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New CTO at Red Hat
kerskine writes "Seems that Red Hat has a new CTO . What happened to Mark Ewing? " There also an updated press release available as well, which gives significantly more information. It looks like Marc Ewing will be spending more time working with the Red Hat Center for Open Source now.Update: 01/12 05:04 by H :The new CTO they've named is Michael Tiemann, one of the Co-Founders of Cygnus. As you recall, Red Hat recently purchased Cygnus. The deal closed on Monday, which is probably why this announcement has finally been made official.
Do you have any evidence that this is happening?
I've not see it from Redhat. Also note that Young, Ewing and the other initial founders still control a large percentage of the stock. And as long as they can make the performace numbers that they have set they can more or less do what they want.
In short your seeing things that are not there.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
The GNU C++ compiler. He is still active in development (or was recently), he implemented pre-compiled header file support for GNUPro, the Cygnus version of GCC.
From redhat's website
Oh, come on. Mike Tiemann has done more for free software than Mark Ewing (that's not to say anything against Mark, who's done tons). And he was the person who first proved that free software/open source could work in business, by founding Cygnus.
Cygnus probably has more revenue than the old Red Hat. Do you think that all of the talented people from Cygnus should be driven away, by letting all of the old Red Hat people keep the top jobs?
It's amazingly ignorant to suggest that replacing Ewing with Tiemann will harm open source, or, to be even more ridiculous, that Ewing should talk to a lawyer.
Only a humourless asshole could moderate that down as offtopic.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Felt obliged to make a quick reply:
'xuse me? I didn't see anything that says "push out"...
...Bob Young and Marc Ewing are still central to different elements of RH's success.
Admittedly I'm being cynical. Perhaps you're right and they both went, gee that's great, now I can dump the boring business stuff and get back to playing with tech stuff. But I doubt it was as clean as that. Even if they went willingly I'd bet they had reservations, particularly about loss of control. I think the child has outgrown the parents rather too quickly for this to have been completely painless.
Not wiser necessarily...
I agree, that's why I put "wiser" in quotes. That's how the old farts (and the wannabee old farts) of Wall Street will see it even though we might take a more balanced view.
I hope RH actually gets into the patent thing in certain areas that do make sense...
A nice idea. In fact the issue of patents is the biggest remaining threat to the whole Open Source movement.
*IF* Red Hat - or some other sponsor and benefactor with a deep wallet - were to accumulate a portfolio of useful patents to be licensed freely to Open Source developers then we'd have a fighting chance of surviving the coming legal war.
Because there's no doubt at all in my mind that once the dinosaurs who've continued to fight the Open Source trend realise that their days are numbered, they will most certainly use their patent portfolios to ensure that no useful software can developed and distributed without paying royalties to *someone*.
If we don't find such a sponsor then our only hope is for a radical change in US (and global) patent laws. There's no sign of this happening as yet since most people don't even realise that there's a problem.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
It took be 45 minutes to install from start to finish. I would not classify this as "long hours". How long did it take you to install NT? And with FreeBSD or Linux, I only have to install once.
And since it only took me 45 minutes, how do you know I didn't also get laid in the hours before or after? I don't know what you guys do in the Windows world, but here in the free Unix world, 45 minutes is considered a cheap quickie!
Besides, it was a TUESDAY night. Tuesday is not the most romantic day of the week. I think Fridays and Saturdays are much better days for romance.
"Hey big boy, how 'bout we go back to my place?"
"I can't. I have to reinstall Windows again."
"But you did that last week."
[sob] "I know..."
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
More people have switched TO Linux FROM DOS/Windows than have ever switched TO DOS/Windows FROM anything! Hell, the number of people who have dumped Windows in favor of FreeBSD is staggering in comparison...
ps. I blew away my Windows drive last night and replaced it with FreeBSD.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
This kind of thing happens all the time in the business world. As it happened on the tail end of the Cygnus deal I'm sure that while it will be touted as taking advantage of blah blah blah and maximizing yadda yadda yadda for the good of the company (and the benefit of shareholders.) What it really means is that they struck some sort of deal on the table doing the acquisition and they are just following through with it.
As to whether Marc Ewing is going to be happy with the situation can only be answered by him. If I were in the situation I'd probably be quite ticked off by it and would start looking for a better situation... as well as a lawyer to look over my contracts VERY carfully to look at for my interests.
I certainly wouldn't attribute to this the death of open source at Red Hat. While that certainly may be somewhere in the future, I really don't see this single action as being that significant in the grand scheme of things.
-chaosgrrl
When you can't find your jello don't come screaming at me to remove the weasle from your headgear.
For those of you unaware of who Red Hat Center for Open Source is (like me untill 5 min ago).
http://www.redhat.com/community/rh_center.html
It doesn't say allot, but it's something.
Red Hat acquired two very important things with Cygnus. The first was an established, profitable customer base. The second was the talent that had produced the first. I don't mean to say that Red Hat doesn't have talent because they do. But this was an effective way to hire some of the best. It is good to see that they are taking steps to keep them. I would have been concerned if I didn't see anything like this.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
Apologies for the self-promo, but we published a fairly long interview with Michael Tiemann not too long ago. I think he's a good guy for the job.
Paul Boutin | writer for Slate, Wired, etc
Why all this corporate news on
Hey wait... I think I figured it out: Since Red Hat went public and gave shares to all the geeks, the
Well I didn't get any shares, I don't care.
I will argue, however, that RH is moving away from a system for the expert user and into the hands of corporate users, a good thing, but meaning that less and less RH is a good choice for your home box compared to other distros.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
If you don't like the fact that the GPL and BSD licenses don't prohibit a company from making money off of your work, then use a different license. Make up your license if you have to. But quick complaining.
This sig is false.
You certainly don't get it.
The reason Red Hat's corporate movements are of interest is because Red Hat was the first open source company to acquire wealth, size and influence. They are in the process of converting from a startup to a fully-fledged corporation. What Red Hat now does will have a major influence on the future of the Open Source movement in more ways than can be counted.
Since Red Hat's IPO was announced, of the two founders Bob Young gave up the CEO's seat to Matthew Szulik, an old-guard and hard headed IT businessman from the pre-open source world; and now Mark Ewing has been pushed out of the CTO's chair in favour of tech-head Michael Tiemann who used to head Cygnus. Tiemann is a famous name in open source, though one with a reputation for commercial success too.
We have a lot to be thankful for in Red Hat's support for the open source movement. But at the same time we need to maintain a healthy level of scepticism with regard to everything they say and do because they are no longer simply motivated by the thrill of making a business model out of new, exciting open source. They are now motivated by profit. That is why the two tech-heads who founded the company have been sidelined. For the company to be taken seriously by the big boys, "wiser" heads must be seen to prevail.
It behooves us to watch these events carefully in case Red Hat should show signs of growing into the type of corporation that we all love to hate. Plenty of people fell out of love with Red Hat long before we got to this stage - just as soon as Red Hat started talking like a business, really.
I on the other hand, naive fool that I am, entertain hopes that Red Hat will stay true to its roots, forever champion the cause of open source and steer clear of nonsensical patents etc.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Red Hat, Inc. has announced the formation of a new non-profit organization, the Red Hat Center for Open Source (RHCOS), that will sponsor, support, promote and engage in a wide range of scientific and educational projects intended to advance the social principles of open source for the greater good of the general public. RHCOS will foster projects that advance the philosophy of open source, through which collaborative intellectual pursuits produce results to be freely shared and enhanced throughout society. Red Hat, Inc. co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Marc Ewing will devote considerable time and effort to the new organization as a Founding Director.
In addition to Ewing and Young, the Board of Directors for RHCOS includes well-known innovators and thought leaders. Board members include:
John Seely Brown, Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation and Director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). His personal research interests include digital culture, ubiquitous computing, user-centering design and organizational and individual learning. A major focus of Brown's research over the years has been in human learning and the management of radical innovation.
John Gilmore, entrepreneur and free software pioneer. The architect of the first Sun workstations, Gilmore is a co-founder of Cygnus Solutions, a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a leading advocate for intellectual freedom.
Lawrence Lessig, Berkman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Lessig teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law, contracts, comparative constitutional law and the law of cyberspace.
Sim B. Sitkin, PhD, Associate Professor at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. Professor Sitkin's teaching interests include managerial effectiveness, organizational behavior, organization design, organizational control and the management of organizational change.
RHCOS will initially be funded with $8 million in a combination of cash and Red Hat common stock donated by Red Hat, Inc. and three founding investors of Red Hat: Young; Ewing; and Frank Batten, Chief Executive Officer of Landmark Communications. Details regarding grant criteria and the application process are currently being determined by the Board of Directors and will be released at a later date.
Or rather, I get annoyed at unjustified accusations.
It isn't happening. So, why do you think this piece of news has anything to do with going proprietary? It doesn't.
And in case you haven't noticed, Red Hat doesn't ship MetroX, and hasn't for quite a while. And even the versions of Red Hat Linux that came with MetroX still had XFree86 as a fallback for people who needed to make copies.
Red Hat isn't stupid. We DEPEND on those OSS zealots, so why would we want to "FIX" them (including ourselves)???
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Please leave spreading FUD to Microsoft.
Red Hat is not moving away from Open Source, and we don't have that intention. I've explained a couple of times why this would even be bad for someone who only cares about money.
So, once again:
Red Hat Linux will NOT go closed or proprietary.
Cygnus is not about going proprietary either - ever seen sourceware.cygnus.com?
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I've dealt with Cygnus, they are a professional group of people and I've never felt that they've compromised OSS principles by their contributions to GCC.
This purchase, more than anything else, leads me to believe that RedHat just might make it in the long run.
While I can't agree with the suggestion that RedHat Linux will become a 'closed proprietary solution', I do wonder if Cygnus' history seems to indicated that the OSS model is not a business model that can be profitable.
If this is not the case, why does Cygnus sell closed source products when their original charter was support of Open Source (more specifically, GPL'd) software?
Cygnus tried the OSS business model before anyone, and seems to have backed away from it, at least to some extent. What does this say to others considering this model?
Perhaps the OSS business model will always be one of leveraging other profitable business. An IBM can afford to support OSS insofar as it hurts competitors more than them and it supports hardware sales. Companies like Cygnus can do OSS to help market their support/consulting business as long as they hold back some of their most valuable gems for more standard commercial licensing.
I know of one small business that uses the OSS product that they produce to generate consulting work for the author and a few associates. That's the purist OSS business model and it seems to work for them, but they appear to have very low overheads.
-Jordan Henderson