5.4. The Road to Mountain View

On 22 January 1998 Netscape announced that it would release the sources of the Netscape client line to the Internet. Shortly after the news reached me the following day, I learned that CEO Jim Barksdale was describing my work to national-media reporters as "fundamental inspiration" for the decision.

This was the event that commentators in the computer trade press would later call "the shot heard 'round the world"—and Barksdale had cast me as its Thomas Paine, whether I wanted the role or not. For the first time in the history of the hacker culture, a Fortune 500 darling of Wall Street had bet its future on the belief that our way was right. And, more specifically, that my analysis of "our way" was right.