1:05:00
that started the snow ball effect going
1:05:02
Every six months or so
1:05:05
I would come back to the venture capitalists
1:05:07
I would show them the new numbers
1:05:09
showing more and more people adopting Linux
1:05:11
and new people porting, new users
1:05:14
and I'd show them our customer list
1:05:16
And our customer list was getting much more impressive
1:05:19
It was people like Cisco that were beginning to appear
1:05:23
people like, you know, those dot-com companies
1:05:26
were started to show up on our customer list
1:05:28
and eventually the venture capitalists
1:05:32
you know, they kept looking at it
1:05:34
they kept saying "Oh, we can't quite do it"
1:05:36
Finally, Linus appeared on the cover of Fortune
1:05:40
There was something happening with Open Source
1:05:43
Well, at that point, the venture capitalists
couldn't ignore it
1:05:48
they just got sick of hearing about Linux everywhere
1:05:51
and they got tired of me, just, you know
1:05:54
showing it to them every,
at that point it was almost every week
1:05:58
So they uh, they decided it was time to invest,
1:06:01
that there was something happening
1:06:03
I announced Open Source to the world on the Internet
1:06:07
I did a lot of the early... administrative work of
1:06:11
starting the Open Source Initiative
1:06:16
and I think six months later
1:06:18
I was reading the words Open Source
1:06:21
in the news all the time
1:06:24
and was totally astounded
1:06:27
And a year later, I believe
1:06:28
Microsoft was talking about releasing some source code
1:06:34
And someone in the press asked Steve Ballmer
1:06:37
if they were going to open source their code
1:06:40
and Steve Ballmer said,
1:06:42
"Well, Open Source means more than
just releasing the source code"
1:06:47
And I realized that he had read my document
1:06:50
and understood it and was now telling
the press about this
1:06:54
Now if you are like just a guy on the net
1:06:57
who's not doing this for a job at all