March 10th, 2008
Is celebrity contradictory with open source?
Daniel Terdiman’s scathing review of journalist Sarah Lacy at the SXSW keynote of Mark Zuckerberg this weekend leads to this intriguing question.
Are celebrity and open source contradictory? (Here’s a clip.)
It’s true that open source has some well-known names. Eric Raymond. Linus Torvalds. Bruce Perens, Eben Moglen. Richard Stallman. But put these men in a line-up and most people wouldn’t be able to identify them.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. In fact there’s something quite right about it.
The open source movement does not lend itself to “look at me.” It’s about code, it’s about building communities, and it’s about values like consensus. That doesn’t make for good TV.
The most telling point in Terdiman’s account came when Lacy, whom I’ll admit I’d never heard of until this morning, said this:
“Anybody who’s seen my (TV) show…has seen me throw a whole glass of water on (Techcrunch founder Michael) Arrington.”
In other words her rudeness was just schtick, like that of Rush Limbaugh or Ellen DeGeneres, and thus should be taken in context, since she was the big star on the stage, not Zuckerberg, who after all had only founded a Web site.
In fact, as the Valleywag blog noted recently, Lacy’s main claim to fame is that she is, in its words, “the hottest reporter in the Valley,” by which they mean she is physically attractive.
Thus, the interview with Zuckerberg, whose site is now worth an estimated $15 billion, could be all about her.
But here’s the question. Did the audience boo Lacy because she was doing a poor job, or did it boo her because they share open source values which are antithetical to her getting in the way of the story?
Is it a problem that open source, as a rule, is immune to the celebrity worship which Ms. Lacy, and so many other reporters, now practice? Or does Linus need a makeover?
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 03/10/08
