{"id":209,"date":"2005-09-08T18:37:28","date_gmt":"2005-09-08T23:37:28","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=209"},"modified":"2005-09-08T18:38:30","modified_gmt":"2005-09-08T23:38:30","slug":"microsofts-worst-nightmare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=209","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft&#8217;s Worst Nightmare?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A commenter writes, in reference to my letter to the Microsoft<br \/>\nrecruiter,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nBTW, I think abrogating to yourself the status of MS&#8217;s worst<br \/>\nnightmare might be seen as presumptious, considering that FLOSS<br \/>\ndepends on a big community, and a lot of what FLOSS is about precedes<br \/>\nyour 97 work, but far be it from me to try to teach ESR strategy.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Um.  You meant &#8220;arrogating&#8221;, I think. A few words about that&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Well, duh.  Of <em>course<\/em> the open-source community predates<br \/>\nme and is much bigger than any one individual. I&#8217;ve done more than<br \/>\nmost to point that out, I think, asserting our continuity clear back<br \/>\nto 1960 and the SPACEWAR hackers at MIT.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m Microsoft&#8217;s worst nightmare not so much because of myself as an<br \/>\nindividual but because I&#8217;ve served as a public focus and embodiment of<br \/>\nthe hacker community&#8217;s values.  And (this is the nightmare part) I<br \/>\nsold them to Wall Street.  I broke us out of the geek ghetto.<\/p>\n<p>I try not to have a big ego about this.  I&#8217;m well aware that if it<br \/>\nhadn&#8217;t been me in that role, somebody else would have done it. It was<br \/>\n<em>time<\/em> in the late 1990s.  OK, to be honest I think without me<br \/>\nthe open-source transition would have happened a few years later and<br \/>\nwith less up-front awareness, but it was going to happen; long-term<br \/>\ntrends in the underlying economics guaranteed that.  I may have been<br \/>\nthe first to understand and publicize those trends, but that never<br \/>\ngave me the illusion that I created them or that they wouldn&#8217;t have<br \/>\noperated without &#8220;ESR&#8221; pushing.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, having been the key man at one or two pivotal historical<br \/>\nmoments, I&#8217;m in an almost uniquely good position to plump for the<br \/>\n&#8220;times make the man&#8221; theory.  Yes, I supplied some individual vision.<br \/>\nBut I absolutely do not think of myself as indispensible and never<br \/>\nhave.  Because I&#8217;ve felt the tide of history sweeping me forward, and<br \/>\nI know that the hacker community created <em>me<\/em>.  <\/p>\n<p>This is something that is hard to talk about without sounding<br \/>\nmystical. I sometimes feel almost as though I&#8217;m a sort of sense organ<br \/>\nor mirror that the hacker community grew in order to see itself more<br \/>\nclearly.  To the extent I ended up &#8220;leading&#8221; or became a culture hero<br \/>\nin that process, it was because the community desperately needed<br \/>\nsomeone to do it and pulled me into the role, shaping me to fit<br \/>\nin the process.<\/p>\n<p>Cultures need culture heroes &mdash; and they&#8217;ll create &#8217;em if they<br \/>\ndon&#8217;t pop up spontaneously.  Note: the process can be damn rough on<br \/>\nthe candidate.  And being the focus of so many peoples&#8217; dreams and<br \/>\naspirations is&#8230;well, it&#8217;s terrifying at times.  I used to have a lot<br \/>\nof contempt for rock stars who couldn&#8217;t handle the pressure and fucked<br \/>\nup with drugs.  Now I understand better.  I&#8217;ve been through some<br \/>\nawful, heartbreaking, soul-destroying shit on this job.<\/p>\n<p>But let&#8217;s look on the positive side.  I guess the most important<br \/>\npoint I want to make is that my success doesn&#8217;t belong to me alone but<br \/>\nto all hackers, every one of us.  I never forget this, and I hope no<br \/>\none else will either.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A commenter writes, in reference to my letter to the Microsoft recruiter, BTW, I think abrogating to yourself the status of MS&#8217;s worst nightmare might be seen as presumptious, considering that FLOSS depends on a big community, and a lot of what FLOSS is about precedes your 97 work, but far be it from me&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=209\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Microsoft&#8217;s Worst Nightmare?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-technology","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}