Open Sources 2.0

Chapter 15. Making a New World

Doc Searls

Open Sources was published in January 1999. That same month I became a full-time editor for Linux Journal, assigned to cover Linux in business. Over the next seven months, I also co-wrote (with Chris Locke, David Weinberger, and Rick Levine) The Cluetrain Manifesto, a rant that first took the form of a web site and later took the form of a book. Its subtitle was “The End of Business as Usual.”

Cluetrain, like much of what I wrote for Linux Journal at the time, argued against bubble-headed marketing at a time when bubble-headed investing in “Linux companies” was growing to galactic dimensions. In August 1999, Red Hat had the largest IPO run-up in stock market history. In December 1999, VA Linux (now VA Software) set a new record, which remains unbroken. In January 2000, Cluetrain hit the bookstores and became a business bestseller. The bubble began to pop on January 17, and within a few months nearly everybody in a “Linux business” (including Linux Journal) suffered consequences ranging from dire to fatal. All businesses, including Linux ones, still feel the after-effects.

Yet the bubble was a red herring. It was off-topic in the extreme, because Linux was quietly being put to use in businesses everywhere, along with a growing suite of other open source infrastructural building materials. Linux was never about the stock market, or even about business. It was about something else—something that caused usage (especially in business) ...