The official mythology of this time would say that this movement was a huge boon to innovation, and largely responsible with launching the Silicon Valley that we know today. Companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Broderbund all got their start in large part because of the availability of cheap programmable platforms to grass roots programmers. One can quibble about the details, but I think this mythology is based on a large measure of truth.

But over the next five to ten years, something strange happened. PCs became corporate devices. With the development of first Visicalc, and then other so-called productivity applications, the PC became a means to an end -- business productivity -- and no longer an end in itself. Cheap machines you could hack disappeared. By the time we get to the glory days of the personal computer -- roughly 1990, with Apple doing well and Windows 3.1 released -- the PC had lost its identity as a programmable device. To get a machine you could hack on, you had to go back into the university setting. Not surprisingly, this time coincides with the flourishing of Unix in academic settings (among other places).

What Linux does is restore the PC to it's rightful domain: it's a cheap, programmable platform. This idea is so simple it is difficult to even state.

The grassroots programmer wants to be able to program without restraint: at home, in the garage, on the road, whatever. But outside the work setting where all their intellectual property is signed over to the employer. To do that grassroots programming, the programmer needs a computer. It should be cheap, flexible, and should support a wide variety of programming languages and environments. It should come with a rich array of editors, debuggers, and compilers. That's the appeal of Linux, plain and simple. It's the tool the grassroots programmer has wanted for 20 years.

The fits and starts of our industry make it appear that this history is discontinuous. It appears that at one time there were programmable platforms like the Apple II and then for a long time the programmable PC disappeared. But that discontinuity is an illusion. Remember, it's about 1990 before corporate America really rests the PC out of the hands of hobbyists and really takes over. Linux is born in 1991.

Linux was then, and remains now, an immediate response to the hacker need for unfettered low cost access to a programmable platform.

Linux supports a wide variety of languages: C, C++, Objective C, Fortran, LISP, Smalltalk, Pascal, Scheme, Perl, Python, Tcl, and Java, just to name the most popular. Java is an incredibly important language, but among grassroots programmers, C is still first among peers. Thus C is the language of choice among Linux enthusiasts. This may change with time, but don't look for the change to be driven from the Linux community.

Staroffice, Applixware, Gnome, KDE, Enlightenment are all interesting developments on Linux, but in the end they just aren't that important. The first program written on an Altair caused the machine to emit beeps and sounds in a recognizable tune. It had no practical application, but it was a heroic demonstration of hacker prowess (you try entering your code in hexidecimal, one byte at a time, by throwing switches). Enlightenment is a vastly more sophisticated program, but its essence, in the mind of the hacker community is much the same: it is a delightly demonstration of programming skill, first and foremost, and any practical application it has is very much an afterthought.

So we've reached a fascinating crossroads with Linux. In effect, we've gone back in time 20 years. Just as 20 years ago corporate America was beginning to wake up to the idea that open hardware (the PC) could revolutionize the computer industry and bolster productivity, corporate America today is realizing that now that hardware has been successfully commodified that open software can once again revolutionize the computer industry and bolster productivity. The suits want to take over Linux, just as the suits 20 years ago took over the PC. And just as there was resistance from the hobbyists 20 years ago, there is resistance from the hobbyists today. The hacker fringe is, now as before, a paradox of cutting edge and old-fashioned thinking melded together.