msgid "" msgstr "" "Project-Id-Version: PACKAGE VERSION\n" "POT-Creation-Date: 2008-10-03 19:55+0700\n" "PO-Revision-Date: YEAR-MO-DA HO:MI+ZONE\n" "Last-Translator: FULL NAME \n" "Language-Team: LANGUAGE \n" "MIME-Version: 1.0\n" "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\n" "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n" #: hacker-revenge.xml:7(title) hacker-revenge.xml:68(title) msgid "Revenge of the Hackers" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:12(firstname) msgid "Eric" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:13(othername) msgid "Steven" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:14(surname) msgid "Raymond" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:16(ulink) msgid "Thyrsus Enterprises" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:19(email) msgid "esr@thyrsus.com" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:23(pubdate) msgid "$Date: 2008-10-03 11:13:03 $" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:24(releaseinfo) msgid "This is version 1.9" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:26(year) msgid "2000" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:27(holder) msgid "Eric S. Raymond" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:30(title) msgid "Copyright" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:31(para) msgid "" "Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under " "the terms of the Open Publication License, version 2.0." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:38(revnumber) msgid "1.9" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:39(date) msgid "26 August 2000" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:40(authorinitials) hacker-revenge.xml:49(authorinitials) msgid "esr" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:41(revremark) msgid "DocBook conversion." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:47(revnumber) msgid "1.8" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:48(date) msgid "31 Aug 1999" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:50(revremark) msgid "This version went into the first printed edition." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:58(para) msgid "" "The eruption of open-source software into the mainstream in 1998 was the " "revenge of the hackers after 20 years of marginalization. I found myself " "semi-accidentally cast as chief rabble-rouser and propagandist. In this " "essay, I describe the tumultuous year that followed, focusing on the media " "stategy and language we used to break through to the Fortune 500. I finish " "with a look at where the trend curves are going." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:70(para) msgid "" "I wrote the first version of A Brief History of Hackerdom in 1996 as a web resource. I had been fascinated by hacker " "culture as a culture for many years, since long before " "I edited the first edition of The New Hacker's Dictionary in 1990. By late 1993, many people (including myself) had come to " "think of me as the hacker culture's tribal historian and resident " "ethnographer. I was comfortable in that role." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:79(para) msgid "" "At that time, I had not the faintest idea that my amateur anthropologizing " "could itself become a significant catalyst for change. I think nobody was " "more surprised than I when that happened. But the consequences of that " "surprise are still reverberating through the hacker culture and the " "technology and business worlds today." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:86(para) msgid "" "In this essay, I'll recapitulate from my personal point of view the events " "that immediately led up to the January 1998 ``shot heard 'round the world'' " "of the open-source revolution. I'll reflect on the remarkable distance we've " "come since. Then I will tentatively offer some projections into the future." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:93(title) msgid "Beyond Brooks's Law" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:95(para) msgid "" "My first encounter with Linux came in late 1993, via the pioneering " "Yggdrasil CD-ROM distribution. By that time, I had already been involved in " "the hacker culture for fifteen years. My earliest experiences had been with " "the primitive ARPAnet of the late 1970s; I was even briefly a tourist on the " "ITS machines. I had already been writing free software and posting it to " "Usenet before the Free Software Foundation was launched in 1984, and was one " "of the FSF's first contributors. I had just published the second edition of " "``The New Hacker's Dictionary''. I thought I understood the hacker " "culture—and its limitations—pretty well." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:106(para) msgid "" "As I have written elsewhere, encountering Linux came as a shock. Even though " "I had been active in the hacker culture for many years, I still carried in " "my head the unexamined assumption that hacker amateurs, gifted though they " "might be, could not possibly muster the resources or skill necessary to " "produce a usable multitasking operating system. The HURD developers, after " "all, had been evidently failing at this for a decade." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:114(para) msgid "" "But where they failed, Linus Torvalds and his community succeeded. And they " "did not merely fulfill the minimum requirements of stability and functioning " "Unix interfaces. No. They blew right past that criterion with exuberance and " "flair, providing hundreds of megabytes of programs, documents, and other " "resources. Full suites of Internet tools, desktop-publishing software, " "graphics support, editors, games...you name it." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:122(para) msgid "" "Seeing this feast of wonderful code spread in front of me as a working " "system was a much more powerful experience than merely knowing, " "intellectually, that all the bits were probably out there. It was as though " "for years I'd been sorting through piles of disconnected car parts—" "only to be suddenly confronted with those same parts assembled into a " "gleaming red Ferrari, door open, keys swinging from the lock and engine " "gently purring with a promise of power..." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:130(para) msgid "" "The hacker tradition I had been observing for two decades seemed suddenly " "alive in a vibrant new way. In a sense, I had already been made part of this " "community, for several of my personal free-software projects had been added " "to the mix. But I wanted to get in deeper...because every delight I saw also " "deepened my puzzlement. It was too good!" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:137(para) msgid "" "The lore of software engineering is dominated by Brooks's Law, articulated " "in Fred Brook's classic The Mythical Man-Month. " "Brooks predicts that as your number of programmers N rises, work performed " "scales as N but complexity and vulnerability to bugs rises as " "N2. N2 tracks the " "number of communications paths (and potential code interfaces) between " "developers' code bases." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:146(para) msgid "" "Brooks's Law predicts that a project with thousands of contributors ought to " "be a flaky, unstable mess. Somehow the Linux community had beaten the " "N2 effect and produced an OS of astonishingly " "high quality. I was determined to understand how they did it." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:152(para) msgid "" "It took me three years of participation and close observation to develop a " "theory, and another year to test it experimentally. And then I sat down and " "wrote The Cathedral and the Bazaar to explain what I " "had seen." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:158(title) msgid "Memes and Mythmaking" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:160(para) msgid "" "What I saw around me was a community that had evolved the most effective " "software-development method ever and didn't know it!. " "That is, an effective practice had evolved as a set of customs, transmitted " "by imitation and example, without the theory or language to explain why the " "practice worked." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:166(para) msgid "" "In retrospect, lacking that theory and that language hampered us in two " "ways. First: we couldn't think systematically about how to improve our own " "methods. Second: we couldn't explain or sell the method to anyone else." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:171(para) msgid "" "At the time, I was thinking about only the first effect. My sole intention " "in writing the original paper was to give the hacker culture an appropriate " "language to use internally, to explain itself to itself. So I wrote down " "what I had seen, framed as a narrative and with appropriately vivid " "metaphors to describe the logic that could be deduced behind the customs." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:178(para) msgid "" "There was no really fundamental discovery in The Cathedral and " "the Bazaar. I did not invent any of the methods it describes. " "What was novel was not the facts it described but those metaphors and the " "narrative—a simple, powerful story that encouraged the reader to see " "the facts in a new way. I was attempting a bit of memetic engineering on the " "hacker culture's generative myths." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:186(para) msgid "" "I first gave the full paper at Linux Kongress, May 1997 in Bavaria. The fact " "that it was received with rapt attention and thunderous applause by an " "audience in which there were very few native speakers of English seemed to " "confirm that I was onto something. But, as it turned out, the sheer chance " "that I was seated next to publisher Tim O'Reilly at the Thursday night " "banquet set in motion a more important train of consequences." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:194(para) msgid "" "As a long-time admirer of O'Reilly's institutional style, I had been looking " "forward to meeting Tim for some years. We had a wide-ranging conversation " "(much of it exploring our common interest in classic science fiction) that " "led to an invitation for me to deliver The Cathedral and the " "Bazaar at Tim's Perl Conference later in the year." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:201(para) msgid "" "Once again, the paper was well-received—with cheers and a standing " "ovation, in fact. I knew from my email that since Bavaria, word about " "The Cathedral and the Bazaar had spread over the " "Internet like a fire in dry grass. Many in the audience had already read it, " "and my speech was less a revelation of novelty for them than an opportunity " "to celebrate the new language and the consciousness that went with it. That " "standing ovation was not so much for my work as for the hacker culture " "itself—and rightly so." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:211(para) msgid "" "Though I didn't know it, my experiment in memetic engineering was about to " "light a bigger fire. Some of the people for whom my speech was genuinely " "novel were from Netscape Communications, Inc. And Netscape was in trouble." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:216(para) msgid "" "Netscape, a pioneering Internet-technology company and Wall Street " "highflier, had been targeted for destruction by Microsoft. Microsoft rightly " "feared that the open Web standards embodied by Netscape's browser might lead " "to an erosion of the Redmond giant's lucrative monopoly on the PC desktop. " "All the weight of Microsoft's billions, and shady tactics that would later " "trigger an antitrust lawsuit, were deployed to crush the Netscape browser." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:224(para) msgid "" "For Netscape, the issue was less browser-related income (never more than a " "small fraction of their revenues) than maintaining a safe space for their " "much more valuable server business. If Microsoft's Internet Explorer " "achieved market dominance, Microsoft would be able to bend the Web's " "protocols away from open standards and into proprietary channels that only " "Microsoft's servers would be able to service." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:232(para) msgid "" "Within Netscape there was intense debate about how to counter the threat. " "One of the options proposed early on was to throw the Netscape browser " "source open—but it was a hard case to argue without strong reasons to " "believe that doing so would prevent Internet Explorer dominance." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:238(para) msgid "" "I didn't know it at the time, but The Cathedral and the Bazaar became a major factor in making that case. Through the winter of " "1997, as I was working on the material for my next paper, the stage was " "being set for Netscape to break the rules of the proprietary game and offer " "my tribe an unprecedented opportunity." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:246(title) msgid "The Road to Mountain View" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:248(para) msgid "" "On 22 January 1998 Netscape announced that it would release the sources of " "the Netscape client line to the Internet. Shortly after the news reached me " "the following day, I learned that CEO Jim Barksdale was describing my work " "to national-media reporters as ``fundamental inspiration'' for the decision." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:254(para) msgid "" "This was the event that commentators in the computer trade press would later " "call ``the shot heard 'round the world'—and Barksdale had cast me as " "its Thomas Paine, whether I wanted the role or not. For the first time in " "the history of the hacker culture, a Fortune 500 darling of Wall Street had " "bet its future on the belief that our way was right. " "And, more specifically, that my analysis of `our way' " "was right." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:262(para) msgid "" "This is a pretty sobering kind of shock to deal with. I had not been very " "surprised when The Cathedral and the Bazaar altered " "the hacker culture's image of itself; that was the result I had been trying " "for, after all. But I was astonished (to say the least) by the news of its " "success on the outside. So I did some very hard thinking in first few hours " "after word reached me. About the state of Linux and the hacker community. " "About Netscape. And about whether I, personally, had what it would take to " "make the next step." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:272(para) msgid "" "It was not difficult to conclude that helping Netscape's gamble succeed had " "just become a very high priority for the hacker culture, and thus for me " "personally. If Netscape's gamble failed, we hackers would probably find all " "the opprobrium of that failure piled on our heads. We'd be discredited for " "another decade. And that would be just too much to take." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:279(para) msgid "" "By this time I had been in the hacker culture, living through its various " "phases, for twenty years. Twenty years of repeatedly watching brilliant " "ideas, promising starts, and superior technologies crushed by slick " "marketing. Twenty years of watching hackers dream and sweat and build, too " "often only to watch the likes of the bad old IBM or the bad new Microsoft " "walk away with the real-world prizes. Twenty years of living in a " "ghetto—a fairly comfortable ghetto full of interesting friends, but " "still one walled in by a vast and intangible barrier of mainsteam prejudice " "inscribed ``ONLY FLAKES LIVE HERE''." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:289(para) msgid "" "The Netscape announcement cracked that barrier, if only for a moment; the " "business world had been jolted out of its complacency about what `hackers' " "are capable of. But lazy mental habits have huge inertia. If Netscape " "failed, or perhaps even if they succeeded, the experiment might come to be " "seen as a unique one-off not worth trying to repeat. And then we'd be back " "in the same ghetto, walls higher than before." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:296(para) msgid "" "To prevent that, we needed Netscape to succeed. So I considered what I had " "learned about bazaar-mode development, and called up Netscape, and offered " "to help with developing their license and in working out the details of the " "strategy. In early February I flew to Mountain View at their request for " "seven hours of meetings with various groups at Netscape HQ, and helped them " "develop the outline of what would become the Mozilla Public License and the " "Mozilla organization." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:304(para) msgid "" "While there, I met with several key people in the Silicon Valley and " "national Linux community. While helping Netscape was clearly a short-term " "priority, everybody I spoke with had already understood the need for some " "longer-term strategy to follow up on the Netscape release. It was time to " "develop one." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:311(title) msgid "The Origins of `Open Source'" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:313(para) msgid "" "It was easy to see the outlines of the strategy. We needed to take the " "pragmatic arguments I had pioneered in The Cathedral and the " "Bazaar, develop them further, and push them hard, in public. " "Because Netscape itself had an interest in convincing investors that its " "strategy was not crazy, we could count on it to help the promotion. We also " "recruited Tim O'Reilly (and through him, O'Reilly & Associates) very " "early on." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:321(para) msgid "" "The real conceptual breakthrough, though, was admitting to ourselves that " "what we needed to mount was in effect a marketing campaign—and that it would require marketing techniques (spin, image-" "building, and rebranding) to make it work." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:326(para) msgid "" "Hence the term `open source', which the first participants in what would " "later become the Open Source campaign (and, eventually, the Open Source " "Initiative organization) invented at a meeting held in Mountain View the " "offices of VA Research on 3 February 1998." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:331(para) msgid "" "It seemed clear to us in retrospect that the term `free software' had done " "our movement tremendous damage over the years. Part of this stemmed from the " "fact that the word `free' has two different meanings in the English " "language, one suggesting a price of zero and one related to the idea of " "liberty. Richard Stallman, whose Free Software Foundation has long " "championed the term, says ``Think free speech, not free beer'' but the " "ambiguity of the term has nevertheless created serious problems—" "especially since most ``free software'' is also distributed free of charge." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:341(para) msgid "" "Most of the damage, though, came from something worse—the strong " "association of the term `free software' with hostility to intellectual " "property rights, communism, and other ideas hardly likely to endear it to an " "MIS manager." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:346(para) msgid "" "It was, and still is, beside the point to argue that the Free Software " "Foundation is not hostile to all intellectual property and that its position " "is not exactly communistic. We knew that. What we realized, under the " "pressure of the Netscape release, was that FSF's actual position didn't " "matter. Only the fact that its evangelism had backfired (associating `free " "software' with these negative stereotypes in the minds of the trade press " "and the corporate world) actually mattered." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:355(para) msgid "" "Our success after Netscape would depend on replacing the negative FSF " "stereotypes with positive stereotypes of our own—" "pragmatic tales, sweet to managers' and investors' ears, of higher " "reliability and lower cost and better features." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:361(para) msgid "" "In conventional marketing terms, our job was to rebrand the product, and " "build its reputation into one the corporate world would hasten to buy." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:365(para) msgid "" "Linus Torvalds endorsed the idea the day after that first meeting. We began " "acting on it within a few days after. Bruce Perens had the opensource." "org domain registered and the first version of the Open Source website up within a week. " "He also suggested that the Debian Free Software Guidelines become the " "`Open Source Definition', and began the process of registering `Open Source' as a " "certification mark so that we could legally require people to use `Open " "Source' for products conforming to the OSD." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:376(para) msgid "" "Even the particular tactics needed to push the strategy seemed pretty clear " "to me even at this early stage (and were explicitly discussed at the initial " "meeting). Key themes:" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:380(title) msgid "1. Forget Bottom-Up; Work on Top-Down" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:382(para) msgid "" "One of the things that seemed clearest was that the historical Unix strategy " "of bottom-up evangelism (relying on engineers to persuade their bosses by " "rational argument) had been a failure. This was naive and easily trumped by " "Microsoft. Further, the Netscape breakthrough didn't happen that way. It " "happened because a strategic decision-maker (Jim Barksdale) got the clue and " "then imposed that vision on the people below him." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:390(para) msgid "" "The conclusion was inescapable. Instead of working bottom-up, we should be " "evangelizing top-down—making a direct effort to capture the CEO/CTO/" "CIO types." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:395(title) msgid "2. Linux is Our Best Demonstration Case" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:397(para) msgid "" "Promoting Linux must be our main thrust. Yes, there are other things going " "on in the open-source world, and the campaign will bow respectfully in their " "direction—but Linux started with the best name recognition, the " "broadest software base, and the largest developer community. If Linux can't " "consolidate the breakthrough, nothing else will, pragmatically speaking, " "have a prayer." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:405(title) msgid "3. Capture the Fortune 500" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:407(para) msgid "" "There are other market segment that spend more dollars (small business and " "home office being the most obvious examples) but those markets are diffuse " "and hard to address. The Fortune 500 doesn't merely have lots of money, it concentrates lots of money where it's relatively " "accessible. Therefore, the software industry largely does what the Fortune " "500 business market tells it to do. And therefore, it is primarily the " "Fortune 500 we need to convince." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:417(title) msgid "4. Co-opt the Prestige Media that Serve the Fortune 500" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:419(para) msgid "" "The choice to target the Fortune 500 implies that we need to capture the " "media that shape the climate of opinion among top-level decision-makers and " "investors: very specifically, the New York Times, the " "Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Forbes, and Barron's Magazine." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:426(para) msgid "" "On this view, co-opting the technical trade press is necessary but not " "sufficient; it's important essentially as a pre-condition for storming Wall " "Street itself via the elite mainstream media." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:431(title) msgid "5. Educate Hackers in Guerrilla Marketing Tactics" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:433(para) msgid "" "It was also clear that educating the hacker community itself would be just " "as important as mainstream outreach. It would be insufficient to have one or " "a handful of ambassadors speaking effective language if, at the grass roots, " "most hackers were making arguments that didn't work." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:440(title) msgid "6. Use the Open Source Certification Mark to Keep Things Pure" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:442(para) msgid "" "One of the threats we faced was the possibility that the term `open source' " "would be ``embraced and extended'' by Microsoft or other large vendors, " "corrupting it and losing our message. It is for this reason the Bruce Perens " "and I decided early on to register the term as a certification mark and tie " "it to the Open Source Definition (a copy of the Debian Free Software " "Guidelines). This would allow us to scare off potential abusers with the " "threat of legal action." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:450(para) msgid "" "It eventually developed that the U.S. Patent and Trademark office would not " "issue a trademark for such a descriptive phrase. Fortunately, by the time we " "had to write off the effort to formally trademark \"Open Source\" a year " "later, the term had acquired its own momentum in the press and elsewhere. " "The sorts of serious abuse we feared have not (at least, not yet as of " "November 2000) actually materialized." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:460(title) msgid "The Accidental Revolutionary" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:462(para) msgid "" "Planning this kind of strategy was relatively easy. The hard part (for me, " "anyway) was accepting what my own role had to be." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:465(para) msgid "" "One thing I understood from the beginning is that the press almost " "completely tunes out abstractions. They won't write about ideas without " "larger-than-life personalities fronting them. Everything has to be story, " "drama, conflict, sound bites. Otherwise, most reporters will simply go to " "sleep—and even if they don't, their editors will." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:472(para) msgid "" "Accordingly, I knew somebody with very particular characteristics would be " "needed to front the community's response to the Netscape opportunity. We " "needed a firebrand, a spin doctor, a propagandist, an ambassador, an " "evangelist—somebody who could dance and sing and shout from the " "housetops and seduce reporters and huggermug with CEOs and bang the media " "machine until its contrary gears ground out the message: the " "revolution is here!." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:480(para) msgid "" "Unlike most hackers, I have the brain chemistry of an extrovert and had " "already had extensive experience at dealing with the press. Looking around " "me, I couldn't see anyone better qualified to play evangelist. But I didn't " "want the job, because I knew it would cost me my life for many months, maybe " "for years. My privacy would be destroyed. I'd probably end up both " "caricatured as a geek by the mainstream press and (worse) despised as a sell-" "out or glory-hog by a significant fraction of my own tribe. Worse than all " "the other bad consequences put together, I probably wouldn't have time to " "hack any more!" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:491(para) msgid "" "I had to ask myself: are you fed up enough with watching your tribe lose to " "do whatever it takes to win? I decided the answer was " "yes—and having so decided, threw myself into the dirty but necessary " "job of becoming a public figure and media personality." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:497(para) msgid "" "I'd learned some basic media chops while editing The New Hacker's " "Dictionary. This time I took it much more seriously and " "developed an entire theory of media manipulation, which I then proceeded to " "apply. The theory centers around the use of what I call ``attractive " "dissonance'' to fan an itchy curiosity about the evangelist, and then " "exploiting that itch for all it's worth in promoting the ideas." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:505(para) msgid "" "This is not the place for a detailed exposition of my theory. But " "intelligent readers can probably deduce much of it from the phrase ``optimal " "level of provocation'' and the fact that my interview technique involves " "cheerfully discussing my interests in guns, anarchism and witchcraft while " "looking as well-groomed, boyishly charming, and all-American wholesome as I " "can possibly manage. The trick is to sound challengingly weird but convey a " "reassuring aura of honesty and simplicity. (Note that to make the trick " "work, I think you have to genuinely be like that; " "faking either quality has a high risk of exposure and I don't recommend it.)" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:516(para) msgid "" "The combination of the ``open source'' label and deliberate promotion of " "myself as an evangelist turned out to have both the good and bad " "consequences that I expected. The ten months after the Netscape announcement " "featured a steady exponential increase in media coverage of Linux and the " "open-source world in general. Throughout this period, approximately a third " "of these articles quoted me directly; most of the other two thirds used me " "as a background source. At the same time, a vociferous minority of hackers " "declared me an evil egotist. I managed to preserve a sense of humor about " "both outcomes (though occasionally with some difficulty)." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:527(para) msgid "" "My plan from the beginning was that, eventually, I would hand off the " "evangelist role to some successor, either an individual or organization. " "There would come a time when charisma became less effective than broad-based " "institutional respectability (and, from my own point of view, the sooner the " "better!). I am attempting to transfer my personal connections and carefully " "built-up reputation with the press to the Open Source Initiative, an " "incorporated nonprofit formed specifically to manage the Open Source " "trademark. At time of writing I am still the president of this organization, " "but hope and expect not to remain so indefinitely." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:539(title) msgid "Phases of the Campaign" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:541(para) msgid "" "The open-source campaign began with the Mountain View meeting, and rapidly " "collected an informal network of allies over the Internet (including key " "people at Netscape and O'Reilly Associates). Where I write `we' below I'm " "referring to that network." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:546(para) msgid "" "From 3 February to around the time of the actual Netscape release on 31 " "March, our primary concern was convincing the hacker community that the " "`open source' label and the arguments that went with it represented our best " "shot at persuading the mainstream. As it turned out, the change was rather " "easier than we expected. We discovered a lot of pent-up demand for a message " "less doctrinaire than the Free Software Foundation's." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:554(para) msgid "" "Tim O'Reilly invited twenty-odd leaders of major free software projects to " "what came to be called the Free Software Summit on 7 March. When these " "leaders voted to adopt the term `open source', they formally ratified a " "trend that was already clear at the grass roots among developers. By six " "weeks after the Mountain View meeting, a healthy majority of the community " "was speaking our language." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:561(para) msgid "" "The publicity following the Free Software Summit introduced the mainstream " "press to the term, and also gave notice that Netscape was not alone in " "adopting the open-source concept. We'd given a name to a phenomenon whose " "impact was already larger than anyone outside the Internet community had yet " "realized. Far from being fringe challengers, open source programs were " "already market leaders in providing key elements of the Internet " "infrastructure. Apache was the leading web server, with more than 50% market " "share (now grown to more than 60%.) Perl was the dominant programming " "language for the new breed of web-based applications. Sendmail routes more " "than 80% of all Internet email messages. And even the ubiquitous domain name " "system (which lets us use names like www.yahoo.com rather than obscure " "numeric IP addresses) depends almost entirely on an open-source program " "called BIND. As Tim O'Reilly said during the press conference following the " "summit, pointing to the assembled programmers and project leaders: ``These " "people have created products with dominant market share using only the power " "of their ideas and the networked community of their co-developers.'' What " "more might be possible if large companies also adopted the open source " "methodology?" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:581(para) msgid "" "That was a good start to our `air war', our attempt to change perceptions " "through the press. But we still needed to maintain momentum on the ground. " "In April, after the Summit and the actual Netscape release, our main concern " "shifted to recruiting as many open-source early adopters as possible. The " "goal was to make Netscape's move look less singular—and to buy us " "insurance in case Netscape executed poorly and failed its goals." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:589(para) msgid "" "This was the most worrying time. On the surface, everything seemed to be " "coming up roses; Linux was moving technically from strength to strength, the " "wider open-source phenomenon was enjoying a spectacular explosion in trade " "press coverage, and we were even beginning to get positive coverage in the " "mainstream press. Nevertheless, I was uneasily aware that our success was " "still fragile. After an initial flurry of contributions, community " "participation in Mozilla was badly slowed down by its requirement for the " "proprietary Motif toolkit. None of the big independent software vendors had " "yet committed to Linux ports. Netscape was still looking lonely, and its " "browser still losing market share to Internet Explorer. Any serious reverse " "could lead to a nasty backlash in the press and public opinion." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:602(para) msgid "" "Our first serious post-Netscape breakthrough came on 7 May when Corel " "Computer announced its Linux-based Netwinder network computer. But that " "wasn't enough in itself; to sustain the momentum, we needed commitments not " "from hungry second-stringers but from industry leaders. Thus, it was the mid-" "July announcements by Oracle and Informix that really closed out this " "vulnerable phase." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:609(para) msgid "" "The database outfits joined the Linux party three months earlier than I " "expected, but none too soon. We had been wondering how long the positive " "buzz could last without major ISV support and feeling increasingly nervous " "about where we'd actually find that. After Oracle and Informix announced " "Linux ports other ISVs began announcing Linux support almost as a matter of " "routine, and even a failure of Mozilla became survivable." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:617(para) msgid "" "Mid-July through the beginning of November was a consolidation phase. It was " "during this time that we started to see fairly steady coverage from the " "financial media I had originally targeted, led off by articles in " "The Economist and a cover story in Forbes. Various hardware and software vendors sent out feelers to the " "open-source community and began to work out strategies for getting advantage " "from the new model. And internally, the biggest closed-source vendor of them " "all was beginning to get seriously worried." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:627(para) msgid "" "Just how worried became apparent when the now-infamous " "Halloween Documents leaked out of Microsoft. These internal strategy documents recognized " "the power of the open source model, and outlined Microsoft's analysis of how " "to combat it by corrupting the open protocols on which open source depends " "and choking off customer choice." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:636(para) msgid "" "The Halloween Documents were dynamite. They were a ringing testimonial to " "the strengths of open-source development from the company with the most to " "lose from Linux's success. And they confirmed a lot of peoples' darkest " "suspicions about the tactics Microsoft would consider in order to stop it." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:642(para) msgid "" "The Halloween Documents attracted massive press coverage in the first few " "weeks of November. They created a new surge of interest in the open-source " "phenomenon, serendipitously confirming all the points we had been making for " "months. And they led directly to a request for me to confer with a select " "group of Merrill Lynch's major investors on the state of the software " "industry and the prospects for open source. Wall Street, finally, came to us." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:650(para) msgid "" "The following six months were a study in increasingly surreal contrasts. On " "the one hand, I was getting invited to give talks on open source to Fortune " "100 corporate strategists and technology investors; for the first time in my " "life, I got to fly first class and saw the inside of a stretch limousine. On " "the other hand, I was doing guerrilla street theater with grass-roots " "hackers—as in the riotously funny Windows Refund Day demonstration of " "15 March 1999, when a band of Bay-area Linux users actually marched on the " "Microsoft offices in the glare of full media coverage, demanding refunds " "under the terms of the Microsoft End User License for the unused Windows " "software that had been bundled with their machines." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:662(para) msgid "" "I knew I was going to be in town that weekend to speak at a conference " "hosted by the Reason Foundation, so I volunteered to be a marshal for the " "event. Back in December I'd been featured in a Star Wars parody " "plot in the Internet comic strip \"User Friendly\". So I joked with " "the organizers about wearing an Obi-Wan Kenobi costume at the demonstration." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:670(para) msgid "" "To my surprise, when I arrived I found the organizers had actually made a " "passable Jedi costume—and that's how I found myself leading a parade " "that featured cheeky placards and an American flag and a rather large " "plastic penguin, booming out \"May the Source be with you!\" to delighted " "reporters. To my further surprise, I was drafted to make our statement to " "the press." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:677(para) msgid "" "I suppose none of us should have really been astonished when the video made " "CNBC. The demonstration was a tremendous success. Microsoft's PR position, " "still trying to recover from the exposure of the Halloween Documents, took " "another body blow. And within weeks, major PC and laptop manufacturers began " "announcing that they would ship machines with no Windows installed and no " "``Microsoft tax'' in the price. Our bit of guerilla theater, it appeared, " "had struck home." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:687(title) msgid "The Facts on the Ground" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:689(para) msgid "" "While the Open Source campaign's air war in the media was going on, key " "technical and market facts on the ground were also changing. I'll briefly " "review some of them here because they combine interestingly with the trends " "in press and public perception." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:694(para) msgid "" "In the eighteen months after the Netscape release, Linux continued to grow " "rapidly more capable. The development of solid symmetric-multiprocessing " "support and the effective completion of the 64-bit cleanup laid important " "groundwork for the future." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:699(para) msgid "" "The roomful of Linux boxes used to render scenes for the Titanic threw a " "healthy scare into builders of expensive graphics engines. Then the Beowulf " "supercomputer-on-the-cheap project showed that Linux's Chinese-army " "sociology could be successfully applied even to cutting-edge scientific " "computing." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:705(para) msgid "" "Nothing dramatic happened to vault Linux's open-source competitors into the " "limelight. And proprietary Unixes continued to lose market share; in fact, " "by mid-year only NT and Linux were actually gaining market share in the " "Fortune 500, and by late fall Linux was gaining faster (and more at the " "expense of NT than of other Unixes)." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:711(para) msgid "" "Apache continued to increase its lead in the web-server market. (By August " "1999 Apache and its derivatives would be running fully 61% of the world's " "publicly-accessible Web servers.) In November 1998, Netscape's browser " "reversed its market-share slide and began to make gains against Internet " "Explorer." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:717(para) msgid "" "In April 1999 the respected computer-market researchers IDG predicted that " "Linux would grow twice as fast as all other server operating systems " "combined through 2003—and faster than Windows NT. In May, Kleiner-" "Perkins (Silicon Valley's leading venture-capital firm) took a lead position " "in financing a Linux startup." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:723(para) msgid "" "About the only negative development was the continuing problems of the " "Mozilla project. I have analyzed these elsewhere (in The Magic " "Cauldron). They came to a head when Jamie Zawinski, a Mozilla co-" "founder and the public face of the project, resigned a year and a day after " "the release of the source code, complaining of mismanagement and lost " "opportunities." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:730(para) msgid "" "But it was an indication of the tremendous momentum open source had acquired " "by this time that Mozilla's troubles did not noticeably slow down the pace " "of adoption. The trade press, remarkably, drew the right lesson: \"Open " "source,\" in Jamie's now-famous words, \"is [great, but it's] not magic " "pixie dust.\"" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:736(para) msgid "" "In the early part of 1999 a trend began among big independent software " "vendors (ISVs) to port their business applications to Linux, following the " "lead set earlier by the major database vendors. In late July, the biggest of " "them all, Computer Associates, announced that it would be supporting Linux " "over much of its product line. And preliminary results from an August 1999 " "survey of 2000 IT managers revealed that 49% consider Linux an \"important " "or essential\" element of their enterprise computing strategies. Another " "survey by IDC described what it called ``an amazing level of growth'' since " "1998, when the market research couldn't find statistically significant use " "of Linux; 13% of the respondents now employ it in business operations." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:748(para) msgid "" "The year 1999 also saw a wave of wildly successful Linux IPOs by Red Hat " "Linux, VA Linux Systems, and other Linux companies. While the overblown dot-" "com-like initial valuations investors originally put on them didn't outlast " "the big market corrections in March 2000, these firms established an " "unmistakable for-profit industry around open source that continues to be a " "focus of investor interest." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:756(title) msgid "Into the Future" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:758(para) msgid "" "I have rehearsed recent history here only partly to get it into the record. " "More importantly, it sets a background against which we can understand near-" "term trends and project some things about the future." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:762(para) msgid "First, safe predictions for the next year:" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:765(para) msgid "" "The open-source developer population will continue to explode, a growth " "fueled by ever-cheaper PC hardware and fast Internet connections." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:769(para) msgid "" "Linux will continue to lead the way, the sheer size of its developer " "community overpowering the higher average skill of the open-source BSD " "people and the tiny HURD crew." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:773(para) msgid "" "ISV commitments to support the Linux platform will increase dramatically; " "the database-vendor commitments were a turning point." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:777(para) msgid "" "The Open Source campaign will continue to build on its victories and " "successfully raise awareness at the CEO/CTO/CIO and investor level. MIS " "directors will feel increasing pressure to go with open-source products not " "from below but from above." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:783(para) msgid "" "Stealth deployments of Samba-over-Linux will replace increasing numbers of " "NT machines even at shops that have all-Microsoft policies." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:787(para) msgid "" "The market share of proprietary Unixes will continue to gradually erode. At " "least one of the weaker competitors (likely DG-UX or HP-UX) will actually " "fold. But by the time it happens, analysts will attribute it to Linux's " "gains rather than Microsoft's." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:793(para) msgid "" "Microsoft will not have an enterprise-ready operating system, because " "Windows 2000 will not ship in a usable form. (At 60 million lines of code " "and still bloating, its development is out of control.)" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:799(para) msgid "" "I wrote the above predictions in mid-December of 1998. All are still holding " "good as of November 2000, two years after they were written. Only the last " "one is arguable; Microsoft managed to ship Windows 2000 by drastically " "curtailing its feature list; adoption rates have not been what they hoped." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:805(para) msgid "" "Extrapolating these trends certainly suggests some slightly riskier " "predictions for the medium term (18 to 32 months out)." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:809(para) msgid "" "Support operations for commercial customers of open-source operating systems " "will become big business, both feeding off of and fueling the boom in " "business use." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:813(para) msgid "" "(This has already come true in 1999 with the launch of LinuxCare, and Linux " "support-service announcements by IBM and HP and others.)" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:817(para) msgid "" "Open-source operating systems (with Linux leading the way) will capture the " "ISP and business data-center markets. NT will be unable to resist this " "change effectively; the combination of low cost, open sources, and true 24/7 " "reliability will prove unstoppable." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:823(para) msgid "" "The proprietary-Unix sector will almost completely collapse. Solaris looks " "like a safe bet to survive on high-end Sun hardware, but most other players' " "proprietary Unixes will quickly become legacy systems." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:828(para) msgid "" "(In early 2000 SGI's IRIX was dead-ended by official Linux adoption within " "SGI itself, and in mid-2000 SCO agreed to be acquired by Caldera. It now " "looks probable that a number of Unix hardware vendors will switch horses to " "Linux without much fuss, as SGI is already well into the process of doing.)" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:834(para) msgid "" "Windows 2000 will be either canceled or dead on arrival. Either way it will " "turn into a horrendous train wreck, the worst strategic disaster in " "Microsoft's history. However, their marketing spin on this failure will be " "so deft that it will barely affect their hold on the consumer desktop within " "the next two years." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:841(para) msgid "" "(In mid-2000, a just-published IDG survey suggested that ``dead on arrival'' " "looks more likely all the time, with most large corporate respondents simply " "refusing to deploy the initial release and existing deployments experiencing " "serious security and stability problems. The fact that Microsoft itself was " "cracked twice in late October/early November of 2000 hardly helped.)" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:849(para) msgid "" "At first glance, these trends look like a recipe for leaving Linux as the " "last one standing. But life is not that simple, and Microsoft derives such " "immense amounts of money and market clout from the desktop market that it " "can't safely be counted out even after the Windows 2000 train wreck." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:855(para) msgid "" "But there are also reasons to believe that Microsoft is going to experience " "serious problems in 2001 that aren't related to either Linux or the " "Department of Justice. As hardware prices drop, the 59% of Microsoft's " "revenues that come from selling fixed-price preinstallation licenses to PC " "OEMs is under pressure. Those fixed license costs represent an ever-" "increasing slice of OEM's gross margins; at some point, the OEMs are going " "to have to claw back some of that last margin from Redmond in order to make " "any profits at all. We know where the critical price point is from observing " "the appliance and PDA market; it's at about $350 retail. On previous trends, " "desktop prices will cross $350 going down well before midyear 2001—and " "when that happens, OEMs will have to defect from the Microsoft camp to " "survive." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:869(para) msgid "" "Nor will it help Microsoft to respond in the obvious way by charging a " "percentage of the system's retail price instead of a fixed per-unit fee. " "OEMs can easily fiddle that system by unbundling expensive outboard " "components like the monitor—and even if they didn't, Wall Street would " "regard such a move as an admmission that Microsoft had lost control of its " "future revenues. One way or another, Microsoft's revenues look likely to " "crash hard long before DOJ gets a final ruling." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:878(para) msgid "" "So at two years out the crystal ball gets a bit cloudy. Which of several " "futures we get depends on questions like: will the DOJ actually succeed in " "breaking up Microsoft? Might BeOS or OS/2 or Mac OS/X or some other niche " "closed-source OS, or some completely new design, find a way to go open and " "compete effectively with Linux's 30-year-old base design? At least Y2K " "fizzled..." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:885(para) msgid "" "These are all fairly imponderable. But there is one such question that is " "worth pondering: Will the Linux community actually deliver a good end-" "user–friendly GUI interface for the whole system?" msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:890(para) msgid "" "In the 1999 first edition of this book, I said the most likely scenario for " "late 2000/early 2001 has Linux in effective control of servers, data " "centers, ISPs, and the Internet, while Microsoft maintains its grip on the " "desktop. By November 2000 this prediction had proved out pretty completely " "except in large corporate data centers, and there it looks very likely to be " "fulfilled within months." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:897(para) msgid "" "Where things go from there depend on whether GNOME, KDE, or some other Linux-" "based GUI (and the applications built or rebuilt to use it) ever get good " "enough to challenge Microsoft on its home ground." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:902(para) msgid "" "If this were primarily a technical problem, the outcome would hardly be in " "doubt. But it isn't; it's a problem in ergonomic design and interface " "psychology, and hackers have historically been poor at these things. That " "is, while hackers can be very good at designing interfaces for other " "hackers, they tend to be poor at modeling the thought processes of the other " "95% of the population well enough to write interfaces that J. Random End-" "User and his Aunt Tillie will pay to buy." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:911(para) msgid "" "Applications were 1999's problem; it's now clear we'll swing enough ISVs to " "get the ones we don't write ourselves. I believe the problem for 2001 and " "later is whether we can grow enough to meet (and exceed!) the interface-design quality standard set by the Macintosh, " "combining that with the virtues of the traditional Unix way." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:918(para) msgid "" "As of mid-2000, help may be on the way from the inventors of the Macintosh! " "Andy Hertzfeld and other members of the original Macintosh design team have " "formed a open-source company called Eazel with the explicit goal of bringing " "the Macintosh magic to Linux." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:923(para) msgid "" "We half-joke about `world domination', but the only way we will get there is " "by serving the world. That means J. Random End-User and " "his Aunt Tillie; and that means learning how to think " "about what we do in a fundamentally new way, and ruthlessly reducing the " "user-visible complexity of the default environment to an absolute minimum." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:930(para) msgid "" "Computers are tools for human beings. Ultimately, therefore, the challenges " "of designing hardware and software must come back to designing for human " "beings—all human beings." msgstr "" #: hacker-revenge.xml:934(para) msgid "" "This path will be long, and it won't be easy. But I think the hacker " "community, in alliance with its new friends in the corporate world, will " "prove up to the task. And, as Obi-Wan Kenobi might say, ``the Source will be " "with us''." msgstr "" #. Put one translator per line, in the form of NAME , YEAR1, YEAR2. #: hacker-revenge.xml:0(None) msgid "translator-credits" msgstr ""