 40 00:01:59,600 --> 00:02:02,000 We do have one sector that is taking off today. 41 00:02:02,000 --> 00:02:04,100 It is the Linux-related sector. 42 00:02:04,100 --> 00:02:06,200 And I thought this might be a good opportunity to say, 43 00:02:06,500 --> 00:02:08,200 "What is Linux?" 44 00:02:08,400 --> 00:02:09,400 And I'll answer this question for you. 45 00:02:09,500 --> 00:02:10,500 Many of you probably already know, 46 00:02:10,500 --> 00:02:12,000 but There are 12 million users out there 47 00:02:12,300 --> 00:02:15,600 A computer Operating System developed by hundreds of 48 00:02:15,600 --> 00:02:17,500 programmers collaborating on the Internet 49 00:02:17,500 --> 00:02:19,400 A challenge to Microsoft Windows NT 50 00:02:19,500 --> 00:02:21,000 Very popular for its speed 51 00:02:22,000 --> 00:02:23,300 and so this's what the craze is about 52 00:02:25,000 --> 00:02:27,200 To kind of explain what Linux is you have to 53 00:02:27,200 --> 00:02:29,200 explain what an Operating System is 54 00:02:29,200 --> 00:02:31,700 And... the thing about Operating System is that you, I mean... 55 00:02:31,700 --> 00:02:34,400 you're never ever supposed to see it. 56 00:02:34,400 --> 00:02:36,100 Because... 57 00:02:36,100 --> 00:02:38,300 nobody really uses an Operating System, 58 00:02:38,700 --> 00:02:41,500 people use... programs... on their computer 59 00:02:41,500 --> 00:02:43,500 And the only mission in life 60 00:02:43,900 --> 00:02:47,500 of an operating system is to help those programs run. 61 00:02:47,800 --> 00:02:51,100 So an operating system never does anything on its own 62 00:02:51,300 --> 00:02:53,700 It's only waiting for the programs to 63 00:02:53,700 --> 00:02:56,000 ask for certain resources or, 64 00:02:56,300 --> 00:02:59,600 or, ask for a certain file on the disk 65 00:02:59,800 --> 00:03:01,500 or ask for the programs to 66 00:03:01,500 --> 00:03:03,300 connect them to the outside world. 67 00:03:03,500 --> 00:03:06,100 And then the operating system comes, steps in and then 68 00:03:06,100 --> 00:03:09,700 tries to make it easy for people to write programs 69 00:03:09,700 --> 00:03:13,000 And, What is Open Source? 70 00:03:13,000 --> 00:03:16,000 Open Source is a way for people to collaborate 71 00:03:16,300 --> 00:03:21,700 on software without being encumbered by all of the problems of intellectual property, 72 00:03:21,700 --> 00:03:26,200 having to negotiate contracts every time you buy a piece of software, 73 00:03:26,500 --> 00:03:28,800 have a lot of lawyers involved. 74 00:03:28,800 --> 00:03:32,000 In general, we just wanna get the software to work 75 00:03:32,400 --> 00:03:33,800 and we want be able to have 76 00:03:33,800 --> 00:03:36,900 people contribute fixes to that, etc.. 77 00:03:37,800 --> 00:03:40,000 So we sort of sacrifice some of 78 00:03:40,000 --> 00:03:41,900 the intellectual property rights 79 00:03:42,000 --> 00:03:44,500 and just let the whole world use the software 80 00:03:46,500 --> 00:03:47,800 Before there could be Linux 81 00:03:47,900 --> 00:03:51,200 There was Richard Stallman and the Free Software Movement. 82 00:03:51,500 --> 00:03:54,200 They think of Richard Stallman as the... 83 00:03:55,300 --> 00:03:58,000 great philosopher, right. 84 00:03:58,000 --> 00:03:59,800 And think of me as the engineer 85 00:04:01,000 --> 00:04:04,400 Richard Stallman is the founding father of the Free Software Movement. 86 00:04:04,800 --> 00:04:08,000 Through his efforts to build the GNU Operating System. 87 00:04:08,100 --> 00:04:11,900 He created the legal, philosophical and technological foundation 88 00:04:11,900 --> 00:04:13,800 for the Free Software Movement. 89 00:04:13,800 --> 00:04:15,400 Without these contributions, 90 00:04:15,400 --> 00:04:17,900 it's unlikely that Linux and Open Source 91 00:04:17,900 --> 00:04:20,000 would have evolved in to their current forms today 92 00:04:20,700 --> 00:04:24,700 I joined the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1971, 93 00:04:25,000 --> 00:04:29,000 I joined... a thriving community of hackers, 94 00:04:29,700 --> 00:04:31,000 people who loved programming, 95 00:04:31,000 --> 00:04:34,300 loved exploring the what they could do with computers. 96 00:04:34,500 --> 00:04:37,700 And they had developed a complete Operating System, 97 00:04:37,700 --> 00:04:40,200 entirely written there. 98 00:04:40,300 --> 00:04:42,800 And I became one of the team, that 99 00:04:43,000 --> 00:04:46,400 continued to improve the Operating System, adding new capabilities 100 00:04:46,400 --> 00:04:50,400 That was my job, and I loved it, we all loved it. That's why we were doing it. 101 00:04:51,000 --> 00:04:54,100 And [clears throat] we called our system 102 00:04:54,100 --> 00:04:56,600 "the Incompatible Time Sharing System" 103 00:04:57,200 --> 00:04:58,600 which is an example of the 104 00:04:58,600 --> 00:04:59,600 playful spirit 105 00:05:00,000 --> 00:05:01,900 which defines a hacker. 106 00:05:02,100 --> 00:05:05,200 Hackers are people who enjoy playful cleverness. 107 00:05:06,000 --> 00:05:08,500 Well, it first started going wrong 108 00:05:08,500 --> 00:05:12,000 as the outside world started pressuring us to have passwords. 109 00:05:12,100 --> 00:05:15,300 We didn't have any passwords on our computer. 110 00:05:15,500 --> 00:05:17,500 And the reason was that the hackers 111 00:05:17,500 --> 00:05:19,800 who'd originally designed the system 112 00:05:19,800 --> 00:05:25,700 realized that passwords were a way the administrators could control all the users. 113 00:05:25,800 --> 00:05:28,200 And they didn't want to build tools 114 00:05:28,500 --> 00:05:31,900 you know, locks and keys for the administrators to control them, 115 00:05:32,200 --> 00:05:34,300 so they just didn't do it. They left that out 116 00:05:35,300 --> 00:05:38,500 And we had the philosophy that whoever sitting at the computer 117 00:05:38,600 --> 00:05:41,000 should be able to do whatever he wants 118 00:05:41,500 --> 00:05:46,500 and somebody else who was there yesterday shouldn't be controlling what you do today 119 00:05:46,500 --> 00:05:50,300 When they put passwords onto one of the machines at MIT 120 00:05:51,500 --> 00:05:53,500 I and bunch of other hackers didn't like it, 121 00:05:53,500 --> 00:05:57,500 I decided to try a subversive sort of hack. [clears throat] 122 00:05:58,300 --> 00:06:00,400 I figured out how to decode the passwords, 123 00:06:00,400 --> 00:06:03,800 so by looking at the database of encoded passwords 124 00:06:03,800 --> 00:06:07,300 I could figure out what each person would actually type to login 125 00:06:07,800 --> 00:06:10,200 And so I sent messages to people, saying, 126 00:06:10,500 --> 00:06:13,600 "Hello? I see that you've chosen the password mumble, 127 00:06:13,800 --> 00:06:16,000 whatever it was. How about if you do as I do 128 00:06:16,500 --> 00:06:18,500 just type Enter for your password 129 00:06:18,500 --> 00:06:21,500 it's much shorter, much easier to type". 130 00:06:22,000 --> 00:06:25,500 And... of course with this message I was 131 00:06:25,500 --> 00:06:29,000 implicitly telling them the security was really just a joke. 132 00:06:29,300 --> 00:06:33,300 Anyway, but in addition I was letting them in on this hack. 133 00:06:33,800 --> 00:06:37,500 And eventually, A fifth of all the users on that computer joined me 134 00:06:37,600 --> 00:06:41,000 in using just Enter as their passwords. 135 00:06:41,000 --> 00:06:44,100 [ Where did the ideas that lead to what is now called Open Source world? 136 00:06:44,200 --> 00:06:46,200 How did that begin? Who began that? ] 137 00:06:46,300 --> 00:06:50,300 It actually began with the start of computers because at that time 138 00:06:50,500 --> 00:06:53,400 software was just passed around between people 139 00:06:53,500 --> 00:06:58,400 And I think it was only like in the lates 70's or early 80's 140 00:06:59,000 --> 00:07:02,500 That people started really closing up their software, 141 00:07:02,500 --> 00:07:05,700 And saying, "No, you can never get a look at the source code. 142 00:07:06,000 --> 00:07:09,300 You can't change the software even if it's necessary 143 00:07:09,400 --> 00:07:12,300 for you to fix it, for your own application" 144 00:07:13,000 --> 00:07:17,000 And... um, you can actually blame some of that on Microsoft, 145 00:07:17,200 --> 00:07:21,200 They are one of the real pioneers of the proprietary software model. 146 00:07:21,600 --> 00:07:23,800 In the mid 1970's, a group of hackers 147 00:07:23,900 --> 00:07:28,500 and computer hobbyist in Silicon Valley formed the "Homebrew Computer Club". 148 00:07:29,000 --> 00:07:32,500 In the club January 31, 1976 newsletter, 149 00:07:32,500 --> 00:07:35,200 Bill Gates of the recently formed Microsoft, 150 00:07:35,500 --> 00:07:37,000 wrote an open letter to the community 151 00:07:37,500 --> 00:07:43,600 where he made a point by point argument for the relatively new concept of proprietary software 152 00:07:43,800 --> 00:07:48,200 up to that point, the practice of computer users had been to freely pass around software 153 00:07:48,500 --> 00:07:51,000 with not much thought given to its ownership 154 00:07:51,500 --> 00:07:54,100 Known as An Open Letter to Hobbyists, Bill Gates writes, 155 00:07:54,500 --> 00:07:56,800 "To me the most critical thing in the hobby market right now 156 00:07:56,900 --> 00:07:59,900 is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. 157 00:08:00,000 --> 00:08:03,100 Without good software and an owner who understands programming, 158 00:08:03,300 --> 00:08:05,300 A hobby computer is wasted. 159 00:08:05,300 --> 00:08:08,000 Will quality software be written for the hobby market? 160 00:08:08,400 --> 00:08:10,900 Gates goes on to write, "The feedback we have gotten from 161 00:08:10,900 --> 00:08:14,300 the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. 162 00:08:14,300 --> 00:08:16,500 Two surprising things are apparent, however. 163 00:08:16,500 --> 00:08:19,500 1) Most of these "users" never bought BASIC, and 164 00:08:19,500 --> 00:08:22,500 2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists 165 00:08:22,500 --> 00:08:26,500 makes the time spent on of Altair BASIC worth less than 2 dollars an hour 166 00:08:26,500 --> 00:08:27,700 Why is this? 167 00:08:27,700 --> 00:08:30,200 As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, 168 00:08:30,200 --> 00:08:32,300 most of you steal your software. 169 00:08:32,300 --> 00:08:35,200 Hardware must be paid for but software is something to share. 170 00:08:35,200 --> 00:08:37,500 Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid? 171 00:08:37,500 --> 00:08:38,900 Is this fair? 172 00:08:38,900 --> 00:08:41,000 One thing you don't do by stealing software 173 00:08:41,000 --> 00:08:43,500 is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had 174 00:08:43,500 --> 00:08:45,600 MITS doesn't make money selling software. 175 00:08:45,600 --> 00:08:48,600 One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written. 176 00:08:49,000 --> 00:08:51,300 Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? 177 00:08:51,600 --> 00:08:54,300 What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, 178 00:08:54,300 --> 00:08:57,900 finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute it for free? 179 00:08:57,900 --> 00:08:58,800 The fact is, 180 00:08:58,800 --> 00:09:02,400 no one besides us has invested a lot of money in hobby software. 181 00:09:02,400 --> 00:09:05,000 What about the guys who resell Altair BASIC? 182 00:09:05,000 --> 00:09:07,300 Aren't they making money on hobby software? 183 00:09:07,300 --> 00:09:10,800 Yes, but those who have been reported to us may lose in the end. 184 00:09:10,800 --> 00:09:12,900 They are the ones who give hobbyists a bad name, 185 00:09:12,900 --> 00:09:16,300 and should be kicked out of any club meeting they show up at. 186 00:09:16,300 --> 00:09:19,200 I would appreciate letters from anyone who wants to pay up, 187 00:09:19,200 --> 00:09:21,000 or has a suggestion or comment. 188 00:09:21,000 --> 00:09:25,000 Signed Bill Gates, General partner, Micro-Soft. 189 00:09:25,400 --> 00:09:29,100 In the late 70's and early 1980's, Richard Stallman was 190 00:09:29,100 --> 00:09:32,400 doing Artificial Intelligence research and coding 191 00:09:32,400 --> 00:09:35,000 at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab. 192 00:09:35,000 --> 00:09:37,300 Richard had a number of negative experiences 193 00:09:37,300 --> 00:09:39,300 during that period which soured him 194 00:09:39,300 --> 00:09:41,400 on the whole idea of commercial software. 195 00:09:41,400 --> 00:09:43,000 [ such as? ] 196 00:09:43,000 --> 00:09:47,000 uh... some company wanted to work on and wanted to fix was locked up. 197 00:09:47,700 --> 00:09:51,700 and he couldn't get the company that owned on the code to let him fix it 198 00:09:52,400 --> 00:09:54,500 even though it would have been to their advantage to do so. 199 00:09:54,500 --> 00:09:57,400 And that put me into a moral dilemma, you see? 200 00:09:57,500 --> 00:10:03,100 Because to get one of the modern computers of the day, which was the early 80's, 201 00:10:03,600 --> 00:10:06,400 you would have to get a proprietary operating system. 202 00:10:06,500 --> 00:10:09,400 The developers of those systems didn't share with other people, 203 00:10:09,500 --> 00:10:11,500 Instead they tried to control the users, 204 00:10:11,600 --> 00:10:13,400 dominate the users, restrict them. 205 00:10:13,900 --> 00:10:16,000 Say, if to get the system, 206 00:10:16,100 --> 00:10:19,500 you have to sign a promise you won't share with anybody else. 207 00:10:19,600 --> 00:10:23,400 And to me that was essentially a promise to be a bad person, 208 00:10:23,400 --> 00:10:25,100 to betray the rest of the world, 209 00:10:25,200 --> 00:10:29,100 cut myself off from society from a cooperating community. 210 00:10:30,300 --> 00:10:34,300 And I had already experienced what happened when other people did that to us, 211 00:10:34,300 --> 00:10:35,800 when they refused to share with us. 212 00:10:35,900 --> 00:10:38,500 because they had signed these contracts. 213 00:10:38,600 --> 00:10:40,400 And it hurt the whole lab, 214 00:10:40,500 --> 00:10:43,200 it kept us from doing useful things before. 215 00:10:43,300 --> 00:10:45,600 So I just wasn't going to do that. 216 00:10:45,700 --> 00:10:49,700 I thought, "This is wrong! I am not going to live this way" 217 00:10:49,900 --> 00:10:53,900 And from experiences like this he developed a profound hostility 218 00:10:54,000 --> 00:10:56,600 to the idea of intellectual property and software. 219 00:10:56,700 --> 00:11:00,300 He eventually acted this out by founding the Free Software Foundation. 220 00:11:00,400 --> 00:11:04,900 So, I looked for another alternative and I realized: 221 00:11:05,000 --> 00:11:06,500 I was an operating system developer. 222 00:11:06,600 --> 00:11:10,300 If I were to develop another operating system. 223 00:11:10,500 --> 00:11:14,100 And then as the author, encourage everyone to share it. 224 00:11:14,200 --> 00:11:17,900 Say, everyone, " You come and get it, use this, form a new community" 225 00:11:18,900 --> 00:11:23,200 Not only could I gave myself a way to keep using computers without 226 00:11:23,300 --> 00:11:26,500 betraying other people, but I'd give it to everybody else, too. 227 00:11:26,600 --> 00:11:29,500 Everybody would have a way out of that moral dilemma 228 00:11:31,000 --> 00:11:34,300 And so I realized this was what I had to do with my life. 229 00:11:34,700 --> 00:11:38,700 I actually began the project in January of 1984. 230 00:11:38,800 --> 00:11:41,500 That's when I resigned for my job at MIT 231 00:11:41,600 --> 00:11:45,400 to start developing the GNU operating system. 232 00:11:46,400 --> 00:11:49,700 Now I should explain the name GNU is a hack. 233 00:11:49,900 --> 00:11:52,700 Because it's a recursive acronym. 234 00:11:53,100 --> 00:11:56,100 It stands for "GNU's Not Unix". 235 00:11:56,200 --> 00:11:59,300 You see so the "G" in "GNU" stands for "GNU". 236 00:11:59,300 --> 00:12:01,400 And what the name means is 237 00:12:01,400 --> 00:12:05,900 I was developing a system that was like the Unix operating system, 238 00:12:05,900 --> 00:12:08,300 but was not the Unix operating system. 239 00:12:08,300 --> 00:12:09,800 This was a different system. 240 00:12:09,800 --> 00:12:12,200 We would have to write it completely from scratch 241 00:12:12,200 --> 00:12:14,100 because Unix was proprietary. 242 00:12:14,200 --> 00:12:16,000 We were forbidden to share Unix, 243 00:12:16,100 --> 00:12:19,700 We couldn't use Unix. It was useless for a community. 244 00:12:19,800 --> 00:12:23,300 So we had to write a replacement for it. 245 00:12:24,900 --> 00:12:26,100 Throughout the 1980s, 246 00:12:26,200 --> 00:12:28,700 as Richard Stallman was building the GNU project, 247 00:12:28,900 --> 00:12:32,300 computer scientists from the University of California at Berkeley 248 00:12:32,400 --> 00:12:34,700 were developing their own free operating system. 249 00:12:35,000 --> 00:12:37,500 Known as Berkeley Unix, or BSD, 250 00:12:37,600 --> 00:12:41,500 it was based upon the Unix kernel which had been licensed from AT&T. 251 00:12:41,600 --> 00:12:46,300 However, due to legal problems with AT&T and fragmentation of the source code, 252 00:12:46,500 --> 00:12:50,100 hackers and other non-institutional users were slow to adopt it 253 00:12:50,300 --> 00:12:54,300 Well, Unix consisted of a large number of separate programs 254 00:12:54,700 --> 00:12:56,400 that communicated with each other. 255 00:12:56,500 --> 00:12:59,400 So we just had to replace these programs one by one. 256 00:12:59,500 --> 00:13:03,200 So what I started doing was writing a replacement for one program, 257 00:13:03,300 --> 00:13:05,100 and then another, and then another, 258 00:13:05,200 --> 00:13:06,900 and then people started joining me, 259 00:13:07,000 --> 00:13:10,600 because I published an announcement inviting other people to join me 260 00:13:10,700 --> 00:13:12,300 to help write these programs. 261 00:13:12,600 --> 00:13:20,000 And uh... and by around 1991, we had replaced practically all of them. 262 00:13:20,500 --> 00:13:21,800 [ What were some of the programs that you ... ] 263 00:13:21,900 --> 00:13:25,000 Well... we had to... to have a complete system, 264 00:13:25,100 --> 00:13:28,700 you need to have a kernel, which is the program that 265 00:13:28,800 --> 00:13:31,600 allocates resources to all the other programs, 266 00:13:31,800 --> 00:13:35,100 you need a compiler, which translates a program 267 00:13:35,200 --> 00:13:40,500 from readable source code that programmers can understand into numbers, 268 00:13:40,600 --> 00:13:44,900 mysterious numbers that the computer can actually run. 269 00:13:45,000 --> 00:13:47,500 you need other programs that go with the compiler to help do this job. 270 00:13:47,500 --> 00:13:48,600 you need a debugger. 271 00:13:48,700 --> 00:13:50,300 you need a text editor. 272 00:13:50,400 --> 00:13:51,500 you need text formatters. 273 00:13:51,600 --> 00:13:53,400 you need mailers... 274 00:13:53,500 --> 00:13:54,800 you need lots and lots of things. 275 00:13:54,900 --> 00:13:58,500 There are hundreds of programs in a Unix-like operating system. 276 00:13:58,900 --> 00:14:00,500 I saw Stallman's announcement. 277 00:14:00,600 --> 00:14:03,900 Actually I met him in February of 1987. 278 00:14:04,000 --> 00:14:08,500 He came to give a five-day tutorial on Emacs at our company. 279 00:14:08,600 --> 00:14:11,200 And during the day he would explain 280 00:14:11,300 --> 00:14:13,400 new ways to think about Emacs 281 00:14:13,500 --> 00:14:16,500 and ways to extend it, enhance it, and to use the Emacs source code 282 00:14:17,100 --> 00:14:18,400 uh, for better or worse. 283 00:14:18,500 --> 00:14:21,700 But in the evening, he was busily working on this compiler, 284 00:14:21,800 --> 00:14:24,100 and he had not yet released it to the public, 285 00:14:24,200 --> 00:14:27,800 so he was uh, being a little bit uh, careful about 286 00:14:27,900 --> 00:14:30,300 who, who got to see the source code. 287 00:14:30,400 --> 00:14:33,800 But I was very eager, and when he first announced it in June, 288 00:14:33,900 --> 00:14:35,500 I downloaded it immediately. 289 00:14:35,700 --> 00:14:37,100 I, I played with it. 290 00:14:37,200 --> 00:14:39,400 I got some, some pointers from him. 291 00:14:39,600 --> 00:14:41,200 And when I sent the source code back to him, 292 00:14:41,300 --> 00:14:42,500 he was very, 293 00:14:42,600 --> 00:14:47,300 uh, actually amazed that how quickly I was able to ramp up on his technology. 294 00:14:47,500 --> 00:14:52,300 Whenever we worked on something at Stanford or in the university, 296 00:14:52,400 --> 00:14:54,200 we would get, mostly at the time 297 00:14:54,300 --> 00:14:58,200 we were working off machines from Digital Equipment or Sun, mostly Sun. 298 00:14:58,400 --> 00:14:59,900 Whenever we would get a Sun machine, 299 00:15:00,100 --> 00:15:04,500 the first thing we would do is we would spend literally days 300 00:15:04,600 --> 00:15:08,600 downloading GNU free software from the Internet, 301 00:15:08,700 --> 00:15:11,100 building it and installing it on that Sun machine. 302 00:15:11,300 --> 00:15:14,800 The crucial thing about GNU is that it's free software. 303 00:15:15,200 --> 00:15:18,700 And Free Software refers not to price, but to freedom. 304 00:15:18,900 --> 00:15:21,200 So think of free speech, not free beer. 305 00:15:22,200 --> 00:15:24,500 The freedoms that I am talking about 306 00:15:24,500 --> 00:15:27,500 are the freedoms to make changes if you want to, 307 00:15:27,600 --> 00:15:30,300 or hire somebody else to make changes for you 308 00:15:30,400 --> 00:15:32,500 if you're using a software for your business, 309 00:15:32,600 --> 00:15:36,300 to redistribute copies, to share with other people, 310 00:15:36,400 --> 00:15:39,500 and to make improvements and publish them 311 00:15:39,600 --> 00:15:42,500 so that other people can get the benefit of them, too. 312 00:15:42,600 --> 00:15:46,400 And those are the freedoms that distinguish free software from non-free software. 313 00:15:46,700 --> 00:15:50,500 These are the freedoms that enable people to form a community. 314 00:15:50,600 --> 00:15:52,100 If you don't have all these freedoms, 315 00:15:52,100 --> 00:15:54,900 you're being divided and dominated by somebody. 316 00:15:55,900 --> 00:15:59,000 My first experience contributing to free software 317 00:15:59,000 --> 00:16:03,000 came in late 1989, early 1990. 318 00:16:03,200 --> 00:16:06,200 I was working as a graduate student at Stanford University 319 00:16:06,400 --> 00:16:08,600 on Computer Aided Design tools. 320 00:16:08,700 --> 00:16:10,800 One of the pieces I needed was a tool 321 00:16:10,900 --> 00:16:12,500 called a parser generator. 322 00:16:12,800 --> 00:16:14,800 Well, the Free Software Foundation 323 00:16:14,900 --> 00:16:18,300 under Richard Stallman created a great tool called "bison". 324 00:16:18,500 --> 00:16:22,400 I needed a tool that worked with C++. Bison worked with C. 325 00:16:22,900 --> 00:16:26,100 I modified bison to create something called "bison++". 326 00:16:26,200 --> 00:16:28,700 And it's a tremendous feeling of empowerment 327 00:16:28,800 --> 00:16:31,900 be able to take a piece of software that was available 328 00:16:32,000 --> 00:16:36,500 and create what you needed in a very short piece of time by modifying it. 329 00:16:36,700 --> 00:16:39,100 I put it back on the Internet 330 00:16:39,200 --> 00:16:40,900 and I was amazed at the number of people 331 00:16:41,000 --> 00:16:42,900 that picked it up and started using it. 332 00:16:43,000 --> 00:16:47,000 In fact, I remember going to, uh job interviews, 333 00:16:47,300 --> 00:16:50,100 I, at various times, considered just going out getting a job. 334 00:16:50,300 --> 00:16:52,100 And I'd gone to a job interview. 335 00:16:52,200 --> 00:16:53,600 And I was talking to one of the people, 336 00:16:53,700 --> 00:16:56,500 and I started asking them about what tools they used, 337 00:16:56,600 --> 00:16:59,000 and they said, "Gee, we used bison++!" 338 00:16:59,100 --> 00:17:01,400 and I said, "Oh, I am the author of bison++!" 339 00:17:01,600 --> 00:17:06,100 Free Software generally does have a copyright. 340 00:17:06,200 --> 00:17:08,800 It does have an owner. 341 00:17:08,900 --> 00:17:10,000 And it has a license. 342 00:17:10,100 --> 00:17:11,900 It is not public domain. 343 00:17:12,000 --> 00:17:14,600 If we put the software in the public domain, 344 00:17:14,700 --> 00:17:17,900 somebody else would be able to make a little bit of changes 345 00:17:18,000 --> 00:17:20,900 and turn that into a proprietary software package, 346 00:17:21,000 --> 00:17:23,800 which means that the users would be running our software, 347 00:17:23,900 --> 00:17:26,800 but they wouldn't have freedom to cooperate and share. 348 00:17:27,500 --> 00:17:31,200 To prevent that, we use a technique called "Copyleft". 349 00:17:31,500 --> 00:17:34,700 The idea of Copyleft is that it's "Copyright" flipped over. 350 00:17:35,500 --> 00:17:37,200 And what we do is, we say, 351 00:17:37,300 --> 00:17:39,200 this software is copyrighted 352 00:17:39,300 --> 00:17:43,600 and we, the authors give you permission to redistribute copies, 353 00:17:43,700 --> 00:17:45,200 we give you permission to change, 354 00:17:45,300 --> 00:17:46,900 we give you permission to add to it. 355 00:17:47,000 --> 00:17:48,700 But when you redistribute it, 356 00:17:48,800 --> 00:17:52,500 it has to be under these terms, no more and no less. 357 00:17:52,600 --> 00:17:54,800 So that whoever gets it from you 358 00:17:54,900 --> 00:18:00,200 also gets the freedom to cooperate with other people, if he wants to. 359 00:18:00,300 --> 00:18:03,800 And then, in this way everywhere the software goes, 360 00:18:03,900 --> 00:18:05,500 the freedom goes, too. 361 00:18:05,600 --> 00:18:07,900 And it becomes an inalienable right 362 00:18:09,000 --> 00:18:11,600 to cooperate with other people and form a community. 363 00:18:11,800 --> 00:18:15,100 [ And so, what is that? the license? what was that... ] 364 00:18:15,200 --> 00:18:17,200 Well, Copyleft being a general idea, 365 00:18:17,300 --> 00:18:20,300 in order to use it, you have to have specific example. 366 00:18:20,400 --> 00:18:24,100 The specific example we use for most GNU software packages 367 00:18:24,200 --> 00:18:27,100 is the GNU General Public License, 368 00:18:27,200 --> 00:18:31,200 a particular document in legalese which accomplishes this job. 369 00:18:31,500 --> 00:18:34,200 A lot of other people use that same license, for example, 370 00:18:34,300 --> 00:18:37,700 Linus Torvalds uses that license for Linux as well. 371 00:18:38,700 --> 00:18:42,200 Well, the license I use is the GNU General Public License. 372 00:18:42,300 --> 00:18:44,200 That's the one Richard Stallman wrote. 373 00:18:44,300 --> 00:18:48,200 And I think it is really astounding contribution. 374 00:18:48,300 --> 00:18:52,300 Uh, it's one of the few software licenses that was written 375 00:18:52,600 --> 00:18:56,000 from the standpoint of the community rather than 376 00:18:56,100 --> 00:18:59,900 from the standpoint of um, protecting a company 377 00:19:00,000 --> 00:19:05,500 or um, as is the case with MIT and BSD license 378 00:19:05,700 --> 00:19:09,400 performing the goals of a government grant program. 379 00:19:09,500 --> 00:19:12,500 Uh, and the GPL is really unique in that. 380 00:19:12,600 --> 00:19:16,000 It's not just a license. It's a whole philosophy that, 381 00:19:16,100 --> 00:19:19,100 I think, motivated the open source definition. 382 00:19:19,200 --> 00:19:23,500 I don't hide that a lot of what I do came from Stallman. 383 00:19:27,900 --> 00:19:31,900 A crucial step in the growth of GNU/Linux and the Free Software movement 384 00:19:32,000 --> 00:19:35,600 was the creation of businesses based upon the software and philosophy. 385 00:19:35,800 --> 00:19:38,300 Grown zero for the beginning of the business phase 386 00:19:38,400 --> 00:19:41,500 was the Electronics Research Lab at Stanford University. 387 00:19:41,800 --> 00:19:45,100 Known as ERL, the lab was the place for the first GNU 388 00:19:45,200 --> 00:19:47,500 and Linux business founder inspiration. 389 00:19:47,600 --> 00:19:49,600 So right here was where ERL was. 390 00:19:50,100 --> 00:19:53,200 That would have been the entrance over there next to the uh, 391 00:19:53,300 --> 00:19:55,600 electrical engineering McCullough building. 392 00:19:55,700 --> 00:19:59,500 As you walk in, you come in, you walk down the hallway, down here. 393 00:20:00,500 --> 00:20:03,600 My office would have been about, about here. 394 00:20:03,700 --> 00:20:07,000 and then right across the hall, from that was Michael Tiemann's office. 395 00:20:07,700 --> 00:20:11,700 Michael Tiemann took uh.. and started a company, Cygnus Software 396 00:20:11,700 --> 00:20:16,600 with the idea was to sell consulting and services around the GNU Free Software 397 00:20:16,600 --> 00:20:19,000 and, well Michael's done very well with Cygnus. 398 00:20:19,000 --> 00:20:23,000 Well uh, I spend a lot of time working out uh, 399 00:20:23,000 --> 00:20:25,000 how we were going to make money 400 00:20:25,000 --> 00:20:27,000 and in the original GNU manifesto 401 00:20:27,000 --> 00:20:30,000 which is the last chapter of the GNU Emacs manual. 402 00:20:30,000 --> 00:20:32,000 Stallman proposed a number of different 403 00:20:32,000 --> 00:20:33,800 possible ways to make money. 404 00:20:33,800 --> 00:20:35,800 From the beginning of the Free Software movement 405 00:20:35,800 --> 00:20:37,000 I had the idea that there's 406 00:20:37,000 --> 00:20:39,000 room in it for business to be done. 407 00:20:39,000 --> 00:20:41,700 One of the advantages of Free Software is that, there's 408 00:20:41,700 --> 00:20:45,000 a free market for any kind of service or support. 409 00:20:45,000 --> 00:20:47,000 So if you are using software in your business, 410 00:20:47,000 --> 00:20:49,000 and you want good support, 411 00:20:49,000 --> 00:20:52,000 you have a choice of people to go to for it, 412 00:20:52,000 --> 00:20:54,000 you have a choice of businesses... that 413 00:20:54,000 --> 00:20:57,000 are in the business of providing you with support. 414 00:20:57,000 --> 00:20:59,000 So they are going to have to in general give you 415 00:20:59,000 --> 00:21:02,000 good support or you go to somebody else. 416 00:21:02,000 --> 00:21:04,000 With proprietary software, 417 00:21:04,300 --> 00:21:07,000 support is a monopoly, there is one company, 418 00:21:07,000 --> 00:21:09,600 typically, that has the source code 419 00:21:09,600 --> 00:21:11,500 and only they can give you support 420 00:21:12,100 --> 00:21:15,300 so typically, you are at the mercy of a monopoly. 421 00:21:15,300 --> 00:21:17,600 That's the case, for example with Microsoft. 422 00:21:17,600 --> 00:21:20,900 So no wonder the support is so bad. 423 00:21:20,900 --> 00:21:22,500 The benefits of Free Software were 424 00:21:22,500 --> 00:21:25,200 tremendous but the cost of supporting it internally 425 00:21:25,800 --> 00:21:27,800 uh, and made managers very very nervous and 426 00:21:27,800 --> 00:21:31,500 so the fundamental idea I had was if we can build a model 427 00:21:31,500 --> 00:21:35,500 that could deliver two to four times the support 428 00:21:35,500 --> 00:21:39,000 and uh, and uh, and hand holding capability 429 00:21:39,000 --> 00:21:41,100 that an internal engineer could provide. 430 00:21:41,100 --> 00:21:44,100 And we could do it at 1/2 to 1/4 of the cost 431 00:21:44,100 --> 00:21:46,300 that would meet the test of whether or not 432 00:21:46,300 --> 00:21:47,900 people would actually buy. 433 00:21:47,900 --> 00:21:50,400 And by about the Fall of that year, we had 434 00:21:50,400 --> 00:21:52,300 all the things worked out about who 435 00:21:52,300 --> 00:21:53,900 needed on the technical team, what 436 00:21:53,900 --> 00:21:55,800 the terms the sale would be, what 437 00:21:55,800 --> 00:21:57,600 the key price point were, and we 438 00:21:57,600 --> 00:22:01,600 actually received our incorporation in Nov of 1989. 439 00:22:02,200 --> 00:22:04,800 One of the most difficult things in starting our company 440 00:22:04,800 --> 00:22:06,400 was actually finding a name for it. 441 00:22:06,400 --> 00:22:09,000 I explained this to one of my friends 442 00:22:09,000 --> 00:22:10,400 "we're having difficulty" 443 00:22:10,400 --> 00:22:12,900 and he returned an e-mail message 444 00:22:12,900 --> 00:22:16,800 that basically just had a bunch of words with the name "GNU" in it. 445 00:22:16,800 --> 00:22:21,600 And "Cygnus" was the one that looked least obnoxious and least obscene. 446 00:22:22,100 --> 00:22:24,600 I can say very clearly that Cygnus 447 00:22:24,900 --> 00:22:28,600 was the first business that specialized in Free Software. 448 00:22:28,800 --> 00:22:32,100 Cygnus supported Free Software, 449 00:22:32,100 --> 00:22:36,100 filled a very essential niche because we had this great software, 450 00:22:36,100 --> 00:22:40,100 you could get it for nothing but you couldn't get support - they made their money 451 00:22:40,300 --> 00:22:42,200 by charging for support. 452 00:22:42,200 --> 00:22:45,900 The GNU project started by building a toolkit, 453 00:22:45,900 --> 00:22:50,800 uh, basic development tools such as a C compiler, a debugger, a text-editor, 454 00:22:51,100 --> 00:22:54,500 and uh, other necessary apparatus. 455 00:22:54,500 --> 00:22:59,000 And their intention was eventually to develop a kernel to sit underneath those 456 00:22:59,200 --> 00:23:01,600 and be the center of the operating system. 457 00:23:01,600 --> 00:23:05,400 By about 1990 they had successfully developed that toolkit, 458 00:23:05,400 --> 00:23:09,400 and it was in wide use on great many variants of Unix. 459 00:23:09,500 --> 00:23:12,100 But there was still no free kernel. 460 00:23:12,100 --> 00:23:16,100 The kernel happened to be one of the last things we started to do 461 00:23:16,400 --> 00:23:18,400 and we had started it not long before. 462 00:23:19,400 --> 00:23:22,400 And that's when Linus Torvalds came along. 463 00:23:22,400 --> 00:23:25,700 "Lin-us" or "Line-us"? What's the exact, do you prefer the pronunciation? 464 00:23:26,000 --> 00:23:28,600 um.. When I speak Swedish it's "Lee-nus"; 465 00:23:28,600 --> 00:23:31,000 when I speak Finnish it's "Leen-ous"; 466 00:23:31,000 --> 00:23:32,800 when I speak English it's "Line-us". 467 00:23:32,800 --> 00:23:35,600 And I really don't care how people pronounce my name. 468 00:23:35,600 --> 00:23:38,400 But "Linux" is always "Linux". 469 00:23:38,400 --> 00:23:42,800 He developed a kernel, and got it working faster than we got ours working, 470 00:23:43,400 --> 00:23:45,900 and got it to work very nicely and solidly. 471 00:23:45,900 --> 00:23:47,800 His kernel is called "Linux". 472 00:23:48,300 --> 00:23:51,500 The initial goal was my very personal goal 473 00:23:51,500 --> 00:23:55,100 to be able to run a similar environment on my computer 474 00:23:55,500 --> 00:23:59,300 that I had grown used to at, at the university computers. 475 00:23:59,900 --> 00:24:05,300 And I could not find anything that suited me for that. 476 00:24:05,700 --> 00:24:09,400 So having been doing computers for all my life basically. 477 00:24:09,400 --> 00:24:12,500 At that point I decided that I'll do my own. 478 00:24:13,000 --> 00:24:17,000 Most of the inspiration early on came from, from SunOS 479 00:24:17,600 --> 00:24:21,900 which was what um, I was using at the university at the time. 480 00:24:21,900 --> 00:24:23,000 [ Which University? ] 481 00:24:23,000 --> 00:24:24,700 University of Helsinki in Finland. 482 00:24:25,600 --> 00:24:30,100 From 1991 to about 1993 was really 483 00:24:30,400 --> 00:24:32,700 I guess the infancy period of Linux. 484 00:24:32,700 --> 00:24:36,400 That was when it was still only alpha or beta quality; 485 00:24:36,400 --> 00:24:38,800 it was relatively unstable. 486 00:24:38,800 --> 00:24:41,600 Although, even then it was a good deal more stable 487 00:24:41,600 --> 00:24:45,600 than a lot of what are now called "production" operating systems. 488 00:24:45,600 --> 00:24:49,600 Linus used the traditional tried-and-true method of writing one program 489 00:24:50,500 --> 00:24:52,500 that does the job, 490 00:24:52,700 --> 00:24:54,800 and he got it to work. 491 00:24:54,800 --> 00:24:58,500 quickly in fact faster than I would have thought was possible. 492 00:24:58,500 --> 00:25:01,500 The term for it is "monolithic", 493 00:25:01,500 --> 00:25:09,400 which means that basically the OS itself is one entity, indivisible. 494 00:25:11,100 --> 00:25:13,400 uh, while in the microkernel, 495 00:25:13,400 --> 00:25:15,900 the, the operating system kernel is actually 496 00:25:17,600 --> 00:25:20,700 uh, just a collection of servers that 497 00:25:20,700 --> 00:25:23,500 do different things and then they have a common protocol 498 00:25:23,500 --> 00:25:25,700 for doing communication between themselves. 499 00:25:26,200 --> 00:25:31,800 [ So why is that... the GNU project that's had so much lead-time, that's been doing this, 500 00:25:31,800 --> 00:25:35,100 Why...Why is it that he was able to kinda come in at the tail end so to speak ] 501 00:25:35,100 --> 00:25:40,800 Well we actually started the GNU Hurd not long before he started Linux. 502 00:25:41,700 --> 00:25:45,700 And it happened though we chose a design that's a very advanced design 503 00:25:46,300 --> 00:25:48,300 in terms of the power gives you 504 00:25:48,300 --> 00:25:50,900 but also turns out to be very hard to debug. 505 00:25:51,600 --> 00:25:57,300 We decided to divide up the kernel which traditionally had been one program, 506 00:25:57,300 --> 00:25:59,600 to divide it up into a lot of smaller programs 507 00:25:59,600 --> 00:26:03,600 that would send messages to each other asynchronously to, to communicate. 508 00:26:05,600 --> 00:26:09,500 The problem is that, that style of programming 509 00:26:09,500 --> 00:26:11,800 has a great deal of potential for bugs, 510 00:26:11,800 --> 00:26:14,700 which are often very hard to figure out because they depend on... 511 00:26:14,700 --> 00:26:22,100 does this program send this message before or after this one sends that message... 512 00:26:22,300 --> 00:26:27,300 And the result was: it took us years to get the thing to work. 513 00:26:28,300 --> 00:26:31,700 [ What is Linux's relationship to the GNU project? ] 514 00:26:32,700 --> 00:26:39,100 Well there's relationships to GNU on kind of multiple levels. 515 00:26:39,600 --> 00:26:43,600 One is just the philosophical level of thinking that 516 00:26:44,200 --> 00:26:46,700 "making your source open is a good idea". 517 00:26:47,300 --> 00:26:51,300 When Linus developed the kernel he wasn't doing it for the GNU project. 518 00:26:51,300 --> 00:26:52,800 He did it independently. 519 00:26:52,800 --> 00:26:56,200 And he released it independently and we didn't know about it. 520 00:26:56,200 --> 00:26:58,500 But some of the people who did know about it 521 00:26:58,500 --> 00:27:01,000 decided to look for what else they could find 522 00:27:01,000 --> 00:27:04,300 to put together with that kernel to make a whole system. 523 00:27:04,300 --> 00:27:08,300 They looked around, and lo and behold everything they needed was already available. 524 00:27:08,500 --> 00:27:09,500 They looked around, and lo and behold everything they needed was already available. 525 00:27:09,800 --> 00:27:11,600 "What good fortune!" they thought. 526 00:27:11,600 --> 00:27:13,900 But actually there was no chance about it. 527 00:27:13,900 --> 00:27:17,900 They had found all the pieces of the GNU system which was missing just the kernel, 528 00:27:18,700 --> 00:27:20,600 so when they put all that together 529 00:27:20,600 --> 00:27:24,600 really they were fitting Linux into the gap in the GNU system. 530 00:27:25,200 --> 00:27:26,400 But they didn't know that. 531 00:27:26,800 --> 00:27:30,800 There's a lot of these programs 532 00:27:31,500 --> 00:27:34,600 um, done by the Free Softwares Foundation, 533 00:27:34,600 --> 00:27:36,800 and done by other people like Linux. 534 00:27:36,800 --> 00:27:40,800 And there's a symbiosis between Linux and the programs 535 00:27:40,900 --> 00:27:44,700 that the programs run on Linux and at the same time 536 00:27:44,700 --> 00:27:47,100 and they take the advantage of Linux as a platform, 537 00:27:47,100 --> 00:27:50,700 while Linux takes the advantage of the programs 538 00:27:50,700 --> 00:27:52,700 by just being able to use them. 539 00:27:52,700 --> 00:27:54,300 [ What...What programs? ] 540 00:27:54,700 --> 00:27:56,100 umm... 541 00:27:56,100 --> 00:27:59,100 The main one is actually the GNU C Compiler. 542 00:27:59,700 --> 00:28:03,300 Which... Without a C compiler it would not have been possible 543 00:28:03,300 --> 00:28:09,500 to make Linux or most of the open progress available. 544 00:28:10,500 --> 00:28:12,700 Linux uses the GPL, 545 00:28:12,700 --> 00:28:17,400 and I agree with a kind of philosophy behind the GPL. 546 00:28:18,500 --> 00:28:23,200 That said the GPL itself is not a very pretty document 547 00:28:23,200 --> 00:28:27,800 which is probably just because no lawyerese can ever be very pretty. 548 00:28:33,800 --> 00:28:37,800 I'd been playing around with Linux for actually 549 00:28:38,000 --> 00:28:41,300 late '92 or early '93 for about a year. 550 00:28:41,300 --> 00:28:45,900 before I decided that it was to the point where actually had everything that I needed 551 00:28:46,200 --> 00:28:48,300 to really replace a Sun Workstation. 552 00:28:48,300 --> 00:28:52,300 And I was looking for a way to have a Unix workstation at home 553 00:28:52,400 --> 00:28:56,400 at the time we used Sun Sparc Stations in the office at Stanford. 554 00:28:57,900 --> 00:29:00,400 Those machines cost us about 7,000 dollars. 555 00:29:00,400 --> 00:29:02,900 Now I desperately wanted a Unix machine at home! 556 00:29:02,900 --> 00:29:05,600 There's always a this thought you get as a graduate student 557 00:29:05,600 --> 00:29:06,900 "Gee... if I could work at home! 558 00:29:06,900 --> 00:29:08,800 Then I would be so much more productive, 559 00:29:08,800 --> 00:29:11,900 I would graduate sooner because I would finish my thesis sooner" 560 00:29:12,500 --> 00:29:16,000 Well, Well, is it true? Well, you can judge. 561 00:29:16,000 --> 00:29:19,800 You know most people end up spending a lot of their time 562 00:29:19,800 --> 00:29:21,300 becoming more productive so that 563 00:29:21,300 --> 00:29:24,500 they ever actually worked on their thesis they'd finish it in a day. 564 00:29:24,500 --> 00:29:26,200 It takes a while sometimes. 565 00:29:26,200 --> 00:29:28,500 So I decided that I wanted a Unix machine at home. 566 00:29:28,500 --> 00:29:32,500 And I went out there I was able to use Linux together with the PC. 567 00:29:32,700 --> 00:29:36,500 For about 2,000 dollars, I put together a system. 568 00:29:36,500 --> 00:29:39,400 That was one and a half to two times faster 569 00:29:39,400 --> 00:29:42,100 than that 7,000 dollars Sun Sparc Station. 570 00:29:42,100 --> 00:29:43,800 It was absolutely amazing. 571 00:29:43,800 --> 00:29:46,800 I had one and a half to two times the speed, 572 00:29:46,800 --> 00:29:49,500 at a third to fourth the price. 573 00:29:49,500 --> 00:29:50,800 Light bulbs went off. 574 00:29:50,800 --> 00:29:53,000 I knew there was an opportunity here. 575 00:29:53,000 --> 00:29:57,000 This was the chance to really do something better than what Sun has done 576 00:29:57,100 --> 00:29:59,700 around Open Source and Linux. 577 00:30:00,100 --> 00:30:03,300 I called it Linux originally as working name. 578 00:30:03,300 --> 00:30:06,800 And that was just because "Linus" 579 00:30:06,800 --> 00:30:08,000 and the "X" has to be there. 580 00:30:08,000 --> 00:30:10,100 It's Unix. It's like a law. 581 00:30:11,400 --> 00:30:14,000 And...what happened was that... 582 00:30:14,000 --> 00:30:17,800 I initially thought that I can't call it Linux publicly, 583 00:30:17,800 --> 00:30:20,100 because it is just too egotistical. 584 00:30:20,100 --> 00:30:22,400 And that was before I had a big ego. Right? 585 00:30:22,400 --> 00:30:26,700 They thought they were taking a whole bunch of components putting them around Linux 586 00:30:27,400 --> 00:30:30,400 So they ended up calling the whole thing "A Linux System" 587 00:30:31,000 --> 00:30:33,100 and somehow that term caught on. 588 00:30:33,100 --> 00:30:34,600 And the result is 589 00:30:34,600 --> 00:30:38,600 there are now ten million people using 590 00:30:38,600 --> 00:30:40,100 this variant of the GNU system... 591 00:30:40,100 --> 00:30:42,400 the GNU/Linux operating system. 592 00:30:42,800 --> 00:30:44,500 And most of them don't know it. 593 00:30:44,800 --> 00:30:48,800 [ Some people advocate it be described as GNU/Linux. 594 00:30:49,200 --> 00:30:52,300 I mean what's your thought on that? I would say, justify or... ] 595 00:30:52,300 --> 00:30:57,600 Well, I think it's justified but it is justified if you actually make GNU distribution of Linux. 596 00:30:58,000 --> 00:31:05,100 The same way that I think that Red Hat Linux is fine or SuSE Linux, or Debian Linux. 597 00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:09,000 Uh, because if you actually make your own distribution of Linux 598 00:31:09,000 --> 00:31:10,800 You get to name the thing. 599 00:31:10,900 --> 00:31:14,900 But calling Linux in general "GNU Linux" I think, is just ridiculous. 600 00:31:16,800 --> 00:31:18,600 I got involved in Fall '93. 601 00:31:19,100 --> 00:31:25,100 Because I was sent a copy of the first CD-ROM commercial Linux distribution, 602 00:31:25,100 --> 00:31:28,500 which was called Yggdrasi produced by Adam Richter. 603 00:31:28,900 --> 00:31:30,600 And I got a copy because... 604 00:31:30,600 --> 00:31:34,500 I had been myself writing Free Software for a long time since the early 80's. 605 00:31:34,500 --> 00:31:37,100 I was actually one of the early GNU contributors myself. 606 00:31:37,900 --> 00:31:39,800 And I was absolutely astonished, 607 00:31:39,800 --> 00:31:41,300 I was completely astonished. 608 00:31:41,300 --> 00:31:45,300 Because I've been a software engineer for nearly 15 years at that point. 609 00:31:46,000 --> 00:31:48,200 And according to all the rules I knew... 610 00:31:48,200 --> 00:31:51,900 about controlling complexity, keeping a project group small, 611 00:31:51,900 --> 00:31:54,700 having closely managed objectives. 612 00:31:54,700 --> 00:31:57,000 Linux should have been a disaster, and it wasn't. 613 00:31:57,000 --> 00:31:59,100 Instead, it was something wonderful, 614 00:31:59,100 --> 00:32:02,400 and I was determined to figure out how they were getting a way with that. 615 00:32:04,500 --> 00:32:07,900 In order for Linux to grow beyond the world of the computer programmer 616 00:32:07,900 --> 00:32:11,900 It needed a use, an application that made it a must-have technology 617 00:32:12,600 --> 00:32:13,900 That threshold was crossed 618 00:32:13,900 --> 00:32:17,700 with the development of a program that made complex websites possible 619 00:32:18,200 --> 00:32:20,600 That program is the Apache web server. 620 00:32:21,300 --> 00:32:24,600 The killer app of Linux was undoubtedly the Apache web server. 621 00:32:25,200 --> 00:32:27,100 If you look at the history of Linux, 622 00:32:27,100 --> 00:32:31,600 the adoption curve of Linux and the adoption curve of the Internet 623 00:32:31,600 --> 00:32:33,100 exactly track each other. 624 00:32:33,100 --> 00:32:38,100 1993, which was when the Apache web server project really got started, 625 00:32:38,100 --> 00:32:41,700 was also the beginnings of the popular ISP explosion 626 00:32:41,700 --> 00:32:45,500 when the Internet first became a mass market commodity 627 00:32:45,500 --> 00:32:47,900 and the idea of web-based electronic commerce 628 00:32:47,900 --> 00:32:50,300 and, and mass communication became real. 629 00:32:50,900 --> 00:32:54,100 I think it was one of the first applications that caused people to go 630 00:32:54,100 --> 00:32:56,000 "Well, if I install Linux." 631 00:32:56,000 --> 00:32:59,000 I get some tangible benefit from doing so, right? 632 00:32:59,500 --> 00:33:02,800 I mean, clearly there were a lot of interesting applications on Linux 633 00:33:02,800 --> 00:33:04,700 at, at the time, this being maybe two or three years ago, 634 00:33:04,700 --> 00:33:06,600 when the root thing really started to take off 635 00:33:06,600 --> 00:33:09,300 but there wasn't a driving, you know, 636 00:33:09,300 --> 00:33:10,600 you could almost say business case 637 00:33:10,600 --> 00:33:13,500 for someone to use Linux versus using NT 638 00:33:13,500 --> 00:33:16,800 until, I think, Apache and a lot of the things that plugged into Apache 639 00:33:16,800 --> 00:33:18,300 enhanced Apache 640 00:33:18,300 --> 00:33:21,300 I mean, when you want to go out and build.. go out to build a server farm 641 00:33:21,800 --> 00:33:23,600 It was much more cost effective 642 00:33:23,600 --> 00:33:24,200 cost effective 643 00:33:24,200 --> 00:33:29,100 real dollar returns to build it on Linux and Apache than was to build it on IIS and NT 644 00:33:29,100 --> 00:33:31,500 even if it meant that you have to spend a little bit of money 645 00:33:31,500 --> 00:33:33,100 to train your staff to learn how to use that or 646 00:33:33,100 --> 00:33:34,800 to find people who were knowledgeable. 647 00:33:34,800 --> 00:33:35,900 But the good news was that 648 00:33:35,900 --> 00:33:37,600 that knowledge wasn't very expensive 649 00:33:37,600 --> 00:33:39,300 because there were all those college students out there 650 00:33:39,300 --> 00:33:42,700 who'd been using Linux for a long time and were very familiar with it. 651 00:33:42,700 --> 00:33:45,900 If you look at the trend curves in web servers 652 00:33:45,900 --> 00:33:49,600 Apache has steadily been gaining a market share ever since 653 00:33:49,600 --> 00:33:52,100 it's up to something like 66% now 654 00:33:52,100 --> 00:33:55,300 It's steadily clobbered all of the closed source competition 655 00:33:55,300 --> 00:33:59,700 And that's because it's more reliable it's more flexible, it's more extensible 656 00:33:59,700 --> 00:34:03,000 It does what webmasters actually need 657 00:34:03,200 --> 00:34:06,000 and the combination of Apache and Linux 658 00:34:06,000 --> 00:34:08,300 found its way into a great many commercial shops. 659 00:34:09,200 --> 00:34:13,800 Essentially, Apache became the application that motivated Internet service providers 660 00:34:13,800 --> 00:34:17,800 and e-commerce companies to choose Linux over Microsoft's Windows. 661 00:34:19,000 --> 00:34:22,100 It would probably runs best on Linux and on FreeBSD 662 00:34:22,100 --> 00:34:25,700 and the reason is the communities around those operating systems 663 00:34:25,700 --> 00:34:30,100 are also the communities that contribute the most back to Apache, right? 664 00:34:30,100 --> 00:34:34,100 And there were also the operating systems that Internet service providers 665 00:34:34,100 --> 00:34:35,900 started using very heavily as well 666 00:34:36,500 --> 00:34:39,400 and Internet service providers really liked Apache 667 00:34:39,400 --> 00:34:40,800 because it allowed them to do 668 00:34:40,800 --> 00:34:44,100 a lot of different things that some of the commercial web servers didn't 669 00:34:44,100 --> 00:34:48,100 such as the ability to host more than one web site on a single box, which clearly 670 00:34:48,200 --> 00:34:50,800 if you are an ISP and you would have 40,000 users 671 00:34:50,800 --> 00:34:52,000 and they all want their web site, 672 00:34:52,000 --> 00:34:53,600 is gonna be pretty important to you. 673 00:34:54,900 --> 00:34:57,200 one of the key factors in the growth of Linux was 674 00:34:57,200 --> 00:35:00,000 the creation of companies that specialized in the distribution 675 00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:02,100 and support of the Operating System itself 676 00:35:02,300 --> 00:35:05,700 Among these companies, Red Hat Software is the best known. 677 00:35:05,700 --> 00:35:09,100 Red Hat started as a product of Marc Ewing 678 00:35:09,100 --> 00:35:10,700 while he was working at IBM. 679 00:35:10,700 --> 00:35:12,700 He wanted a little better Linux distribution 680 00:35:12,700 --> 00:35:14,100 he started playing around, 681 00:35:14,100 --> 00:35:18,100 found out he uh, he spent more time maintaining his Linux distribution 682 00:35:18,300 --> 00:35:21,300 than he did uh, than he did working on his new project. 683 00:35:21,300 --> 00:35:25,000 So he uh, sort of started the distribution himself 684 00:35:25,000 --> 00:35:26,600 He met up with Bob Young, 685 00:35:26,600 --> 00:35:29,500 who at the time was running company called ACC Bookstore 686 00:35:29,500 --> 00:35:32,900 which was a mail-order PC Unix uh, catalog 687 00:35:32,900 --> 00:35:34,800 And Bob kind of knew he wanted something, 688 00:35:34,800 --> 00:35:36,900 you know, more his own to market, 689 00:35:36,900 --> 00:35:39,300 rather than reselling other people's products 690 00:35:39,300 --> 00:35:42,400 And he was fairly good at marketing, and... 691 00:35:42,400 --> 00:35:43,800 Mark knew he needed some marketing help 692 00:35:43,800 --> 00:35:46,800 because he was very good at the technical parts, so they kinda got together 693 00:35:46,800 --> 00:35:51,100 I started working with Red Hat in May of 1995, basically right out of NC State. 694 00:35:51,100 --> 00:35:56,100 along with Eric Troan who, me and him combined make up employees #4 and #5. 695 00:35:57,000 --> 00:36:01,000 We actually reported to work in an apartment that Mark Ewing used to live in 696 00:36:02,300 --> 00:36:06,200 We took it over as kind of the development part of Red Hat software 697 00:36:06,200 --> 00:36:10,100 and stayed that way till about November of 1995 when... 698 00:36:10,300 --> 00:36:12,900 a toilet we had in the apartment kind of exploded, 699 00:36:12,900 --> 00:36:14,300 flooded our downstairs neighbor 700 00:36:14,300 --> 00:36:17,400 and she got little upset and... 701 00:36:17,400 --> 00:36:19,600 the apartment folks found out we were running a business there 702 00:36:19,600 --> 00:36:21,700 instead of actually living there the same time 703 00:36:21,700 --> 00:36:23,100 So they decided to throw us out. 704 00:36:23,100 --> 00:36:25,300 So at that point, we had about a week to go find 705 00:36:25,300 --> 00:36:27,600 our first office, which we did 706 00:36:27,600 --> 00:36:29,600 and get ourselves moved in a hurry 707 00:36:40,100 --> 00:36:45,100 We started going in again '95 or so to the venture capital firms, 708 00:36:45,100 --> 00:36:48,000 asking, saying, there's something happening here. 709 00:36:48,000 --> 00:36:50,100 There's a great business opportunity, 710 00:36:50,100 --> 00:36:54,100 to build the next Sun for open source. 711 00:36:54,300 --> 00:36:57,500 Well, the venture capitalists looked at this and said 712 00:36:57,500 --> 00:37:00,000 "Gee, you are selling systems 713 00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:02,100 the software is free. This is kind of scary. 714 00:37:02,100 --> 00:37:04,600 We're not sure that we want to put money in. And... 715 00:37:04,600 --> 00:37:08,000 by the way, we funded other systems companies 716 00:37:08,000 --> 00:37:10,900 and it hasn't really panned out. We are scared." 717 00:37:13,100 --> 00:37:16,200 I came to the US about 3 years ago, 718 00:37:16,200 --> 00:37:18,500 and the reason really was that I'd been spending 719 00:37:19,800 --> 00:37:22,800 like 6 or 7 years at Helsinki University. 720 00:37:22,800 --> 00:37:27,100 and decide it was time to see the real world and not just university life. 721 00:37:27,100 --> 00:37:32,100 Especially this area had a lot of the most interesting work being done. 722 00:37:33,600 --> 00:37:35,400 So I just decided that... 723 00:37:35,400 --> 00:37:39,400 let's try to move half way across the world, 724 00:37:39,900 --> 00:37:41,100 and give this a try. 725 00:37:41,100 --> 00:37:43,100 And it's turned out pretty well. 726 00:37:43,100 --> 00:37:46,000 [ Ah...you see this as temporary or long term? ] 727 00:37:46,500 --> 00:37:49,100 Well, we saw it as temporary at first. 728 00:37:49,100 --> 00:37:53,100 And I think it's certainly looking like it's turning into long term. 729 00:37:53,400 --> 00:37:56,900 Our youngest daughter is both US and Finnish citizen, 730 00:37:56,900 --> 00:37:58,400 because she was born here 731 00:37:59,000 --> 00:38:03,000 and the older one is speaking both Swedish and English, so... 732 00:38:27,200 --> 00:38:31,200 The next major event was one that I had directed hand in. 733 00:38:31,300 --> 00:38:34,100 I wrote a paper, called "The Cathedral & the Bazaar". 734 00:38:34,100 --> 00:38:37,800 which was my observations, my anthropological analysis 735 00:38:37,800 --> 00:38:40,100 of what it was that made the open source world work. 736 00:38:40,100 --> 00:38:45,400 We didn't call it that then. We were still using the term "Free Software" primarily. 737 00:38:45,400 --> 00:38:48,100 So it was my observation of what made the Free Software world work 738 00:38:48,100 --> 00:38:52,400 and why we were able to produce extremely high quality software 739 00:38:52,900 --> 00:38:56,900 in spite of constantly violating all of the standard rules of software engineering 740 00:38:57,800 --> 00:39:00,500 In that paper, I was setting up a contrast 741 00:39:00,500 --> 00:39:02,700 between two different styles of development, 742 00:39:02,700 --> 00:39:04,400 two opposed styles of development. 743 00:39:04,400 --> 00:39:10,000 One, which is the conventional closed development style, 744 00:39:10,000 --> 00:39:12,500 which I called the "Cathedral" style. 745 00:39:12,500 --> 00:39:15,800 In that one, you have tight specification of objectives. 746 00:39:15,800 --> 00:39:21,100 Small project groups which are run in a fairly hierarchical authoritarian manner. 747 00:39:22,300 --> 00:39:24,800 And you have long release intervals 748 00:39:25,600 --> 00:39:28,500 On the other hand,what I identified is happening in the Linux world 749 00:39:28,500 --> 00:39:34,100 was a much more peer to peer decentralized, market or bazaar-like style, 750 00:39:34,500 --> 00:39:36,100 which has a very short release intervals 751 00:39:36,100 --> 00:39:41,100 and constant solicitation of feedback from people who are formally outside of the project. 752 00:39:41,100 --> 00:39:45,100 A very intense peer review process. 753 00:39:45,400 --> 00:39:48,100 And the startling thing was that the more I looked at this, 754 00:39:48,100 --> 00:39:52,100 the more it seemed that trading away all the supposed advantages 755 00:39:52,900 --> 00:39:55,000 of conventional closed development, 756 00:39:55,000 --> 00:39:59,000 for that one single advantage of massive independent peer review 757 00:39:59,000 --> 00:40:03,000 actually seemed to win, actually seemed to get you good results. 758 00:40:06,500 --> 00:40:08,400 The reason Netscape is important is 759 00:40:08,400 --> 00:40:13,300 that they were the first large company to participate in open source. 760 00:40:13,300 --> 00:40:15,100 We had Cygnus providing support, 761 00:40:15,100 --> 00:40:17,700 but we didn't really have much business. 762 00:40:17,700 --> 00:40:21,500 And Netscape went open source essentially as a way to fight Microsoft, 763 00:40:21,500 --> 00:40:25,300 which was giving away Internet Explorer, 764 00:40:25,300 --> 00:40:29,300 but not letting anyone else have the source code, not letting companies collaborate. 765 00:40:30,300 --> 00:40:32,000 Working as part of the sales force, I got a bit of, 766 00:40:32,000 --> 00:40:34,400 I got a good idea of.. of why people bought our software 767 00:40:34,400 --> 00:40:38,400 and what it took to make our software successful in the marketplace against competitive products. 768 00:40:39,800 --> 00:40:41,100 However, the problem was, 769 00:40:41,100 --> 00:40:44,700 we were seeing, as that, as time went on, 770 00:40:44,700 --> 00:40:48,100 our software was uh, 771 00:40:48,100 --> 00:40:51,900 being competed against by other people's software, particularly Microsoft's 772 00:40:51,900 --> 00:40:55,700 and as time went on, the price of our software had to drop 773 00:40:55,700 --> 00:40:57,800 because other people were giving their software away 774 00:40:57,800 --> 00:41:00,800 at no charge or at little charge. 775 00:41:00,800 --> 00:41:03,000 Now the real problem was that they feared 776 00:41:03,000 --> 00:41:06,500 Microsoft would achieve a monopoly lock on the browser market 777 00:41:06,500 --> 00:41:10,300 and they would then use that monopoly lock to 778 00:41:10,300 --> 00:41:11,900 pervert actually, 779 00:41:11,900 --> 00:41:15,900 the HTTP and HTML standards that the web depends on. 780 00:41:15,900 --> 00:41:19,900 And once they had turned those standards in to lock in devices, 781 00:41:19,900 --> 00:41:23,900 they could then use that control to drive Netscape out of the server market, 782 00:41:24,300 --> 00:41:26,600 which was where it was making its real money. 783 00:41:26,600 --> 00:41:29,500 My concern was that as time went on, 784 00:41:31,000 --> 00:41:33,300 Netscape's business would be threatened, 785 00:41:33,300 --> 00:41:37,100 by the fact that we didn't have enough people to do what we needed to do as a company 786 00:41:37,100 --> 00:41:41,000 in order to keep our software viable in the marketplace. 787 00:41:41,500 --> 00:41:45,300 The Netscape release happened in early 1998. 788 00:41:45,300 --> 00:41:49,300 And uh, I was told later, I had no idea at the time, 789 00:41:50,300 --> 00:41:52,600 that it came about as a direct result of 790 00:41:52,600 --> 00:41:55,400 the right people having read "The Cathedral and the Bazaar". 791 00:41:55,900 --> 00:41:59,600 "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", the paper by Eric Raymond, 792 00:41:59,600 --> 00:42:05,200 was a significant influence on Netscape's decision to release source code. 793 00:42:05,900 --> 00:42:08,100 It came as a complete shock to me. 794 00:42:08,100 --> 00:42:10,300 I wasn't really ready for the thought 795 00:42:10,300 --> 00:42:12,500 that I was changing the world even by accident. 796 00:42:13,200 --> 00:42:17,200 However he was not by any means the only influence on that decision. 797 00:42:17,500 --> 00:42:19,700 Uh, and not necessarily the most important one, 798 00:42:19,700 --> 00:42:21,400 when all is said and done. 799 00:42:21,400 --> 00:42:23,600 As I said, Netscape, 800 00:42:23,600 --> 00:42:27,600 Netscape had already been talking about releasing source code for quite some time before 801 00:42:28,300 --> 00:42:30,200 anyone ever heard of Eric's paper. 802 00:42:30,600 --> 00:42:32,600 Linux Congress in early 1997, 803 00:42:32,600 --> 00:42:35,600 which was the first place that I gave that paper. 804 00:42:35,900 --> 00:42:39,900 And one of the people who heard it was Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly and Associates. 805 00:42:40,400 --> 00:42:43,300 And uh, he thought it was pretty intriguing 806 00:42:43,300 --> 00:42:47,300 and he asked me to give it at his first PERL conference, which was uh.. 807 00:42:47,300 --> 00:42:49,900 later that year, in Fall of 97. 808 00:42:50,600 --> 00:42:52,500 And apparently what happened, I was told later, 809 00:42:52,500 --> 00:42:55,000 although I had no idea that this was happening at the time, 810 00:42:55,400 --> 00:43:01,500 uh is that some people from Netscape actually heard the paper at the PERL conference 811 00:43:01,500 --> 00:43:05,500 and took those ideas back to Netscape and they kind of lit a fire there. 812 00:43:05,600 --> 00:43:09,600 The role of my paper was essentially to make the internal case at Netscape, uh 813 00:43:09,700 --> 00:43:13,700 to make the business case for why Netscape should release its source code. 814 00:43:13,900 --> 00:43:17,500 The paper was called "Netscape Source Code As Netscape Product". 815 00:43:18,200 --> 00:43:22,200 uh.. a strange title, essentially what the title meant was that 816 00:43:22,800 --> 00:43:24,000 In my opinion we needed to 817 00:43:24,100 --> 00:43:27,900 think of source code not just as something that was used in creating our products, 818 00:43:27,900 --> 00:43:30,100 but as something that was a product in its own right. 819 00:43:30,500 --> 00:43:33,200 Something that customers might use, other people might use. 820 00:43:33,700 --> 00:43:36,500 I then looked at what the business models might be 821 00:43:36,500 --> 00:43:39,400 if we released source code for our products. 822 00:43:39,400 --> 00:43:41,100 How would we license them? 823 00:43:41,100 --> 00:43:45,100 How do we sell products in this environment? 824 00:43:46,400 --> 00:43:49,600 Then I looked at the competition, particularly Microsoft. 825 00:43:49,600 --> 00:43:52,200 What would they be likely to do if we released source code? 826 00:43:52,200 --> 00:43:54,800 Was there some way they could use our source code against us? 827 00:43:54,800 --> 00:43:58,800 I used Eric's paper as an example of how distributed development could work, 828 00:43:59,600 --> 00:44:03,400 how a company could develop software not just using their own people, 829 00:44:03,400 --> 00:44:06,200 but also working with people on the Internet. 830 00:44:07,300 --> 00:44:10,900 And that's why I included a reference to Eric's paper in my paper. 831 00:44:11,200 --> 00:44:12,700 Once my paper was circulated, 832 00:44:12,700 --> 00:44:15,100 the people who read my paper would naturally enough 833 00:44:15,100 --> 00:44:18,100 find a reference to Eric's paper and read that as well. 834 00:44:18,100 --> 00:44:20,700 [ And who was involved in making that happen at Netscape? ] 835 00:44:21,700 --> 00:44:25,100 Primarily the person who made the actual decision was Jim Barksdale. 836 00:44:25,900 --> 00:44:28,000 And this turned out to be important later. 837 00:44:28,000 --> 00:44:30,800 That our big win, the big score 838 00:44:30,800 --> 00:44:34,400 that gave us mainstream visibility and credibility with investors 839 00:44:34,400 --> 00:44:38,400 came not because of bottom up evangelism from a bunch of engineers, 840 00:44:38,500 --> 00:44:41,600 but because one strategist at the top 841 00:44:41,600 --> 00:44:43,900 saw the potential power of this method and 842 00:44:43,900 --> 00:44:46,800 then essentially imposed that vision on everyone underneath him. 843 00:44:47,900 --> 00:44:51,100 When I completed the paper, I first gave a copy to Mark Andreessen, 844 00:44:51,100 --> 00:44:55,100 who was co-founder of Netscape and was at the time one of, 845 00:44:55,100 --> 00:44:56,900 on the senior management team at Netscape. 846 00:44:56,900 --> 00:45:00,900 Mark then gave a copy of the paper to several other people within Netscape management, 847 00:45:01,000 --> 00:45:03,100 including Jim Barksdale. 848 00:45:03,100 --> 00:45:06,200 I'm not sure exactly when Jim and the other senior managers 849 00:45:06,200 --> 00:45:08,300 made the actual decision, 850 00:45:09,000 --> 00:45:11,300 I believe it was in early January sometime. 851 00:45:11,400 --> 00:45:15,900 Netscape actually announced that it was gonna release the source code on Jan 22nd, 852 00:45:16,400 --> 00:45:19,900 the same time it was going to give Communicator away for free. 853 00:45:20,300 --> 00:45:23,000 When Netscape decided to release the source code, 854 00:45:23,000 --> 00:45:25,400 people sort of got a wake up notice and said 855 00:45:25,400 --> 00:45:28,900 "Hey, maybe there is something to this idea of releasing source code 856 00:45:28,900 --> 00:45:32,400 and doing development with people outside your company." 857 00:45:33,400 --> 00:45:38,200 So Netscape's decision brought a lot of public attention to the idea of Free Software, 858 00:45:38,200 --> 00:45:40,500 what became known as Open Source, 859 00:45:40,500 --> 00:45:43,000 and brought a lot of attention to the Linux operating system, 860 00:45:43,000 --> 00:45:47,000 which was one of the most prominent examples of Open Source software at that time. 861 00:45:52,500 --> 00:45:55,800 This is our first office, Mountain View, California. 862 00:45:55,800 --> 00:45:58,200 We moved here in early 1995. 863 00:45:58,200 --> 00:46:00,100 This is 4,000 square feet. 864 00:46:00,100 --> 00:46:06,700 It was an incredible leap of faith for us to move out and take the company to our own office. 865 00:46:06,700 --> 00:46:09,700 Now what's really important about this place 866 00:46:09,700 --> 00:46:13,300 is that this is the office where the term "Open Source" was invented. 867 00:46:13,300 --> 00:46:18,000 If you walk in to an executive's office and say "Free Software", 868 00:46:18,300 --> 00:46:22,100 OK, If you're lucky, the response you'll get is something like, 869 00:46:22,100 --> 00:46:28,600 "hmm, hmm, Free Software, must be cheap, shoddy, worthless." 870 00:46:28,600 --> 00:46:32,600 Uh, and if you're not lucky, it has associations with, uh. 871 00:46:34,000 --> 00:46:38,000 with the Free Software Foundation's wholesale attack on intellectual property rights, 872 00:46:38,400 --> 00:46:41,000 which regardless of what you think about the ethics of that, 873 00:46:41,000 --> 00:46:45,000 it's lousy marketing, it's not something that businesses want to hear. 874 00:46:45,500 --> 00:46:47,900 So Eric Raymond knew there was a problem. 875 00:46:47,900 --> 00:46:50,100 We'd been calling this Free Software, 876 00:46:50,100 --> 00:46:54,100 but people took the term "Free" and associated with "Free of charge", 877 00:46:54,500 --> 00:46:57,200 they thought they couldn't make money or couldn't sell, 878 00:46:57,200 --> 00:46:59,100 which is exactly the wrong concept. 879 00:46:59,100 --> 00:47:04,700 We wanted to get across the idea the software was open and that the source code was available. 880 00:47:04,700 --> 00:47:07,000 Very important pieces. 881 00:47:07,000 --> 00:47:10,700 We had this meeting at the VA offices in Mountain View, where Eric, 882 00:47:10,700 --> 00:47:17,200 myself, and Christine Peterson from Foresight Institute joined us as well as some other people. 883 00:47:17,200 --> 00:47:20,100 Christine Peterson was there by phone. uh.. 884 00:47:22,000 --> 00:47:25,600 Jon "Mad dog" Hall was also there by phone. uh.. 885 00:47:26,400 --> 00:47:30,300 And then Todd Anderson, who later worked for SuSE for a while was there. 886 00:47:30,300 --> 00:47:33,300 Sam Ockman who now runs Penguin Computing was there. 887 00:47:33,300 --> 00:47:36,700 He was uh.. He was an employee of VA at the time 888 00:47:36,700 --> 00:47:39,600 Well, we came up with the concept of Open Source, 889 00:47:39,600 --> 00:47:42,900 we called Linus in fact and asked Linus if he liked it. 890 00:47:42,900 --> 00:47:46,100 He was interested, He liked it. 891 00:47:46,100 --> 00:47:48,600 Eventually we came up with something that replaced "Free Software". 892 00:47:48,600 --> 00:47:50,200 That was the beginning of Open Source. 893 00:47:50,200 --> 00:47:52,300 [ How did you chose words "Open Source"? ] 894 00:47:53,100 --> 00:47:57,100 You know, I think Christine Peterson was the person who really came up with the idea. 895 00:47:57,500 --> 00:48:04,300 Uh, we wanted, again, the idea that the source code was out there and it was open. 896 00:48:04,300 --> 00:48:05,700 There weren't many choices. 897 00:48:07,800 --> 00:48:11,800 Well, since the fist three recipients have spoken for the Open Source movement, 898 00:48:12,800 --> 00:48:16,300 I think I should speak about the Free Software movement. 899 00:48:16,300 --> 00:48:19,800 The Open Source movement, focuses on practical advantages 900 00:48:19,800 --> 00:48:22,500 that you can get by having a community of users 901 00:48:22,500 --> 00:48:26,500 who can cooperate on interchanging and improving software. 902 00:48:26,600 --> 00:48:30,400 I agree completely with the points they make about that. 903 00:48:30,400 --> 00:48:34,900 The reason why my views are different, while I am in the Free Software movement 904 00:48:34,900 --> 00:48:37,000 rather than the Open Source movement, 905 00:48:37,000 --> 00:48:40,000 is that I believe there's something more important at stake. 906 00:48:40,000 --> 00:48:45,000 That freedom to cooperate with other people, freedom to have a community... 907 00:48:45,000 --> 00:48:47,200 is important for our quality of life. 908 00:48:47,200 --> 00:48:51,200 It's important for having a good society that we can live in. 909 00:48:51,300 --> 00:48:57,300 And that that is in my view, even more important than having powerful and reliable software. 910 00:48:57,800 --> 00:49:01,800 But I think some of the people in the Free Software camp... 911 00:49:02,600 --> 00:49:06,000 are a little scared by the commercialization. 912 00:49:08,000 --> 00:49:12,000 And uh, you know, of course a rebel is put off by success. 913 00:49:12,300 --> 00:49:15,900 uh.. I think that commercialization is very important. 914 00:49:15,900 --> 00:49:18,700 We want to mainstream this software, 915 00:49:18,700 --> 00:49:23,900 and I work with Richard Stallman who's the gray haired man of Free Software, 916 00:49:25,400 --> 00:49:28,400 uh, on a regular basis, and I don't feel 917 00:49:28,400 --> 00:49:31,900 I have any philosophical differences. 918 00:49:31,900 --> 00:49:35,000 me as author the Open Source definition and 919 00:49:35,000 --> 00:49:40,300 he is originator of free software as an organized thing, 920 00:49:41,800 --> 00:49:44,800 except for one thing. Richard thinks that all software should be free, 921 00:49:44,800 --> 00:49:49,500 and I think that free software and non-free software should coexist. 922 00:49:49,500 --> 00:49:51,200 That's the only difference we have. 923 00:49:52,000 --> 00:49:54,800 Uh, we decided early on that what we needed, 924 00:49:54,800 --> 00:49:58,800 a..a definition, we needed a kind of meta-license to define the term "Open Source". 925 00:49:59,000 --> 00:49:59,800 a, a definition, we needed a kind of meta-license to define the term "Open Source". 926 00:49:59,800 --> 00:50:03,600 And what we came up with is a document called "The Open Source Definition". 927 00:50:03,600 --> 00:50:08,800 It's derived from the Debian Free Software guidelines that were originally written by Bruce Parens. 928 00:50:09,300 --> 00:50:12,600 I'd written the original draft of that, uh, 929 00:50:12,600 --> 00:50:16,100 discussed it for a month with the Debian developers 930 00:50:16,100 --> 00:50:18,800 Debian is a Linux distribution 931 00:50:18,800 --> 00:50:22,000 And made it their project policy 932 00:50:22,000 --> 00:50:24,900 And Eric and I decided to relabel 933 00:50:25,700 --> 00:50:27,800 what we'd written for Debian 934 00:50:27,800 --> 00:50:29,100 as The Open Source definition 935 00:50:29,100 --> 00:50:31,400 and to say Open Source is a software 936 00:50:31,800 --> 00:50:34,300 that gives you a list of nine rights 937 00:50:34,300 --> 00:50:36,600 which is in the Open Source definition. 938 00:50:37,600 --> 00:50:40,400 The first right is Free Redistribution 939 00:50:40,400 --> 00:50:42,800 This doesn't mean Free as in no price 940 00:50:42,800 --> 00:50:45,000 It means liberty 941 00:50:45,800 --> 00:50:48,600 Um, you have to be free to redistribute 942 00:50:48,600 --> 00:50:50,100 your software to someone else 943 00:50:50,100 --> 00:50:52,300 And actually no price is a side effect 944 00:50:52,300 --> 00:50:55,600 You can charge for that redistribution or not 945 00:50:55,600 --> 00:50:57,800 It has to come with source code 946 00:50:58,100 --> 00:51:01,500 So that someone can maintain a program. 947 00:51:01,500 --> 00:51:04,200 If they go from a PC to a Mac for example 948 00:51:04,600 --> 00:51:07,600 they can change the software. 949 00:51:07,600 --> 00:51:10,000 Derived Works have to be possible 950 00:51:10,000 --> 00:51:12,700 If someone has to improve your program 951 00:51:12,700 --> 00:51:18,000 um, they should be able to distribute the result 952 00:51:18,000 --> 00:51:21,500 uh, There is a provision about integrity 953 00:51:21,500 --> 00:51:22,800 of the author's source code 954 00:51:23,000 --> 00:51:27,900 which says that the author can sort of maintain their honor 955 00:51:27,900 --> 00:51:29,700 and if you make a change 956 00:51:30,100 --> 00:51:32,400 you might have to change the name of the program 957 00:51:32,400 --> 00:51:35,100 or mark out your change very clearly 958 00:51:35,100 --> 00:51:38,500 so that your change doesn't reflect on the author 959 00:51:38,500 --> 00:51:42,300 There is no discrimination against people or groups. 960 00:51:42,400 --> 00:51:44,200 Uh, the example I usually use is 961 00:51:44,900 --> 00:51:47,400 You can't stop an abortion clinic 962 00:51:47,400 --> 00:51:50,600 or an anti-abortion activist from using the software 963 00:51:50,600 --> 00:51:54,200 There is no discrimination against fields of endeavor 964 00:51:54,600 --> 00:51:57,400 And that means the software has to be usable 965 00:51:57,600 --> 00:52:00,900 in a business as well as in a school 966 00:52:00,900 --> 00:52:04,400 The license has to be distributable 967 00:52:04,500 --> 00:52:05,500 In other words 968 00:52:05,700 --> 00:52:08,900 I have to be able to give that license to someone 969 00:52:08,900 --> 00:52:12,300 and that license then should work 970 00:52:12,300 --> 00:52:15,000 if that someone gives it to yet a third person 971 00:52:15,000 --> 00:52:18,800 The license can't be specific to a product 972 00:52:18,800 --> 00:52:20,000 in other words 973 00:52:20,000 --> 00:52:25,200 if I distribute my software on a Red Hat system 974 00:52:25,200 --> 00:52:26,800 the license can't say 975 00:52:26,800 --> 00:52:30,500 you can't distribute this on a SuSE or Debian system 976 00:52:30,500 --> 00:52:34,000 The license can't contaminate other software 977 00:52:34,000 --> 00:52:40,400 So if I distribute this on a CD with another program 978 00:52:40,400 --> 00:52:43,600 It can't say that other program must be free 979 00:52:43,600 --> 00:52:46,500 otherwise you can't distribute my software 980 00:52:46,500 --> 00:52:49,200 And then the only other part of 981 00:52:49,200 --> 00:52:50,400 the Open Source definition 982 00:52:50,400 --> 00:52:53,200 is a list of licenses that were accepted 983 00:52:53,200 --> 00:52:57,100 And the ones that we started with were the GPL 984 00:52:57,100 --> 00:53:00,200 which was actually the example for a lot of 985 00:53:00,200 --> 00:53:03,700 what's in the Open Source definition in the BSD license 986 00:53:03,700 --> 00:53:07,700 because software for BSD system pre-existed Linux 987 00:53:13,500 --> 00:53:17,300 I think the next moment that I thought was really pivotal 988 00:53:17,300 --> 00:53:19,500 was when the database vendors flipped over 989 00:53:19,500 --> 00:53:21,500 which happened about three months sooner 990 00:53:21,500 --> 00:53:22,600 than I expected to 991 00:53:22,600 --> 00:53:25,000 and actually happened in late July early August 992 00:53:25,000 --> 00:53:29,000 commitments to do one ports from Oracle and 993 00:53:29,300 --> 00:53:32,100 and Sybase and the other key database vendors. 994 00:53:32,100 --> 00:53:33,400 [ And why was that critical? ] 995 00:53:33,400 --> 00:53:35,500 because we knew that in order for 996 00:53:35,500 --> 00:53:37,800 the open source story to be credible 997 00:53:37,800 --> 00:53:40,500 and especially in order for the Linux story to be credible, 998 00:53:40,500 --> 00:53:43,500 we'd have to get commitments from independent software vendors 999 00:53:43,500 --> 00:53:47,000 to do ports of their applications to these platforms 1000 00:53:47,000 --> 00:53:49,600 and I was actually kind of worried 1001 00:53:49,600 --> 00:53:52,000 I thought that we were in a window of vulnerability 1002 00:53:52,000 --> 00:53:55,400 between the time that we announced the open source campaign 1003 00:53:55,400 --> 00:53:57,200 and the database vendors flipped over 1004 00:53:57,200 --> 00:53:59,800 that was the point at which hostile action 1005 00:53:59,800 --> 00:54:03,500 by Microsoft or other close-source software companies 1006 00:54:03,500 --> 00:54:04,800 that was the point in which 1007 00:54:04,800 --> 00:54:07,300 a serious marketing blitz might have sunk us 1008 00:54:07,300 --> 00:54:11,300 but once the big database vendors flipped over 1009 00:54:11,300 --> 00:54:13,800 that opened the way for other ISVs 1010 00:54:13,800 --> 00:54:15,700 that started the snow ball effect going 1011 00:54:15,700 --> 00:54:17,800 Every six months or so 1012 00:54:17,800 --> 00:54:19,400 I would come back to the venture capitalists 1013 00:54:19,400 --> 00:54:21,100 I would show them the new numbers 1014 00:54:21,100 --> 00:54:23,200 showing more and more people adopting Linux 1015 00:54:23,200 --> 00:54:25,000 and new people porting, new users 1016 00:54:25,000 --> 00:54:26,600 and I'd show them our customer list 1017 00:54:26,600 --> 00:54:29,900 And our customer list was getting much more impressive 1018 00:54:29,900 --> 00:54:32,500 It was people like Cisco that were beginning to appear 1019 00:54:32,500 --> 00:54:35,000 people like, you know, those dot-com companies 1020 00:54:35,000 --> 00:54:37,400 were started to show up on our customer list 1021 00:54:37,400 --> 00:54:40,000 and eventually the venture capitalists 1022 00:54:40,000 --> 00:54:42,000 you know, they kept looking at it 1023 00:54:42,000 --> 00:54:43,800 they kept saying "Oh, we can't quite do it" 1024 00:54:43,800 --> 00:54:47,000 Finally, Linus appeared on the cover of Fortune 1025 00:54:47,000 --> 00:54:49,300 There was something happening with Open Source 1026 00:54:49,300 --> 00:54:53,300 Well, at that point, the venture capitalists couldn't ignore it 1027 00:54:53,700 --> 00:54:56,600 they just got sick of hearing about Linux everywhere 1028 00:54:56,600 --> 00:54:58,500 and they got tired of me, just, you know 1029 00:54:58,500 --> 00:55:01,900 showing it to them every, at that point it was almost every week 1030 00:55:01,900 --> 00:55:04,500 So they uh, they decided it was time to invest, 1031 00:55:04,500 --> 00:55:06,300 that there was something happening 1032 00:55:06,300 --> 00:55:09,800 I announced Open Source to the world on the Internet 1033 00:55:09,800 --> 00:55:13,200 I did a lot of the early... administrative work of 1034 00:55:13,200 --> 00:55:16,700 starting the Open Source Initiative 1035 00:55:16,700 --> 00:55:18,500 and I think six months later 1036 00:55:18,500 --> 00:55:21,000 I was reading the words Open Source 1037 00:55:21,000 --> 00:55:23,600 in the news all the time 1038 00:55:23,600 --> 00:55:25,900 and was totally astounded 1039 00:55:25,900 --> 00:55:27,100 And a year later, I believe 1040 00:55:27,100 --> 00:55:31,100 Microsoft was talking about releasing some source code 1041 00:55:32,200 --> 00:55:34,400 And someone in the press asked Steve Ballmer 1042 00:55:34,400 --> 00:55:37,000 if they were going to open source their code 1043 00:55:37,000 --> 00:55:38,500 and Steve Ballmer said, 1044 00:55:38,500 --> 00:55:42,500 "Well, Open Source means more than just releasing the source code" 1045 00:55:42,800 --> 00:55:45,400 And I realized that he had read my document 1046 00:55:45,400 --> 00:55:48,200 and understood it and was now telling the press about this 1047 00:55:48,600 --> 00:55:51,600 Now if you are like just a guy on the net 1048 00:55:51,600 --> 00:55:53,900 who's not doing this for a job at all 1049 00:55:53,900 --> 00:55:55,700 and you sort of write a manifesto 1050 00:55:55,700 --> 00:55:58,000 and it spreads out through the world 1051 00:55:58,000 --> 00:55:59,000 and a year later 1052 00:55:59,000 --> 00:56:02,100 the vice president of Microsoft is talking about that 1053 00:56:02,100 --> 00:56:05,400 You'd think you were on drugs, wouldn't you? 1054 00:56:05,400 --> 00:56:07,100 But that's what really happened 1055 00:56:13,000 --> 00:56:17,000 The Local Users Groups tend to be more than an issue of 1056 00:56:18,900 --> 00:56:21,000 building a social network 1057 00:56:22,200 --> 00:56:27,800 especially getting people familiarized with the issues 1058 00:56:29,400 --> 00:56:33,600 also just acting as a kind of supporting network 1059 00:56:33,700 --> 00:56:38,900 for people who, who do not, for example, have the ability 1060 00:56:38,900 --> 00:56:42,100 to pay for commercial support network 1061 00:56:42,300 --> 00:56:44,700 So one thing they're doing in this area 1062 00:56:44,700 --> 00:56:46,700 for example, is they're making these. 1063 00:56:46,900 --> 00:56:48,700 I think it's once a month 1064 00:56:48,700 --> 00:56:52,400 They're having install fests, which means that 1065 00:56:52,600 --> 00:56:56,900 people who have problems getting Linux installed on their machines 1066 00:56:57,100 --> 00:56:58,600 or have some issue, I mean 1067 00:56:58,600 --> 00:57:00,000 maybe they've installed Linux 1068 00:57:00,000 --> 00:57:02,600 but want to set up the network in a specific way 1069 00:57:02,600 --> 00:57:04,700 can actually bring in their machines 1070 00:57:04,700 --> 00:57:05,800 to this users group meeting 1071 00:57:05,800 --> 00:57:09,400 And there's a lot of people there willing to help 1072 00:57:09,400 --> 00:57:13,400 who may have seen the same problem before. 1073 00:57:22,400 --> 00:57:24,100 Well, actually things aren't so well. 1074 00:57:24,100 --> 00:57:27,300 I tried it earlier myself. I had problems. 1075 00:57:27,300 --> 00:57:29,700 And so I came to this install fest where 1076 00:57:29,700 --> 00:57:31,400 all the gurus abound. 1077 00:57:31,400 --> 00:57:35,300 Hopefully I'll have better luck getting it in. 1078 00:57:35,300 --> 00:57:38,100 Instead of having, uh, sending e-mails, or 1079 00:57:38,100 --> 00:57:40,000 writing to news groups on the Internet 1080 00:57:40,000 --> 00:57:42,500 and waiting several days for the answers sometimes 1081 00:57:42,500 --> 00:57:45,500 it's easy to come here and find other people 1082 00:57:45,500 --> 00:57:46,700 who might know about your problem 1083 00:57:46,700 --> 00:57:48,600 and may be able to help you 1084 00:57:48,600 --> 00:57:49,700 And hopefully within a few hours 1085 00:57:49,700 --> 00:57:51,900 you have your machine installed 1086 00:57:51,900 --> 00:57:55,900 Originally I wanted to it install on uh, my larger laptop 1087 00:57:56,100 --> 00:57:57,800 and so I just did a search on the net 1088 00:57:57,800 --> 00:58:01,800 and found where there were resources to get help 1089 00:58:02,400 --> 00:58:04,100 And um, I'm here today 1090 00:58:04,100 --> 00:58:07,800 cause I'm trying to put Linux on this little guy right here. 1091 00:58:07,800 --> 00:58:10,100 just a Toshiba Libretto 1092 00:58:10,100 --> 00:58:12,700 It's not a easiest thing in the world to do 1093 00:58:12,700 --> 00:58:15,300 because it's a weird piece of hardware, so... 1094 00:58:15,300 --> 00:58:17,300 Any chairs around here? 1095 00:58:29,200 --> 00:58:31,000 I think that Department of Justice case 1096 00:58:31,000 --> 00:58:33,000 has made people aware of the fact that 1097 00:58:33,000 --> 00:58:36,000 you should at least look for alternatives to Microsoft. 1098 00:58:36,000 --> 00:58:40,000 and maybe Microsoft isn't the American dream after all 1099 00:58:40,100 --> 00:58:42,000 and that kind of shifting perception 1100 00:58:43,300 --> 00:58:45,100 you can very clearly see 1101 00:58:45,100 --> 00:58:49,100 that people just took Microsoft for granted 1102 00:58:49,600 --> 00:58:52,000 and maybe they're still buying Microsoft but at least 1103 00:58:52,000 --> 00:58:54,900 they're kind of more aware of the issue these days 1104 00:58:54,900 --> 00:58:57,600 Microsoft actually uses Linux as defense 1105 00:58:57,600 --> 00:58:59,000 They used Linux to ground a claim 1106 00:58:59,000 --> 00:59:00,000 that they don't have a monopoly 1107 00:59:00,000 --> 00:59:03,100 because Linux could essentially 1108 00:59:03,100 --> 00:59:05,000 push them off their catbird seat at any time. 1109 00:59:05,000 --> 00:59:07,800 It was a very ingenious argument, totally specious 1110 00:59:07,800 --> 00:59:09,600 because it didn't 1111 00:59:09,600 --> 00:59:11,800 do anything to answer the charge 1112 00:59:11,800 --> 00:59:13,400 that they had previously engaged in 1113 00:59:13,400 --> 00:59:16,100 bullying and various anti-competitive practices. 1114 00:59:16,100 --> 00:59:17,700 but it was clever of them 1115 00:59:17,700 --> 00:59:20,200 And, in an event, the judge didn't buy it 1116 00:59:22,500 --> 00:59:25,100 While ordinarily we in the Linux community are rather worried about 1117 00:59:25,100 --> 00:59:27,500 letting Microsoft become the issue, 1118 00:59:27,500 --> 00:59:32,700 but there was a Slashdot article about December of '98 1119 00:59:32,700 --> 00:59:38,500 where a fellow named Matt at the noodle had pointed out that... 1120 00:59:38,500 --> 00:59:41,500 the, a gentleman in Australia has managed to receive a refund for 1121 00:59:41,500 --> 00:59:45,500 the unused copy of Windows that came with his computer. 1122 00:59:45,500 --> 00:59:50,000 So he declared the 19th of January, was it January? 1123 00:59:50,000 --> 00:59:52,400 err, no, It was February. It was February. Oh, I'm sorry, the 19th of February... 1124 00:59:52,400 --> 00:59:54,500 he declared 19th of February Windows Refund Day. 1125 00:59:54,500 --> 00:59:56,800 and he encouraged everyone to go to the computer manufacturers, 1126 00:59:56,800 --> 00:59:59,800 and return their unused copies of Windows... 1127 00:59:59,800 --> 01:00:03,000 as it was specified in the Windows End-User License Agreement. 1128 01:00:03,000 --> 01:00:06,100 It's important to remember that in the License itself, it says that 1129 01:00:06,100 --> 01:00:11,000 you can receive a refund if you don't use the software, 1130 01:00:11,000 --> 01:00:14,000 and that the manufacture is bound by law to do this... 1131 01:00:14,000 --> 01:00:16,000 or it was bond by contract. 1132 01:00:16,000 --> 01:00:19,000 and we found if you called up these manufactures, they basically said... 1133 01:00:19,000 --> 01:00:21,200 "Stop bothering me kid." and hung up on you. 1134 01:00:21,200 --> 01:00:24,200 We didn't really wanna sort of giving out our location, 1135 01:00:24,200 --> 01:00:27,400 or where we were going to meet, until... 1136 01:00:27,400 --> 01:00:28,400 you know, the very last seconds. 1137 01:00:28,400 --> 01:00:31,800 What we did is, we have people meet at the place where we could control 1138 01:00:31,800 --> 01:00:33,500 in the different towns around here. 1139 01:00:33,500 --> 01:00:37,000 So I was the San Jose marshal, and I believe Nick you were... 1140 01:00:37,000 --> 01:00:39,400 I was..., Rick Moen and I did San Francisco. 1141 01:00:39,400 --> 01:00:39,900 Right 1142 01:00:40,000 --> 01:00:44,000 and so we had maps there and we handed them off everybody who was coming. 1143 01:00:44,000 --> 01:00:48,000 Well, we actually met at a Denny's That's just outside the Foster City limits... 1144 01:00:48,000 --> 01:00:49,600 Foster City city limits, 1145 01:00:49,600 --> 01:00:53,000 which meant also just outside of Foster City Police jurisdiction, 1146 01:00:53,000 --> 01:00:56,600 which meant any, any incidents that happened at the meeting point 1147 01:00:56,600 --> 01:00:58,900 happened in the jurisdiction of San Mateo, 1148 01:00:58,900 --> 01:01:02,500 and if they told us they get lost, we'd say, "Fine, we are going to Foster city. Bye." 1149 01:01:02,500 --> 01:01:06,000 It's sort of the Dukes of Hazzard method of avoiding the cops, so... 1150 01:01:07,500 --> 01:01:11,000 Well actually, originally we marched on the other side of this building. 1151 01:01:11,000 --> 01:01:15,000 We marched around and up onto the parking structure that's up there, 1152 01:01:15,000 --> 01:01:17,900 and that's where Microsoft had a reception laid out for us with 1153 01:01:17,900 --> 01:01:20,000 drinks and a big sign that said... 1154 01:01:20,000 --> 01:01:22,400 "Microsoft Welcomes the Open Source Community". 1155 01:01:22,400 --> 01:01:26,400 and the local news cameras got shots of Eric Raymond and Microsoft representative. 1156 01:01:27,500 --> 01:01:30,400 Microsoft's story seems to mostly be that... 1157 01:01:30,500 --> 01:01:35,000 ...this was not an issue for Microsoft, rather from the OEMs. 1158 01:01:35,000 --> 01:01:38,300 So we all needed to go back to our computer manufacturers and try yet again 1159 01:01:38,300 --> 01:01:40,400 to try and get refund from them. 1160 01:01:40,400 --> 01:01:42,100 We responded to them saying, you know, 1161 01:01:42,100 --> 01:01:46,100 that we tried that and it's not possible, we need Microsoft to take action at this point. 1162 01:01:46,400 --> 01:01:49,000 And they just repeated the tag line over and over again... 1163 01:01:49,000 --> 01:01:52,000 "you need to go to the OEMs and manufacturers and get your refunds there." 1164 01:01:52,500 --> 01:01:58,000 We had about 150 people, probably half of which had signs and such, so.. 1165 01:01:58,500 --> 01:02:02,000 Well, we ended up actually right in this courtyard here. 1166 01:02:02,500 --> 01:02:06,000 Basically we originally met, gathered outside, 1167 01:02:06,000 --> 01:02:11,000 various people sent groups in, people from FreeBSD camp sent a couple of folks in. 1168 01:02:11,000 --> 01:02:15,000 We had Eric Raymond and Chris actually tried to go up eventually. 1169 01:02:15,300 --> 01:02:17,600 They had blocked the elevator off to us. 1170 01:02:17,600 --> 01:02:18,800 [ Where are the offices? ] 1171 01:02:18,800 --> 01:02:21,000 The offices are right up here on the 9th floor. 1172 01:02:23,000 --> 01:02:25,100 We got some really nice press out of it. 1173 01:02:25,300 --> 01:02:26,500 and we think as a result 1174 01:02:26,500 --> 01:02:30,500 Toshiba made it possible for you to buy laptop without the operating system on it. 1175 01:02:31,200 --> 01:02:33,000 So, it's a small victory, but... 1176 01:02:33,100 --> 01:02:37,100 Well, even now, companies such as IBM and... 1177 01:02:37,200 --> 01:02:39,500 a lot of other computer manufacturers are allowing you... 1178 01:02:39,500 --> 01:02:42,100 now to buy machines that don't have Windows on them. 1179 01:02:51,000 --> 01:02:53,800 When I was a kid and I went to school, 1180 01:02:53,800 --> 01:02:56,100 the teachers were trying to teach us to share. 1181 01:02:56,100 --> 01:02:58,100 They said if you bring some candy, 1182 01:02:58,100 --> 01:03:01,200 you can't eat it all yourself, you gotta share with other kids. 1183 01:03:01,200 --> 01:03:06,800 But now the administration says teachers should be teaching kids to say yes to licensing. 1184 01:03:06,800 --> 01:03:09,800 If you bring some software to school, "Oh! No, don't share it... 1185 01:03:09,800 --> 01:03:13,800 ...sharing means you're pirate, sharing means you'll be put in jail." 1186 01:03:14,000 --> 01:03:18,000 That's not the way society should work. We need the good will, 1187 01:03:19,000 --> 01:03:23,000 the willingness to help other people at least when it's not too hard, 1188 01:03:23,300 --> 01:03:25,500 because that's the basis of society, 1189 01:03:25,500 --> 01:03:28,000 that's the fundamental resource, 1190 01:03:28,000 --> 01:03:31,900 That gives us a society instead of a dog-eat-dog jungle. 1191 01:03:31,900 --> 01:03:33,100 [ So what about people say if that if 1192 01:03:33,100 --> 01:03:36,200 you have rampant piracy and eliminate the profit motive and... 1193 01:03:36,200 --> 01:03:38,000 ...and creative works, software. Will not... ] 1194 01:03:38,000 --> 01:03:41,000 Well, they were on both counts. For one thing, 1195 01:03:41,000 --> 01:03:45,000 people are making a profit from developing Free Software, 1196 01:03:45,000 --> 01:03:49,800 but for another, the freedom to have a community is more important. 1197 01:03:50,000 --> 01:03:53,800 [ People that look at, casually look at Open Source Free Software and think... 1198 01:03:53,800 --> 01:03:57,000 Well, because you are supposed to share and do it for people's good will, 1199 01:03:57,000 --> 01:03:59,400 Doesn't that seem someone communist. What's your response? ] 1200 01:03:59,400 --> 01:04:03,200 Absolutely nonsense, it makes me really angry when people do that. 1201 01:04:03,200 --> 01:04:08,000 Well, back in, back in 1989, actually communism would have been a compliment. 1202 01:04:08,200 --> 01:04:10,600 the word people were using at that time was "crazy", 1203 01:04:10,600 --> 01:04:12,500 and I want them to use capitalism. 1204 01:04:12,500 --> 01:04:16,000 Communism is an ideology that forces people to share. 1205 01:04:16,100 --> 01:04:19,700 If you don't share, you get thrown in jail or killed. 1206 01:04:19,900 --> 01:04:26,000 In 1990, we got a visit from a director of an institute in uh, Moscow University, 1207 01:04:26,100 --> 01:04:30,000 and actually I saw him in Helsinki just 2 weeks ago, 1208 01:04:31,200 --> 01:04:33,000 but in any event, he came by, 1209 01:04:33,200 --> 01:04:37,000 and Richard Stallman had suggested that he visit Cygnus, 1210 01:04:37,000 --> 01:04:41,000 because he was interested in and understanding how the Free Software model... 1211 01:04:41,000 --> 01:04:46,100 might apply to stimulating entrepreneurial innovation in Russia of all places, 1212 01:04:46,300 --> 01:04:50,300 and we had been kind of secretive about our business plan, 1213 01:04:50,500 --> 01:04:53,200 because you know, we weren't really sure it's gonna work, 1214 01:04:53,200 --> 01:04:56,000 we didn't want to look too stupid if it failed. 1215 01:04:56,000 --> 01:04:58,300 But I was very very open with him. 1216 01:04:58,300 --> 01:05:02,200 The more I told him, the more he started to shake his head like this, 1217 01:05:02,400 --> 01:05:06,000 and I finally said, you know, "What's wrong?" 1218 01:05:06,000 --> 01:05:11,000 And he said, "This sounds to much like communism to be successful in Russia." 1219 01:05:13,000 --> 01:05:17,000 You got to go a Gulag and end up in a mass grave with a bullet in the back of your head. 1220 01:05:17,000 --> 01:05:21,000 Open Source is not communism because it does'nt force people. 1221 01:05:23,000 --> 01:05:26,000 Carl Marx did not invent helping your neighbor. 1222 01:05:27,800 --> 01:05:31,800 It's not communist to have a commons, 1223 01:05:31,900 --> 01:05:38,600 A commons existed long before communism as a philosophy of government. 1224 01:05:39,400 --> 01:05:41,500 there are many commons in our lives, 1225 01:05:41,500 --> 01:05:43,600 For example, we drive on the highway, 1226 01:05:43,600 --> 01:05:47,000 something that is maintained for our common good. 1227 01:05:47,000 --> 01:05:51,000 Actually labeling our business model... 1228 01:05:51,600 --> 01:05:53,700 means that it misses the point a little bit. 1229 01:05:53,700 --> 01:05:54,800 whether it's communist, or whether it's capitalist, 1230 01:05:54,800 --> 01:05:58,400 the label doesn't matter, the real question is, 1231 01:05:58,400 --> 01:06:02,000 how much value can you deliver, how scalable is the business, 1232 01:06:02,000 --> 01:06:05,300 what kind of problems, what kind of of rate of innovation can you sustain. 1233 01:06:05,300 --> 01:06:09,000 and then, however you want to label that, it's really up to you. 1234 01:06:10,400 --> 01:06:13,600 The Revolution goes Prime Time. 1235 01:06:37,600 --> 01:06:39,100 A lot of people described, 1236 01:06:39,100 --> 01:06:42,000 that August LinuxWorld as "Linux's coming-out party", 1237 01:06:42,000 --> 01:06:46,000 Linus Torvalds was very funny about this, he said, "What? Was Linux gay?" 1238 01:06:48,000 --> 01:06:51,000 But some people said "Yeah, that was our debutante ball." 1239 01:06:51,600 --> 01:06:52,700 That was when the... 1240 01:06:52,700 --> 01:06:56,700 Linux Gods, and the hardware hackers really got it together with the suits. 1241 01:07:06,800 --> 01:07:09,800 At 3pm on August 10th 1999, 1242 01:07:09,800 --> 01:07:13,400 Linus Torvalds delivered the keynote address at LinuxWorld. 1243 01:07:13,400 --> 01:07:17,900 The crowds of 6000 people began lining up at 12 noon. 1244 01:07:37,500 --> 01:07:40,000 Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Larry Augustin... 1245 01:07:40,000 --> 01:07:45,800 LinuxWorld Conference Chair and President and CEO of VA Linux Systems. 1246 01:07:54,000 --> 01:07:57,000 These guys have to clap, I pay them. 1247 01:07:57,000 --> 01:08:01,300 Thank you all for being here, looks like it's been a great show so far. 1248 01:08:01,300 --> 01:08:07,600 If you'll indulge me for a moment, I'm going to try to avoid the glare of the lights. 1249 01:08:07,800 --> 01:08:11,000 I still think there's lots of people, even though this is the 2nd show, 1250 01:08:11,000 --> 01:08:14,500 I still think there's lots of people who don't quite get... 1251 01:08:14,500 --> 01:08:17,000 ...what it is that's so exciting about Linux. 1252 01:08:17,000 --> 01:08:19,000 So there is a great show going on next door, 1253 01:08:19,000 --> 01:08:21,700 there's huge exhibits and everything, 1254 01:08:21,700 --> 01:08:26,600 but it's the people out here that are real contributors, not those companies. 1255 01:08:26,600 --> 01:08:29,500 The person on next I know you all know, 1256 01:08:29,500 --> 01:08:32,400 so I don't have to give anything in the way as introduction. 1257 01:08:32,400 --> 01:08:36,000 Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, Linus Torvalds. 1258 01:08:36,000 --> 01:08:39,000 Linus 1259 01:08:44,000 --> 01:08:45,000 Thanks. 1260 01:08:48,000 --> 01:08:50,000 Calm down. 1261 01:08:55,500 --> 01:08:57,500 Calm down. 1262 01:08:57,500 --> 01:08:59,000 Say "oooo". 1263 01:08:59,000 --> 01:09:00,000 yes. 1264 01:09:00,200 --> 01:09:03,600 I don't want to just give one of my normal talks, 1265 01:09:03,600 --> 01:09:05,100 because I find them boring, 1266 01:09:05,100 --> 01:09:09,100 probably by now most of you find them boring too because you've heard them like 10 times. 1267 01:09:10,000 --> 01:09:12,700 But after the technical updates, we will actually try... 1268 01:09:12,700 --> 01:09:17,200 ...whether we can do a question and answer session with 5,000 people, 1269 01:09:17,300 --> 01:09:20,000 or how many of you there are there. 1270 01:09:21,000 --> 01:09:23,200 and it may not actually work out, 1271 01:09:23,200 --> 01:09:26,900 because one of the 5,000 people is really loud. 1272 01:09:26,900 --> 01:09:28,000 The one thing I will do, 1273 01:09:28,000 --> 01:09:32,000 which I always do in all my talks is the gratitude thing, 1274 01:09:32,400 --> 01:09:35,500 I want to kind of acknowledge the fact that... 1275 01:09:35,500 --> 01:09:38,000 ...I'm obviously not been alone in doing Linux. 1276 01:09:38,000 --> 01:09:40,000 RHAT IPO: On August 11, 1999 1277 01:09:40,000 --> 01:09:43,700 Red Hat Software became the first Linux company to go public. 1278 01:09:43,700 --> 01:09:45,700 Red Hat, up 228% 1279 01:09:45,700 --> 01:09:48,800 this is the IPO that everybody was waiting for. 1280 01:09:48,800 --> 01:09:51,300 They of course are behind the Linux operating software. 1281 01:09:58,000 --> 01:10:02,000 R-H-A-T, I know 1282 01:10:03,000 --> 01:10:04,000 All I've gotten today, 1283 01:10:04,000 --> 01:10:07,400 are comments about what the stock price is, all morning, 1284 01:10:07,400 --> 01:10:10,900 you know it was at 41, it was at 42, it was at 47, 1285 01:10:10,900 --> 01:10:13,800 it was at 53, it was at 51... 1286 01:10:13,800 --> 01:10:17,600 Every machine as far as I can tell on the show floor 1287 01:10:17,600 --> 01:10:21,600 is pointed to their e-trade accounts or their broker accounts, they know the Red Hat's price 1288 01:10:22,400 --> 01:10:24,900 I can't believe this. 47 1289 01:10:24,900 --> 01:10:26,700 I just heard 53. 1290 01:10:26,700 --> 01:10:27,700 Oh, boy. 1291 01:10:27,700 --> 01:10:29,700 Hang on, I didn't buy it. 1292 01:10:29,700 --> 01:10:31,100 You didn't buy? 1293 01:10:31,100 --> 01:10:33,300 No, no, I didn't buy. 1294 01:10:33,300 --> 01:10:35,000 I should've bought, but uh... 1295 01:10:35,000 --> 01:10:36,600 No no, that's great. 1296 01:10:36,600 --> 01:10:38,100 If it's... if it's.... 1297 01:10:38,100 --> 01:10:39,400 You guys don't know? 1298 01:10:39,400 --> 01:10:40,500 Well, you know 1299 01:10:40,500 --> 01:10:42,800 Red Hat being successful as just means that 1300 01:10:42,800 --> 01:10:46,300 It legitimizes Linux So it's much easier for us to go out 1301 01:11:03,000 --> 01:11:06,000 Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) ... on the Red Hat IPO 1302 01:11:06,000 --> 01:11:08,000 It's kind of been a little bit divided. 1303 01:11:08,000 --> 01:11:09,000 You've got a lot of people 1304 01:11:09,000 --> 01:11:10,000 that are pretty hardcore and 1305 01:11:10,000 --> 01:11:11,300 And they're kind of offended by that 1306 01:11:11,300 --> 01:11:14,400 you know, cause they work really hard, they are not really getting... 1307 01:11:14,400 --> 01:11:16,900 maybe they fair share out of that. 1308 01:11:16,900 --> 01:11:18,100 Some people do get ticked. 1309 01:11:18,100 --> 01:11:19,200 and you know the thing 1310 01:11:19,200 --> 01:11:21,400 that you see that on a lot of mailing lists or on Slashdot you'll read, you know 1311 01:11:21,400 --> 01:11:27,200 This guy is really mad because he didn't get chance to, he's didn't get a chance to do... 1312 01:11:28,300 --> 01:11:29,700 to get stock from Red Hat 1313 01:11:29,700 --> 01:11:34,700 He didn't get a chance to get... to get a job from this other company, you know. 1314 01:11:35,200 --> 01:11:38,700 But the, the kind of the shocking secret there is that, 1315 01:11:38,700 --> 01:11:41,800 Most the really hardcore guys, you know, they don't care so much. 1316 01:11:41,800 --> 01:11:43,600 The guys that are kind of really down in trenches. 1317 01:11:43,600 --> 01:11:46,000 They're writing this code because they need this code. 1318 01:11:46,300 --> 01:11:48,400 If we could invite Richard Stallman 1319 01:11:48,400 --> 01:11:51,800 who's the founder of the Free Software Association 1320 01:11:51,800 --> 01:11:53,700 and Tim Ney, who's the managing director. 1321 01:11:53,700 --> 01:11:57,000 There we go. Hahahahaha 1322 01:11:57,000 --> 01:11:59,200 Ah, here it is. 1323 01:12:00,000 --> 01:12:04,800 Now, Richard, I saw you playing your recorder at, in Paris at that Linux conference 1324 01:12:04,800 --> 01:12:06,200 But I didn't have audio tracks. 1325 01:12:06,200 --> 01:12:08,400 So would you them to add audio to their, uh... 1326 01:12:08,400 --> 01:12:10,400 Video downstream next time 1327 01:12:10,400 --> 01:12:12,600 Uh..I don't have any control over that 1328 01:12:12,600 --> 01:12:16,600 unfortunately those things can only be done with non-free software. 1329 01:12:20,100 --> 01:12:23,400 We'll give you the award, and before you say a word, 1330 01:12:23,400 --> 01:12:28,300 we'll have a Tim and yourself hold up a little representation of the contribution 1331 01:12:28,500 --> 01:12:30,800 towards the Free Software Association. 1332 01:12:30,800 --> 01:12:34,800 So, very ironic things have happened, 1333 01:12:35,200 --> 01:12:38,000 but nothing to match this 1334 01:12:38,000 --> 01:12:41,600 Giving the Linus Tovarlds award to the Free Software Foundation 1335 01:12:41,600 --> 01:12:45,600 is sort of like giving the Han Solo award to the rebel fleet. 1336 01:12:50,200 --> 01:12:56,000 You see, some of you may not realize how far that analogy goes. 1337 01:12:57,800 --> 01:13:01,300 But actually let me tell you how this, how we got here. 1338 01:13:01,300 --> 01:13:02,800 see what happened is, 1339 01:13:02,800 --> 01:13:05,400 15 years ago, if you wanted to use a computer, 1340 01:13:05,400 --> 01:13:09,400 the only way you could do it was to, was with proprietary software, 1341 01:13:10,300 --> 01:13:13,000 software that divides and subjugates the users. 1342 01:13:13,000 --> 01:13:14,900 And most people just... 1343 01:13:14,900 --> 01:13:16,200 A lot of people didn't like it. 1344 01:13:16,200 --> 01:13:17,700 But they saw no alternative. 1345 01:13:17,700 --> 01:13:21,500 But some of us were determined to make an alternative. 1346 01:13:21,500 --> 01:13:25,500 And we said we're gonna develop a free operating system, 1347 01:13:25,600 --> 01:13:27,400 a free software operating system 1348 01:13:27,400 --> 01:13:33,100 that will give users the chance to have freedom while they use their computers. 1349 01:13:33,700 --> 01:13:36,300 Now a lot of people said, "Well, it's a nice idea 1350 01:13:36,300 --> 01:13:38,600 but it's so hard, you'll never get it done, 1351 01:13:38,600 --> 01:13:42,500 so I don't wanna participate, I don't believe you can ever get it done." 1352 01:13:42,500 --> 01:13:45,300 But luckily not everybody said that. 1353 01:13:45,300 --> 01:13:49,200 And clearly, we knew we would eventually get the kernel done. 1354 01:13:49,200 --> 01:13:50,500 But as it happens. 1355 01:13:50,500 --> 01:13:53,600 somebody else did a better kernel before we did. 1356 01:13:53,600 --> 01:13:57,200 Now in the old days, we had an overall strategy 1357 01:13:57,200 --> 01:14:00,800 from calling people's attention to the importance of freedom 1358 01:14:00,800 --> 01:14:04,800 To the freedom they can have, or not have, when they use a computer. 1359 01:14:05,500 --> 01:14:07,600 Well what can we do about it? As far as I can tell, 1360 01:14:07,600 --> 01:14:13,600 the only workable way of trying to change this make that strategy work again 1361 01:14:14,000 --> 01:14:19,800 is to, spread the word that the operating system you're using is actually the GNU system. 1362 01:14:19,900 --> 01:14:22,100 Somewhat modified of course. 1363 01:14:23,200 --> 01:14:25,100 And when people know this, 1364 01:14:25,100 --> 01:14:28,600 they'll take a look at the reasons we developed this system. 1365 01:14:28,600 --> 01:14:30,500 They'll think about these issues. 1366 01:14:30,500 --> 01:14:33,300 And some of them will decide they agree. 1367 01:14:33,300 --> 01:14:36,600 So I ask people, please tell the people this is the GNU system. 1368 01:14:36,600 --> 01:14:40,600 It's the combination of GNU and Linux so we can call it GNU/Linux 1369 01:14:46,600 --> 01:14:49,900 [ So Larry, when you were at Stanford 8, 9 years ago during your Ph.D 1370 01:14:49,900 --> 01:14:51,600 did you ever think you'd be in this position? ] 1371 01:14:51,600 --> 01:14:52,500 No 1372 01:14:52,500 --> 01:14:53,900 [ All kidding aside. ] 1373 01:14:53,900 --> 01:14:55,800 No I had no idea honestly 1374 01:14:55,800 --> 01:14:58,600 [ What did you think you would be when you were finished up with your Ph.D? ] 1375 01:14:58,600 --> 01:15:00,000 You know that's a good question, 1376 01:15:00,000 --> 01:15:02,300 I really didn't have a good idea, I mean. 1377 01:15:02,300 --> 01:15:05,600 Here we are, on this huge show floor. 1378 01:15:05,600 --> 01:15:08,600 There are people just going crazy about Linux. 1379 01:15:08,600 --> 01:15:12,000 We had 6,200 people crammed into a room 1380 01:15:12,000 --> 01:15:15,300 to see the Linux, Linus speak last night. 1381 01:15:15,300 --> 01:15:16,900 Here we are, with, you know, 1382 01:15:16,900 --> 01:15:19,600 all of these huge venders all over the show. 1383 01:15:19,600 --> 01:15:22,700 I..It's, just, you have no idea that this is gonna happen. 1384 01:15:22,700 --> 01:15:25,500 I mean this is just this little operating system that we're happy with. 1385 01:15:25,500 --> 01:15:27,500 that a few people cared about, you know, 1386 01:15:27,500 --> 01:15:29,500 I thought I'd have a nice little consulting business. 1387 01:15:29,500 --> 01:15:30,900 And here I am suddenly, 1388 01:15:30,900 --> 01:15:33,400 with all of this huge show going on. 1389 01:15:33,400 --> 01:15:34,400 It's just incredible. 1390 01:15:34,400 --> 01:15:37,600 I mean, a year ago, you could look and say, you know, this is gonna be big 1391 01:15:37,600 --> 01:15:39,400 and everyone standing at the show going 1392 01:15:39,400 --> 01:15:41,800 "You know the show was big last year, 1393 01:15:41,800 --> 01:15:44,800 is it gonna, is it gonna be as big as this year?" 1394 01:15:44,900 --> 01:15:46,100 The you remind them 1395 01:15:46,100 --> 01:15:48,300 "You know, last year was only 6 month ago." 1396 01:15:48,400 --> 01:15:50,300 And then they go "Oh, , Linux time". 1397 01:16:17,000 --> 01:16:19,200 So leading up to the IPO, uh... 1398 01:16:19,200 --> 01:16:25,200 we had arrived actually in San Diego on Tuesday night 1399 01:16:25,500 --> 01:16:29,500 We spent Wednesday morning meeting investors in San Diego. 1400 01:16:29,900 --> 01:16:31,300 We flew up to San Francisco 1401 01:16:31,300 --> 01:16:35,200 spent Wednesday afternoon meeting investment firms in San Francisco 1402 01:16:35,200 --> 01:16:36,100 VA Linux Selected December 9, 1999, as the day for its stock to begin trading. 1403 01:16:36,100 --> 01:16:39,500 then on the Thursday morning of the IPO is 1404 01:16:39,500 --> 01:16:42,000 when our stock would be traded publically. 1405 01:16:42,000 --> 01:16:45,800 So it was nice we had ended the tour in San Francisco 1406 01:16:45,800 --> 01:16:49,700 because we could go to the credit suite's trading desk the next morning 1407 01:16:49,700 --> 01:16:51,600 to watch the public offering. 1408 01:16:51,600 --> 01:16:55,600 And in San Francisco being close enough to the company, and to our families, 1409 01:16:55,600 --> 01:16:59,600 we could invite people up to actually join us in the first trade. 1410 01:16:59,600 --> 01:17:02,700 So I invited my wife and we invited Linus and Tove, 1411 01:17:02,700 --> 01:17:06,200 and a number of other friends and people who worked in the company in to join us. 1412 01:17:06,200 --> 01:17:07,700 Whenever we invite Linus and Tove, 1413 01:17:07,700 --> 01:17:10,800 they have uh, two young children, 1414 01:17:10,800 --> 01:17:12,800 and I have a daughter, Andrea. 1415 01:17:12,800 --> 01:17:14,300 And we always bring the kids along 1416 01:17:14,300 --> 01:17:16,300 so we went in to the credit suite's trading floor 1417 01:17:16,300 --> 01:17:18,700 with all these traders and there are these 3 year old kids 1418 01:17:18,700 --> 01:17:21,000 running around and chasing each other around the show floor, 1419 01:17:21,000 --> 01:17:22,000 around the trading floor. 1420 01:17:22,000 --> 01:17:27,200 So Linus and I walked in and we walked up in to the trading floor 1421 01:17:27,300 --> 01:17:28,600 and everyone was very excited. 1422 01:17:28,600 --> 01:17:31,800 And we kept asking them, well "Hows it going? Are things going ok?". 1423 01:17:31,800 --> 01:17:34,600 And they said, "Oh, it's.. uh, we're really excited, 1424 01:17:34,600 --> 01:17:35,800 I think things are going well. 1425 01:17:35,800 --> 01:17:39,400 We don't wanna, We don't wanna say, We don't wanna jinx anything." 1426 01:17:39,400 --> 01:17:43,400 We walked in and it was a big screen TV showing CNBC. 1427 01:17:44,000 --> 01:17:48,000 And it was amazing to us, but the theme for the day was Linux. 1428 01:17:48,100 --> 01:17:50,500 Now we have an IPO that's gonna go today. 1429 01:17:50,500 --> 01:17:52,700 And when I mean go, it is going to go. 1430 01:17:52,700 --> 01:17:54,700 The estimates I'm hearing are staggering. 1431 01:17:54,700 --> 01:17:58,200 But watch VA Linux Systems. It goes at 12:40 today. 1432 01:17:58,200 --> 01:17:59,900 The symbol is L-N-U-X. 1433 01:17:59,900 --> 01:18:03,500 A provider of large scale computer servers and workstations, 1434 01:18:03,500 --> 01:18:05,700 specially designed for the Linux operating system. 1435 01:18:05,700 --> 01:18:11,800 The original range on this IPO was 11 to 13 dollars, then 21 to 23, then 28 to 30. 1436 01:18:12,000 --> 01:18:15,300 Priced at 30, and the estimates I'm hearing I don't wanna repeat 1437 01:18:15,300 --> 01:18:16,600 because I don't have a confirmation. 1438 01:18:16,600 --> 01:18:21,500 But if they're true, they will blow you're mind when this stock takes off at 12:40. 1439 01:18:21,500 --> 01:18:23,900 I turned to Linus and I said "Gee, did you ever think, 1440 01:18:23,900 --> 01:18:29,100 you know, you'd walk in here some day and Linux would be THE theme on CNBC?". 1441 01:18:29,700 --> 01:18:32,400 and Linus said in his joking way said "Oh Absolutely!". 1442 01:18:32,800 --> 01:18:36,300 So we walk in and they show us the buy and sell orders coming in.. 1443 01:18:36,300 --> 01:18:38,300 and it's incredible. 1444 01:18:38,300 --> 01:18:41,900 We're seeing numbers like 320 dollars, 340 dollars a share. 1445 01:18:42,500 --> 01:18:44,400 And I'm just in complete shock. 1446 01:18:44,400 --> 01:18:49,700 You know, this is over 10 times where we priced the offering. It was incredible. 1447 01:18:50,000 --> 01:18:54,000 And I remember Linus just kind of, sort of patting me on the back and saying, 1448 01:18:54,000 --> 01:18:58,000 you know "Relax..." and it was pretty exciting to see that. 1449 01:18:58,000 --> 01:19:00,900 We were, it was just amazing. We were stunned. 1450 01:19:01,300 --> 01:19:04,300 We were lucky that we were able to get back to the offices, 1451 01:19:04,300 --> 01:19:08,100 we'd been in San Francisco so we could come back to VA's offices 1452 01:19:08,100 --> 01:19:10,600 to, to see everyone in the office for the IPO. 1453 01:19:10,600 --> 01:19:15,500 When we got back, we had uh, everyone was obviously very excited. 1454 01:19:16,100 --> 01:19:18,800 The IPO had done just tremendously well. 1455 01:19:18,800 --> 01:19:22,400 We had a little party that we put together. 1456 01:19:22,400 --> 01:19:24,100 It was interesting, while we were celebrating 1457 01:19:24,100 --> 01:19:26,600 there were plenty of people that were still trying to work. 1458 01:19:26,600 --> 01:19:30,400 I recall cries of "Be quiet!", "We're on the phone!", "We're Working!", 1459 01:19:30,400 --> 01:19:34,100 Uh, as we uh, as we went in to the offices. 1460 01:19:34,100 --> 01:19:37,900 One of the things I did was I gave the road show presentation 1461 01:19:37,900 --> 01:19:39,700 for the employees back at the office, 1462 01:19:39,700 --> 01:19:42,800 so they could have an idea of what we'd been telling investors, 1463 01:19:42,800 --> 01:19:46,400 and understand exactly what we'd uh, put together for them. 1464 01:19:46,400 --> 01:19:55,100 But again the story of the day is VA Linux, now up 766% to 235 dollars to 265. 1465 01:19:55,300 --> 01:19:57,700 Sue, the best performing IPO ever. 1466 01:19:57,700 --> 01:20:03,200 Here it goes, Sycamore Networks was uh, priced at 38 dollars, surged to $270. 1467 01:20:03,500 --> 01:20:05,800 This has just beat it. And by the way.. 1468 01:20:05,800 --> 01:20:09,800 [ How do you feel about potentially billions of dollars of wealth being created 1469 01:20:10,000 --> 01:20:14,000 from your creation, that you're not directly cashing out? ] 1470 01:20:14,600 --> 01:20:18,000 So, if I hadn't made Linux available, I mean, 1471 01:20:18,000 --> 01:20:21,300 I wouldn't have gotten any money that way either. 1472 01:20:21,300 --> 01:20:24,200 So I mean, It's a win-win situation. 1473 01:20:24,200 --> 01:20:31,000 Uh, just the fact that there are a lot of commercial companies 1474 01:20:31,100 --> 01:20:37,000 means that there are a lot of Linux people who used to work on Linux kind of on the side. 1475 01:20:37,500 --> 01:20:40,200 And now they get paid for doing what they wanted to do. 1476 01:20:40,200 --> 01:20:44,800 And that helps me in the sense that I wanted them to work on Linux anyway. 1477 01:21:06,400 --> 01:21:11,700 The whole GNU project is really one big hack. 1478 01:21:12,200 --> 01:21:16,200 It's one big act of subversive playful cleverness, 1479 01:21:16,200 --> 01:21:22,300 to change society for the better, because I'm only interested in changing it for the better, 1480 01:21:22,400 --> 01:21:26,600 but in a clever way. 1481 01:21:26,800 --> 01:21:30,800 Hi, we're the GNU/Stallmans, and this is "The Free Software Song" 1482 01:21:31,800 --> 01:21:35,400 Join us now and share the software; 1483 01:21:35,400 --> 01:21:42,200 You'll be free, hackers, you'll be free. 1484 01:21:43,100 --> 01:21:43,900 You'll be free, hackers, you'll be free. 1485 01:21:51,600 --> 01:21:54,700 Hoarders may get piles of money, 1486 01:21:54,700 --> 01:22:02,100 That is true, hackers, that is true. 1487 01:22:03,900 --> 01:22:07,300 But they cannot help their neighbors; 1488 01:22:07,300 --> 01:22:15,300 That's ain't good, hackers, that's ain't good. 1489 01:22:19,500 --> 01:22:22,500 When we have enough free software 1490 01:22:22,500 --> 01:22:29,800 At our call, hackers, at our call, 1491 01:22:31,900 --> 01:22:35,100 We'll throw out those dirty licenses 1492 01:22:35,100 --> 01:22:42,900 Ever more, hackers, ever more. 1493 01:23:17,900 --> 01:23:21,200 Join us now and share the software; 1494 01:23:21,200 --> 01:23:28,400 You'll be free, hackers, you'll be free. 1495 01:23:30,300 --> 01:23:33,300 Join us now and share the software; 1496 01:23:33,300 --> 01:23:39,900 You'll be free, hackers, you'll be free. 1497 01:23:42,100 --> 01:23:44,900 Oh, you'll be free 1498 01:23:44,900 --> 01:23:46,600 I let you know. 1499 01:23:46,600 --> 01:23:49,500 That you'll be free. [ repeat ] 1500 01:23:49,500 --> 01:23:51,400 I let you know 1501 01:23:51,400 --> 01:23:55,400 That you'll be free. [ repeat ] 1502 01:23:58,500 --> 01:24:02,500 That you'll be free. [ repeat ]