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Where the wild feeds are
When Bill Gates uses the F-word, it doesn't show up on TV. But Web sites featuring raw satellite transmissions let it all hang out.
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Column
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By Scott Rosenberg
[07/27/99]

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Fuck them! My hair is long and my sandals are worn. That's who I am. That's who all of us are. And we fucking wrote the software that Red Hat sells. We own the company in a far more real sense than any of the moneyed lords with sufficient "liquid net worth" to take part in the IPO. They're auctioning my software off on the New York Stock Exchange to the highest bidder, and I can't take part!

We coders had been abruptly disenfranchised, after having had silver carrots waved in front of our noses. I'd opened my first money-market account just now, in order to take part in the commercial future of something I believed in -- and the door had been slammed in my face.

An hour later, an article titled "Barred from Red Hat IPO?" was posted on Slashdot and the floodgates were unleashed. In the first five minutes nearly 40 posts from all over America came pouring in, with hackers telling stories like mine. Most were pissed off. Some were mad at Red Hat, some at E-Trade, most at The Man, for dissing us once again.

The online community is built around words, not appearances, and ideas, not muscle. The most valuable currency is knowledge, and respect goes to the providers. In our world, we own Red Hat. We know all there is to know about its product, its strengths, its possible weaknesses. And if code to patch those weaknesses is to be written, we will be the ones writing it. On this battlefield, E-Trade's refusal to credit us with the knowledge we have is outrageous. Stooping to meat-space metrics like "liquid net worth" is bullshit. We know Red Hat, and we believe in it. We've created it. We know the stock will do well, and if it doesn't, it is a failure of our knowledge and therefore our own problem. We deserve to partake. It's absurd that we be banned.

A real sense of outrage has sprung up. Why offer us riches if you're not going to let us have any? This is real money we're talking about here. By my best estimate, at least $400,000 was sent to E-Trade over the last 11 business days by developers who flunked the eligibility requirements. (About 400 people responded to a poll on Slashdot, saying they had been denied participation because of the eligibility requirements.) None of us expected that the innocuous-sounding "series of questions" from the invitation e-mail would result in over half of us being denied access; there was no explicit indication that a Net Worth was required. Our trust was abused.

Will Red Hat stand up for us this time? They've been our heroes thus far, persuading suits to ditch Microsoft for the work of our hands, convincing major business partners to embrace open source and our community and offering us, the little guys, a chance at fiscal rewards through their stock.

The Net's legend-spinners are whispering that the financial world was miffed at Red Hat for offering us so much of their stock. Whether the story's true or not, that's what I believe. I did get a note from Red Hat's spokeswoman, Melissa London, but it didn't say much: "Red Hat is working closely with E-Trade to work through investor profile problems. I cannot comment on what the plans are, etc., of course."

Red Hat is our challenger, our proxy in the fight for respect. We believe that if Red Hat succeeds on Wall Street, our cause everywhere will be furthered. Now these eligibility requirements have thrown up a barricade against us. We cannot let nothing be done -- won't someone stand up for the penny-ante idealists encountering The Man on his turf for the first time?

This isn't about hackers wanting money for code they gave away for free. We hack for love -- and respect. The eligibility requirements took away that respect, and tarnished Red Hat's empowerment of the giants on whose shoulders it stood. According to some reports, E-Trade has started mailing letters to rejected invitees, offering to let them retake the questionnaire. On Slashdot, hackers are encouraging each other to fill in false answers that will ensure that we pass the test. But we don't want to participate in borrowed clothes, as fictional millionaires with stated trillions in net worth. We want to win this battle on our terms, as ourselves.

We created the revolution. We want recognition. Is that too much too ask?
salon.com | July 30, 1999

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