A few weeks ago, I gave a keynote at the Hispalinux Congress in Madrid. It was an eye-opening experience for me in a number of ways.

First, I’ve spent the last several years with both feet firmly planted in the business world. In the business world, Linux seems to have become just another operating system product to be sold into “the enterprise”; so, it’s often difficult to remember what it was like before Linux became big business, back in those increasingly-forgotten days when so many of us worked on Linux for the sheer love of what we were doing, consumed by the higher purpose that we were somehow changing the world.

Second, coming from the U.S., where Red Hat dominates the distribution world almost completely and, more than any other company, has used its industry weight to transform Linux into the “just another enterprise OS product”, it was refreshing to once again see Linux as a vibrant and diverse community rather than the corporatized hegemony it has become here.

Yes, I said it: “Changing the world”. Combined, these three words have to be among the three corniest in all English. Everyone wants to do it, or at least talk about doing it, but very few seem to actually accomplish it, and those that do accomplish it rarely seem to set out to accomplish it. Indeed, it’s a ridiculous notion if you really stop to think about it. You certainly don’t dare utter these words in a business context.

Ridiculous though the notion is, we actually did it. We changed the world. The thing we all seem to have forgotten, at least in the business world and at least in the U.S., is why.

I don’t know that anyone knows the answer to that one for sure. One thing is certain though: No one person or company did it by themselves, not Richard Stallman, not Linus Torvalds, not Red Hat, not anyone else. It was the collective efforts of thousands working on Linux for the sheer love of what they were doing, consumed by some higher purpose, changing the world or otherwise. Yes, Richard, Linus, and Red Hat made critical contributions, without which we certainly wouldn’t be where we are today. But each are just members of the larger community, and that community is the real reason we managed to change the world.

What does all this have to do with my visit to Spain? For the first time in a long time, I saw what was, at its essence, a community rather than a business. Furthermore, I saw people changing the world. Today, not in some distant memory. Yet what I saw reminded me very much of that distant memory.

Take what is happening in the Spanish province of Extremadura, where some 180,000 computers running Linux and other free software have been installed in public schools and government offices, displacing Microsoft software (see, e.g., Europe’s Microsoft Alternative, Washington Post, November 3, 2002). Microsoft’s response?

“There’s been too much theology and not enough economic analysis in the debate so far,” said Bradford L. Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, who oversees the company’s global lobbying team. “Consider that there’s a lot more to the total cost and value of a product than the initial offering somebody might give you,” Smith said. For instance, it is often expensive to find support services for free software, whereas such help comes bundled with the purchase of Windows. And companies like Microsoft have a vested interest in updating their products; that’s not necessarily so with free software.

He has a point. But in making that point, it’s clear he doesn’t understand why Linux is happening in Extremadura any more than the business world increasingly doesn’t understand why Linux has happened in the U.S.

This isn’t about “total cost of ownership”, nor is it about “product value”. This isn’t about technology at all. Ask Munich.

It’s about freedom. It’s about controlling your own destiny, building a future for yourself that doesn’t bind you to the profit motive of a single American company. It’s about building a vibrant, thriving, local community, a community that is self-sufficient, self-sustaining–and unstoppable. Where do you find support for free software? The community. Who has a vested interest in updating their products? The community does.

It’s fitting that Extremadura is one of the flash points for this new, world-changing way of thinking:

Extremadura is best known as the birthplace of many of the conquistadors — Francisco Pizarro, Hernan Cortés and Hernando de Soto among them — who made their mark after leaving the place. Vazquez de Miguel, too, fled in his early years. He went to the United States to get his doctorate and worked as an organic chemist doing AIDS and cancer research before a friend convinced him that he could do more good for his people by returning and taking a job as a professor at the local university.

Vazquez de Miguel, 52, says that by empowering people to use computers through Linux, he will be able to stop the outward migration and create new industries in Extremadura.

Like many Linux advocates, he speaks about the software in emotional terms. “Connectivity and literacy” equals “equality and liberty,” he said.

Microsoft regards such talk as too dramatic and distracting. It is software, after all, not war, company officials said. It is far more productive in their view to talk about the technical aspects of Windows vs. Linux.

Actually, it is war–in fact, if you really stop and think about it, it’s a war Microsoft started. And it’s a war that doesn’t stop at software. I met Spanish-speaking people from all over the world at the Congress, people from government, from industry, from academia, some of whom had traveled great distances to get a look at what’s going on in the software world, to try to understand how the same principles might be applied to myriad social, economic, industrial and political problems. Indeed, those I spoke with about free software’s potential broader impact were fascinated (and heartened) by the story of Howard Dean’s grassroots, open-source-inspired rise to political prominence.

Lest any of my thoughts be misinterpreted as “anti-business”, let me again point out that I have both feet firmly planted in the business world, and that I am actively trying to build a business around Linux. Business is good–business creates economies, which are essentially communities, and communities are the basis of the common good. It is the how of business that can be destructive. In the case of the Linux business, we need to stop and think about why Linux happened and why the world has embraced it, and make sure those of us trying to build businesses around Linux keep those things in mind or risk destroying the very thing that is of value. Is Linux about saving a few bucks, or is there something more to it than that?

The people of Spain have a lot to teach us. Here’s hoping we’re willing to listen.