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Look Ma! That Bengal Tiger is Charging Right at Us with its Claws Ready to Strike!

[Click on the thumbnail images for full-sized pictures.]

New York City under what remains of hurricane Dennis

A nice example of the breadth of architectural styles found in the NYC sky scape.

Down below on the street, a newspaper-magazine vendor tends to his inventory.

Two standard issue NYC hotdog and hot prezzel stands.

I did say that NY was under the clouds of Hurricane Dennis, but I thought I would liven up the view a bit with this nice shot of a Midtown Manhattan skyline taken the following weekend after Bob's talk. The shot was taken from Central Park looking south.

I'm sure millions were spent on this piece of art, yet it seems to get in the way of pedestrian traffic.

The unbelievability of the numbers behind Red Hat's IPO dominated my thoughts as I swerved over to the Southern State, down the Southern State, then onto the Cross Island, back onto the LIE and finally handing over my $3.50 to the toll booth guy to pay for my passage under the East River at Midtown.

IBM's red sculpture which sits at the base of the IBM building on 57th street.

The rain from hurricane Dennis was now coming down over Manhattan rather hard. I got only slightly wet this time, as I dashed over to the IBM building. Knowing that the remains of Dennis were on their way to NYC, I was wise to bring my umbrella along.

New Yorker's anxiously awaiting Bob's arrival with baited breath? I think not. Most of them have no idea who Bob is and are just taking cover from the rain in front of the main entrance to the IBM building on 57th street.

LXNY folk gather at the beginning of the meeting, waiting for Bob to show.

The meeting room was a large one. There was ample room to fit at least 100 people. When the journalist and I arrived, there were about 20 people there. I got to work handing out fliers to my Open Source/Open Science conference and also took some pictures.

Brian (I think) and Jim of VA Linux posing for me as Jim zips up his VAIO in one of those glad zip lock bags. Good way to water proof your VAIO.

I noticed the door to the meeting room close and went over to try get it to stay open, figuring people showing up may miss the meeting if the door is closed. As I was futsying around with the door, I turned to find Bob Young looking to get into the room. "Hi Bob" I said, "Welcome to New York." He cracked a smile, returned the greeting and went in to mingle with the rest of the gathering crowd. I followed him in.

Brian and Ari of VA Linux. If you look closely, you'll notice that they are both soaked from the rain outside.

The Amiga Users Group (AUG) president, I assume, announcing the existence of the AUG.

Mike Smith addressing the assemble group before Bob speaks.

Bob started by talking about the amount of travel he was doing lately in promoting Red Hat to private industry in the pre-IPO days. Those days were long and the travel extensive. The same presentations were made over and over to the point that he had a hard getting his mouth just to form the words during these presentations. Through this ordeal, he learned the truth of the equation "opportunity - sleep = trouble." He was also amused to realize that the corollary also held true, "trouble + sleep = opportunity." A neat equation of state in the world of sales. During his travel many mistakes were made and this was done under high pressure situations and little sleep when he and other Red Hat management types were pitching Red Hat to heavy weight investors. He recalled one time when they were scheduled to be in New York on such a day, and someone had scheduled a meeting with just one investor in Dallas the day before. He and his colleagues who were touring the country, did not want to go to Dallas, give their presentation in front of just one investor, and then have to fly that night to NY getting there at 2am, and then try to be fresh for a really big, high pressure pitch to a bunch of NY Wall Street types the next day. So they decided to play a trick on this poor Dallas investor. During their presentation, they were going to redo all their mistakes they made during all their other presentations to date. Bob continues, "I got up and gave my introduction, going through all the mistakes I could remember while I gave my talk, I then handed the floor over to Matthew Szulik, (the current president of the company.) Matthew started. 'We at Red Hat are committed to bringing and supporting the best software Open Source has to offer to the Amiga platform!'" Well, maybe you had to be there to get the irony of the story.

Bob's waiting for Mike to finish up his announcements before taking the floor.

Bob Young and Mike Smith standing in front of the assembled group sometime during the Q and A part of Bob's talk. I can tell because Bob has taken off his jacket and tie at this point.

Talking to the computer users at the time, it became clear to him that Free Software had something important to offer. He recalled how people would wax poetic about the wonders of Free Software. It was much more stable and reliable than its commercial counterparts. Thus Bob featured Free Software articles in his newsletter. He didn't tell the audience if his newsletter was a success or not, but Bob had found his niche.

Another shot of Bob and Mike, but this time before the talk starts. Notice Bob hasn't taken off his jacket and tie yet.

Bob taking questions and giving answers.

At that time, Linux was making its way into the free software world, and Bob saw an opportunity to exercise his entrepreneurial skills. In grand entrepreneurial style, he hooked up with Mark Ewing, and started up Red Hat, which he ran out of his wife's sewing room. Some time later, he and Marc moved to North Carolina where Red Hat is now stationed.

Bob looking over his shoulder at someone, just after he got to the LXNY meeting.

Yet another shot of Bob and Mike. Stop me if I'm getting too repetitive...

Bob went on to describe how the railway monopolies of the beginning of the 20th century were broken. They were not broken by other companies building better trains or tracks, they were broken when the interstate highway system was built and truckers could deliver goods from door to door, rather than from region to region. In a similar fashion, the software industry will have to use Free Software to break the monopoly held by Microsoft which it enjoys now.

Jay Sulzberger bring a gift of pastry snacks to the guest speaker.

Bob had some more points about Free Software which need mentioning. He talked about how the market for overnight package delivery changed. When Federal Express entered the market, their goal was to reduce the cost of delivering a package overnight from $200 down to $10. "What happens when you do so?" You change the way people use overnight delivery by expanding its use tremendously. And we see this today, with everyone and his uncle sending or receiving packages overnight. Now with e-commerce, the overnight delivery volume is just going to get bigger. Bob segued into this thought, what will happen in the OS market if you change cost of an operating system to $0? "You will change the way people use it," implying a great expansion in the use of Free OS.

I thought I would break up the monotony of all these pictures of Bob with this picture of a section of a Maya stone relief. The picture was taken the following weekend while I roamed the Metropolitan Museum. It's also a nice contrast to all this talk about high tech and Free Software.

Back to Bob. Here his is photographed while being only slightly mobbed by LXNY'ers trying to meet the man for the first time.

At some point the meeting turned form Bob talking about his experiences and analyses of the Free Software market to a question and answer period. There were lots of questions which varied from asking about his new book, "Under the Radar," to what he thought about making money off others people's software. (He took his coat and tie off to answer that question which he started by saying, "We are standing on the shoulders of giants..."). One thing that I noticed during the question and answer session was the urgency of those who wanted to ask their questions. As time went on, more and more people were raising their hands trying to get a question in. There was an active dialog going on between Bob and the LXNY users group. The question I wanted to get in, but couldn't, was what would be Bob's advice to someone who wanted to enter this new Free Software market. I'll pop the question to him the next time I see him. He did tell me that he was going to attend my Open Source/Open Science extravaganza at BNL, so maybe I'll corner him then...

LXNY'ers gather at Kaplan's deli after Bob's talk.

The final question finally rolled around. Something about really bad support from Dell, which went on for about 5 minutes. Bob's reply was the right one, "Send me an e-mail of your complaint and I'll forward it on to the right person." With that everyone got up and the "after the talk buzz" started. Bob was surrounded for the next 20 minutes by people trying to meet him and get another question in. I walked around taking photos. After a while, Jay in a very loud voice told every one to get out since the building management closes the room at 9pm.

Mike, Bob and Jay, sharing a NY Deli moment.

If you have read my other articles, you know my routine by now. I hit the LIE east, and start counting exits until I reach exit 68. This time was no different. And again, as I drove down the LIE, (I can almost drive this freeway blindfolded) my mind wandered off into Free Software land.

The event that I just attended I considered to be at the historical level. And unfortunately, comparisons between Bob Young and Bill Gates kept popping into my head. When Microsoft went public, did Bill gather with his old Altair users group to talk about the wonders of DOS? When was the last time Bill showed up to a users group meeting to basically shoot the sh*t with his friends? When will Bob be able to do what he did tonight again? As time goes on, and the free software market expands, Bob's time is going to be more and more in demand and events like this one will just not occur. It's a sad thought but a realistic one, I'm afraid.

Back to primitive imagery. Why not! I bet there is a law of human social interaction and economic forces which states that these forces are invariant in time. If not, I'll be glad to publish an article on such a law. This picture is of a gold mask found excavated in Central America.

This gold mask is of Peruvian origin.

Ugly fellow from the south pacific.

I leave you with a shot of the Rosetta Stone. An inscription is repeated 3 times in 2 different languages, Egyptian and Greek. The inscriptions are hieroglyphs, demotic (another form of Egyptian writing) and Greek. From what was etched in this stone, 19th century scholars were able to begin deciphering the Egyptian hieroglyphs. One could argue that the necessity of open standards pre-exist our Internet times by several millennia.

Copyright © 1999, Stephen Adler
Published in Issue 47 of Linux Gazette, November 1999