FOSTER CITY, California -- They came a hundred strong, bearing aloft an American flag and a two-foot-tall plastic penguin. They carried their unopened packages of the Windows operating system that had come bundled with their new PCs.
A cheerful contingent of Linux enthusiasts and open-source advocates traipsed to a Silicon Valley branch office of Microsoft here yesterday, bearing copies of Windows 98. They wanted a refund for the software that they didn't want and wouldn't use.
"This isn't just a Linux event," said Chris DiBona, director of Linux marketing at VA Research. "This is about choice. This is about people having the right to say, 'I don't want this. And I don't want to pay for it.'"
But for the time being, Microsoft wasn't negotiating.
Microsoft Refund Day started auspiciously enough. After assembling at the local Denny's parking lot, the programmers and system administrators marched off to the sounds of geek rocker band Severe Tire Damage, playing from atop a flatbed truck.
The first maneuver was executed with near-military precision: 85 people crossed the six lanes of East Hillsdale Boulevard without violating traffic rules. Cars honked. People waved. Only in Silicon Valley would a parade of mostly men in matching white penguin-emblazoned T-shirts and bearing slogans like "Got Source?" be recognized as a grassroots movement of free software evangelists.
"I'm not used to seeing these people in the outdoors," said one participant.
The group was led at times by Eric Raymond, whose manifesto The Cathedral and the Bazaar helped lay the ideological groundwork for community-based development of free software.
Wrapped in a brown polyester wizard's robe and neon green hood festooned with tiny penguins, Raymond said that Monday's march was only a shot across the bow and that sooner or later, Microsoft will have to take the threat of open source software seriously.
"If Microsoft lives up to the terms of its license, fine -- if not, they look like schmucks," said Raymond. "And they could leave themselves open to a class-action lawsuit that could invalidate their shrink-wrap software licenses."
At the office park, the group paused for a quick photo session with photographers. They formed a pyramid and brandished hand-lettered signs reading, "I want Linux. Why should I pay (the) Bill?" and "Who ordered Windows?"
Then, being careful not to trample the flowers, they took the parking garage by storm. Four levels up, the group of aging hippies, long-haired Unix gurus, and paunchy programmers took possession of a small table of beverages, under a sign welcoming the Linux community to the garage roof. A lone Microsoft spokesman, the luckless Rob Bennett, group product manager for Microsoft Windows, was there to greet them.
