53 lines
3.5 KiB
Plaintext
53 lines
3.5 KiB
Plaintext
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Microsoft’s Worst Nightmare?
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<p>A commenter writes, in reference to my letter to the Microsoft<br />
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recruiter,</p>
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<blockquote><p>
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BTW, I think abrogating to yourself the status of MS’s worst<br />
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nightmare might be seen as presumptious, considering that FLOSS<br />
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depends on a big community, and a lot of what FLOSS is about precedes<br />
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your 97 work, but far be it from me to try to teach ESR strategy.
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</p></blockquote>
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<p>Um. You meant “arrogating”, I think. A few words about that…</p>
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<p><span id="more-209"></span></p>
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<p>Well, duh. Of <em>course</em> the open-source community predates<br />
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me and is much bigger than any one individual. I’ve done more than<br />
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most to point that out, I think, asserting our continuity clear back<br />
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to 1960 and the SPACEWAR hackers at MIT.</p>
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<p>I’m Microsoft’s worst nightmare not so much because of myself as an<br />
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individual but because I’ve served as a public focus and embodiment of<br />
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the hacker community’s values. And (this is the nightmare part) I<br />
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sold them to Wall Street. I broke us out of the geek ghetto.</p>
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<p>I try not to have a big ego about this. I’m well aware that if it<br />
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hadn’t been me in that role, somebody else would have done it. It was<br />
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<em>time</em> in the late 1990s. OK, to be honest I think without me<br />
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the open-source transition would have happened a few years later and<br />
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with less up-front awareness, but it was going to happen; long-term<br />
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trends in the underlying economics guaranteed that. I may have been<br />
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the first to understand and publicize those trends, but that never<br />
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gave me the illusion that I created them or that they wouldn’t have<br />
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operated without “ESR” pushing.</p>
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<p>In fact, having been the key man at one or two pivotal historical<br />
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moments, I’m in an almost uniquely good position to plump for the<br />
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“times make the man” theory. Yes, I supplied some individual vision.<br />
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But I absolutely do not think of myself as indispensible and never<br />
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have. Because I’ve felt the tide of history sweeping me forward, and<br />
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I know that the hacker community created <em>me</em>. </p>
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<p>This is something that is hard to talk about without sounding<br />
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mystical. I sometimes feel almost as though I’m a sort of sense organ<br />
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or mirror that the hacker community grew in order to see itself more<br />
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clearly. To the extent I ended up “leading” or became a culture hero<br />
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in that process, it was because the community desperately needed<br />
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someone to do it and pulled me into the role, shaping me to fit<br />
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in the process.</p>
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<p>Cultures need culture heroes — and they’ll create ‘em if they<br />
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don’t pop up spontaneously. Note: the process can be damn rough on<br />
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the candidate. And being the focus of so many peoples’ dreams and<br />
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aspirations is…well, it’s terrifying at times. I used to have a lot<br />
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of contempt for rock stars who couldn’t handle the pressure and fucked<br />
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up with drugs. Now I understand better. I’ve been through some<br />
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awful, heartbreaking, soul-destroying shit on this job.</p>
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<p>But let’s look on the positive side. I guess the most important<br />
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point I want to make is that my success doesn’t belong to me alone but<br />
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to all hackers, every one of us. I never forget this, and I hope no<br />
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one else will either.</p></p>
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