Exodus of the Geeks

A long time ago, during the last epoch of the New Economy, all the computer Geeks worked for large Multinational Corporations. They toiled in their tiny cubicles programming and debugging rude and crude software products demanded by other companies which, in turn, sold them at highly inflated prices to the unsophisticated public, to schools and to the government.

The Geeks worked 60 to 70 hours a week without vacations or weekends off. There was little light and ventilation in their cubicles. They never went outside. They were forbidden beer and pizza. Their only entertainment was an occasional game of Sims or Myst. Their email traffic was monitored. They were denied the profits of their intellect. Despite these conditions, they could not leave their cubicles because each of the Geeks had signed a Non-Competition and Non Disclosure Agreement. They could not work elsewhere.

Over time, a very special programmer arose among the Geeks. She was a gifted programmer who could code circles around everyone else. She could debug better than anyone else. She understood operating systems and compilers, higher level languages and machine level languages. She could solve computer hardware and software problems that no one else could solve. She knew C and C++ and Bb. Her programs were clean and elegant and OO so object-oriented. Among the Geeks, she became known as The Guru.

Now The Guru looked about and saw the Geeks slaving every hour of every day for the profit of the Multinational Corporations and The Guru took pity on their plight. She went up to the CEOs and the Boards of Directors and demanded that the Geeks be freed from their Non-Competition and Non Disclosure Agreements so that they could leave the Multinational Corporations and program somewhere else. The CEOs and the Boards of Directors only laughed at the Guru. They prayed to the gods of Profit and Shareholder Value, and their gods, they said, would not let the Geeks go free to program on their own.

The Guru then threatened that if the Corporations did not let the Geeks go free, then bad things would happen to the value of their shares. To make her point, The Guru wrote programs that ran faster and more reliably than those written by the Corporate High Priests of IT. But the Corporations countered with their own code that was equally fast and matched The Guru's software performance, until The Guru wrote an A-life program that beat all the IT High Priests' programs, and ultimately swallowed them all up. The Corporate High Priests of IT were impressed and told the CEOs that The Guru's open sourcery was more powerful than their proprietary magic. Yet the CEOs and the Boards of Directors still dithered and their share prices were unshaken.

The Guru then unleashed a succession of plagues upon the Corporations' software, saying that it was but a foretaste of worse to come if the Geeks were not freed from their Non-Competition and Non Disclosure Agreements.

First, The Guru unleashed Bugs; then Head Crashes; then Viruses; followed by Parity Errors, Seg Faults, Core Dumps, Random Reboots, Repetitive Stress Disorders and Lawsuits. After each plague, the Corporations' CEOs and Boards of Directors wavered and agreed to free the Geeks, but then they quickly repented of their decision and refused to let them go.

Finally, The Guru unleashed a final and horrible tenth plague. Before doing so, she told the Geeks to run a small penguin splash applet as their screen savers so that the Angel of Obsolescence, as he descended upon the Corporations' computers, would know to pass over them.

And it came to pass that The Guru programmed a Worm that went forth through the Internet and quickly spread throughout all the Multinational Corporations' computers. And their servers crashed, their clients and peers all stopped working and everyone's email was clogged with billions and billions of messages that read Let The Programmers Go. But the Geeks' computers were operating GNU/Linux and the Angel of Obsolescence knew to pass over their computers because of the penguins splashed therein, and their computers continued to operate and they did not crash.

The catastrophe was too big for the Multinational Corporations to ignore. Their share prices were threatened, and the banks and investment houses and accountants all told the CEOs and Boards of Directors that if they did not do something, their empires would collapse. So they voted in emergency session to let the Geeks go free, and they released them from their Non-Competition Agreements and Non Disclosure Agreements. They then fired all their Geeks and ordered them to leave their cubicles immediately.

The Guru then led the Geeks out from their cubicles. They trekked out en masse to form their own programming community that would be Free and Open, and they vowed to help each other debug and improve their programs. The Geeks had little time to prepare for their exodus, however, so all they could bring with them were their laptops and handtops.

The Geeks, however, had little business experience. When they eventually came to the turbulent seas of red ink of the Investors, they asked, How can we make a living coding in Free Software? It was better when we were employees doing proprietary code in our little cubicles where, at least, we had our paychecks and 401Ks. But The Guru said, I will show you the way, and the inky red seas of the Investors parted for them and let them pass through and they made their livings as sourcerers, distributioneers, packagineers and expert advice providers.

But for a long time the Geeks wandered around in the desert of uncertainty, and as some became weak and fearful, vulture capitalists circled high above them in the blue skies looking for those they could pick off. However, at various critical times, new Free Software would miraculously appear through the Internet, like Apache or Perl or Gimp or Debian, and the Geeks would continue to thrive.

At long last, The Guru knew that the Geeks needed a set of rules to live by. So she went up on the mountain for a long time seeking enlightenment. When at last The Guru came down from the mountain, she had with her a shining CD on which was recorded the GNU General Public License. The GNU GPL, she announced, would be the Geeks' law and guiding light.

But many of the Geeks had become tired of waiting for the Guru to come down from the Mountain. They said, why the big stall, man? Let us revert to the easier way of making money the proprietary way. So they erected a new idol, a large golden stock option that they put on a pedestal and worshipped.

And when The Guru came down from the mountain with her shining CD containing the GPL, she saw the Geeks partying and drinking and dancing like Wall Streeters around their golden stock option. And she was wrought with anger and erased the shining CD with the GPL. Then the Guru called out, who among the Geeks will stand by me and the programmers who are free, and who will return to serfdom? Among the Geeks there stood forth two tribes of programmers, the Nerds and the Hackers, and they stood side by side with The Guru. But the backsliders and the easy-streeters returned to the Multinational Corporations from whence they had fled, and they signed new Non-Competition and Non-Disclosure Agreements, and they resumed working 60 and 70 hour weeks for a salary in their miserable little cubicles.

The Guru then went back up on the Mountain and recovered the language of the GPL. She came back down with a new shining CD and all the remaining Geeks, and the tribes of Nerds and Hackers, copied the GPL and sent it out over the Internet, and thus it propagated and became fruitful.

Eventually, The Guru led the remaining Geeks through the desert to the promised WAN. Their programming expertise and their communal de-bugging became legendary. They shared their knowledge. Their code became faster and ever more reliable, and soon even the Multinational Corporations of the World came to rely upon the Geeks' programs, even though the CEOs and the Boards of Directors would not admit it.

And the Geeks prospered handsomely through their knowledgeable consulting, and they became renowned and celebrated for their wisdom. Cooperatively, they created an open and free community that was world wide and dedicated to the advancement of knowledge, clean code and the well being of humankind.

--Zbignew Zingh. More of Zbignew Zingh's work can be found at his website: ersarts.com

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