VA Linux priced its shares at $30 and watched them close the first day at $239.25. That gain of 698 percent, on December 9, 1999, set a record for a first-day pop. The Sunnyvale company sold computers loaded with Linux, the free operating system that hobbyists had built and big companies were starting to trust. Investors wanted any piece of open source they could buy, and VA Linux was the purest one on offer.

Servers for the Open Web

Larry Augustin, a Stanford graduate student, started the company with fellow students, and it dates its founding to January 1995. VA built Intel-based servers and workstations tuned for Linux, and sold them to the internet companies multiplying across Silicon Valley. Its engineers also worked on Linux itself. The bet was that free software would run the web, and that someone had to sell the reliable machines it ran on. VA also owned Linux.com, a hub for the community.

From Servers to T-Shirts

The record debut faded fast. Within months VA agreed to buy Andover.net, owner of Slashdot, and the dot-com crash soon followed. Dell, IBM and HP began selling Linux servers too. In 2001 VA left the hardware business and became VA Software, then SourceForge, after its site for open-source projects. It later sold geek gifts as ThinkGeek and renamed itself Geeknet. In 2015 GameStop bought Geeknet for about $140 million.

Cover: Firework around the Antwerp Cathedral, plate 41 from Casperius Gevartius, Pompa Introitus Honori Serenissimi Principis Ferdinandi, Theodoor van Thulden. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for fireworks bursting over a cathedral spire (a record first day).