Phelan, the son of a gold rush-era liquor wholesaler who grew up to hate both Prohibition and the invasion of California by Japanese immigrants, decreed in his will that the Villa Montalvo should be dedicated to the "support and encouragement of music, art, literature and architecture." Quite the Renaissance legacy -- though one wonders if he could have dreamed that one day his home would also host glamorous press conferences trumpeting new computer gizmos.

Possibly. Phelan was a man of some imagination. He chose the name Montalvo as homage to the 16th century Spanish writer Garcia Ordonez de Montalvo, who coined the name "California" in his otherwise eminently forgettable novel "Sergas of Esplandian." And since for so much of the 20th century, California has for better or worse represented the future -- of technology, culture, entertainment and even capitalism itself -- what better place to contemplate the cutting edge of Silicon Valley than in a villa dedicated to the man who first dreamed up the state's name?

So perhaps the half-eagle, half-lion stone griffins that guard the narrow winding road up to the Villa Montalvo were not too surprised to see, one rainy morning in January 2000, a horde of journalists, analysts, chip designers, money men and high-tech industry flacks invade their peaceful territory. For this was no ordinary press conference; this was the ultimate Silicon Valley dog-and-pony show. A company named Transmeta -- notorious, on the one hand, for being the most secretive start-up in the valley, and on the other, for employing one of the world's most famous programmers, Linus Torvalds* -- was about to raise the curtain on its tomorrowland product. The next little piece of the mythological Californian future was at hand. Who would dare miss it?

Certainly not me. Like everyone else, I wanted to finally get some answers about what Transmeta was up to. But like most people there, I also wanted to catch a glimpse of Torvalds. In that new universe where the Net, the software industry and the media are colliding, Torvalds is increasingly regarded as a hero of sorts -- a knight in digital armor jousting with the grasping ogres that currently lord it over the high-tech marketplace. Never mind that in real life Torvalds is a staunch pragmatist, a person who displays zero inclination for engaging in crusades or otherwise quixotic adventures. That's immaterial: Torvalds is the primary author of Linux,* a software program that is the core of a free operating system.*

An operating system -- such as Unix,* the Mac OS and, of course, Microsoft Windows -- is the heart and soul of a computer. The phenomenal recent market successes of Linux-based operating systems, which are posing the first real threat to Microsoft's software hegemony in a decade, have thrust Torvalds into the position of being the antithesis to Microsoft chairman Bill Gates.* While Microsoft charges what the market will bear for access to its software, Torvalds gives his code away. And somehow, it works. Indeed, in a seeming paradox, vast fortunes are being generated by corporations specializing in packaging and supporting so-called "free software"* or "open-source software,"* software defined by one fundamental commandment: that the source code* to a program, variously referred to as the underlying blueprints, or recipe, for that program, be freely available to the general public.

To the uninitiated, free software sounds like a joke, a late-night psychic friends TV come-on or, at best, a fad for geeks and nerds who have nothing better to do than play with computer code all night long. But to a growing number of technology watchers, free software means much, much more: Its success points toward a possible future in which the simple act of sharing constitutes the bedrock of a new strain of capitalism. By early 2000, talk of initial public offerings, billion-dollar market capitalizations and venture-capitalist shenanigans had become increasingly common wherever free-software hackers hung out. A healthy and growing number of computing cognoscenti were even arguing that, in a truly free market, free software would inevitably dominate.

Together with thousands of other programmers scattered across the world, Torvalds is demonstrating the astonishing potential of what can be achieved when volunteers collaborate with each other via the Internet, sharing code across corporate, geographic, cultural and linguistic boundary lines. As a byproduct, Torvalds can lay claim to what is quite possibly the fastest growing cult of personality in the world of technology. For Transmeta, the public relations benefits alone are well worth his salary; just by being his employer, Transmeta ensures that some of the most keen eyes on the Net will obsess over the company's every move.

The Free Software Project
Read Andrew Leonard's book-in-progress on Linux and open source -- and post your comments.