Linux users march on city hall

By Lisa M. Bowman

A small but enthusiastic crowd of Linux lovers hit the streets of San Francisco on Thursday, hoping to trumpet the virtues of open source to lawmakers and voters.

Led by Michael Tiemann, chief technology officer of Linux seller Red Hat, the group marched the mile-long stretch from the LinuxWorld conference to San Francisco City Hall.

There Tiemann unveiled the Digital Software Security Act, a proposal that would prohibit the state from buying software that doesn't open its code.

Tiemann, wearing a red fedora and clutching a map so he could find his destination, said he also wanted to point out the hypocrisy of the state, which is one of the holdouts in the antitrust battle against Microsoft but runs the company's software in government offices.

"While they're spending money suing the monopolist, they're also feeding the monopolist with the other hand," Tiemann told the crowd.

The march attracted the zealous, the fearful and the merely curious.

One marcher, a hotshot Linux programmer who goes by the name of Tack, said it's important that government types listen to open source advocates before passing laws dealing with technology. He said he's already suffering from federal laws that outlaw certain types of programming that could crack copy protections. "Instead of being able to focus on developing a new technology for my client, I have to think like a lawyer," said Tack, who described himself as a "freelance tech guy".

"I don't want to land in jail," he added.

Hoping to reach regular people, the marchers walked up one of the city's main streets, passing rows of outdoor chess players and department store bag-laden tourists.

They stopped briefly at the Metreon shopping center, at a cable car turnaround, and finally, on the steps of city hall. Occasionally they chanted, "Balance the budget. Switch to Linux." Few outsiders looked up from their activities to acknowledge the crowd.

Turnout was on the low end of the 20 to 100 people Tiemann expected. Some programmers complained of the early 10:30am start time. One said he had to drag his friend out of bed. Others cited the fast pace of the gangly Tiemann, who took off promptly from the conference hall and rushed up the street, forcing some programmers to jog breathlessly behind him.

But open source guru Bruce Perens, who marched alongside Tiemann, lamented that most technologists simply aren't paying attention. "It's obvious only a tiny bit of people from (LinuxWorld) turned out, and that presents a problem," he said. "Either they don't understand the issues or they have a business partnership that doesn't allow them to talk about it."

Lisa M. Bowman writes for News.com. News.com's Stephen Shankland contributed to this report