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Update on Alan Cox's Sabbatical

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the checking-back-in dept.

seymansey writes "ITWales, a company which resides on the Swansea University Campus has posted an interview with Alan Cox regarding his progress of his MBA. It also mentions his opinions on some legal matters that he shows interest in, as well as his plans for the future, and of course for Linux itself."

16 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. Geeks in management? by ObviousGuy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The brains of the company should be in the cube farm, not the board room.

    --
    I have been pwned because my /. password was too easy to guess.
    1. Re:Geeks in management? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Surely the brains of the company should be everywhere? Techheads that understand marketing/sales/strategy are important, as are executives that appreciate engineering - otherwise you get a silo mentality in your company where marketing overcommits and blames the programmers, and where the engineers just want to play and find the customer a distraction.

    2. Re:Geeks in management? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      The brains of the company are in the cube farm, not the board room.

      The brains of the company should be in the cube farm and the board room.

    3. Re:Geeks in management? by rcarovano · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Based upon my experience, I would disagree. As someone with both EE and MBA degrees, my observation is that you need brains in all areas within a company. By brains, I mean more than know-how, but also the willingness and capability to do the right things right. An organization necessarily exists because one person can't do it all, thus brains are required in all functions. Just my humble opinion--would like to entertain other's thoughts and experience as well.

    4. Re:Geeks in management? by mentatchris · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This just has to be wrong. I've seen many a project bloat because my fellow coders have no sense of economics and think something will be fun to work on. I think it is good that everyone has the idea that the reason we get paychecks and can support our wives and kids is because as a whole the company adds value by selling things for more than they cost us. This entrepreneurial spirit might be something that helps differentiate small companies from big ones. I saw in software developer magazine that the MBA is growing as a choice of graduate degree for developers. I think this is a good thing... in a lot of ways, the software industry is inefficient. Having a bit more of an idea about the goals and costs and strategies that other industries have used is a good thing for all of us.

    5. Re:Geeks in management? by skaffen42 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Damn, I am impressed. An MBA who actually used the works "my humble opinion" and did not seem to be joking at the same time. Now before anybody thinks I am just going after some quick karma by insulting MBAs, I actually have a point to make here.

      A lot of the MBA types I know really have a problem with listening to other people's ideas. Sometimes I think it has been trained out of them and replaced by the "I have an MBA so I'm always right" mentality to make them better prepared to deal with other hyper-assertive management types.

      This is fine, and probably a requirement to get anything done at higher levels of managment, but becomes a real problem when the time comes for the MBAs and the Geeks to work together. I have seen quite a few projects embarked upon only to fail due to obvious technical impossibilities, when asking a techie's opinion would have stopped the whole thing before the company blew a couple of million on a dead end project. Unfortunately, it is the technical team that gets fired while the MBA heads for the next "ooh, shiny" project.

      --
      People couldn't type. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this.
  2. who now by Syncroswitch · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Time for a new slashdot poll..

    Who would you like to see (temporarily) fill cox's position.

  3. My personal opinion by psxndc · · Score: 4, Insightful
    The reason for me is because I believe looks shouldn't matter. They always will, and that is unfortunate, but it will never shake the tenant from my mind that "if they can do the job, it doesn't matter what they look like." But that's a geek's perspective. Taller people will always make more money and attractive people will always get raises first because often geeks aren't making those decisions. It sucks, but that's the way it is. We can only try to improve the situation by not acquiescing and being who we are. We don't have to be obnoxious about it, but hope springs eternal that someday people will accept someone for who they are and what they can accomplish instead of the product they use in their hair or the name on the inside of their blazer. *shrug*

    psxndc

    --

    The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.

  4. Who the fuck writes this tripe? by tomstdenis · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "A kernel hacker in the employ of Red Hat and widely accepted as second only to Linus Torvalds himself in the echelons of open source illuminati"

    First off, he's not a kernel hacker. He's a kernel developer. I'd like to think the changes he makes are well thought out [to the extent possible].

    Second, Linux Torvalds is by far not the largest OSS contributor in the world. First off, there are 100s of Kernel developers. Second, what of all the userland and development tools required to build the fucking kernel in the first place? Did those just pop out of the wind?

    Sure Linus has contributed a huge gift to the OSS community but it isn't like OSS wouldn't exist without him. For starters, the GNU organization pre-dates Linux by quite a while.

    Whoever wrote the article should do some fucking research first and less idol worshiping.

    Tom

    --
    Someday, I'll have a real sig.
    1. Re:Who the fuck writes this tripe? by Effugas · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Tom--

      Alan's pulled off some gnarly stunts with the 2.2ac series; some definite hackworhty brilliance. Remember, hacker isn't a prejorative, any more than soldier is. I do understand the distinction you're trying to make, but it's pretty likely that Alan would call himself a kernel hacker.

      I should point out they weren't talking about lines of code as much as public respect. Who's the lead coders of Samba? I know Tridge and Jeremy, but most don't. How bout Apache? KDE? Even if you can name them, they don't compare to Alan and Linus for not only coding so much themselves, but so successfully managing those hundreds of other kernel developers.

      Yes, you need devtools to build a kernel. That doesn't make the kernel unimpressive.

      It's very interesting what would have happened had Linux not shown up. I expect BSD would have forked into what Linux became. Had AT&T's lawsuit not slowed things down for years, Linux would not have happened, as BSD would have been far more mature at the appropriate time. How strange is that?

      --Dan

    2. Re:Who the fuck writes this tripe? by corebreech · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Not to take anything away from Alan Cox, but this phrase:
      ...and widely accepted as second only to Linus Torvalds himself in the echelons of open source illuminati...

      That's just silly. If they had said Linux kernel source illuminati instead, obviously I'd agree. But all of open source? I'm sorry, that just isn't so.

      I'm not even sure Linus rates #1 here... RMS has a very beefy claim to this throne too. Certainly, if there's a #1 and a #2, it's these two guys who are duking it out. Not Alan Cox.
      --
      Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
    3. Re:Who the fuck writes this tripe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful


      Alan has always been active in the hacking culture. A solid 'developer' is going to be a well conditioned person capable of not only thinking in the box but understanding the box.

      A hacker is not afraid to think outside of the box. A good hacker also understands the box. Alan is an excellent hacker.

      This is also why he will make a great leader in the biz world if he decides to go that direction.

  5. Geek-to-Suit Program by spamhog · · Score: 5, Insightful

    >> There's a je-ne-sais-quoi that makes
    >> a geek a geek regardless of his/her
    >> outside appearances.

    The likelyhood of a besuited geek showing his geekiness to a hardcore suit on IRC is a big fat 0.

    I am a part-time suit, and we're explicitly taught to act somewhat superficial and semi-moronic because in most settings this IS the most effective long-term way to extract the best out of fellow humans.

    In a way, a suit is complementary to a semi-Asperger type, with a focus switched away from the mechanics of things, and into the mechanics of humans. Not surprising that most suits come across as semi-moronic. They are, just not in the same way as geeks.

    If you want to "fool" a suit, or at least not to antagonize hir, it's actually quite easy to pretend you're one, and also eventually to become one. Gates did it very effectively for almost 20 years, even if some claim he's a mild Asperger.

    The opposite (suit->geek) is nary impossible, as it involves a lot more cerebral hardwiring that has to be developed over the years, preferably from a tender age.

    I thoroughly applaud Alan's choice to get an MBA. An MBA'ed second-in-command in the Linux camp can't but help.

    Think of this: Who will dare accuse a masterized AC of being a communist, anti-business, anti-western, anti-American, anti-copyright, or a child eater for that matter?

    Adopting a radical hair control policy might be a good idea. Steve Jobs did that when it became necessary to attract capital from Republican-leaning sources. But he wasn't that famous at the time.

  6. Slashdot -- People magazine for the IT world by swb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've always found the People-magazine like fawning over the "stars" of Open Sourcedom alternately nauseating and amusing.

    I'm not trying to take anything away from the accomplishments of Alan or anyone else. And there are times where features of people are worthwhile, but only when they've done or said something noteworthy. "Alan Cox went to class today" isn't one of them. "Alan Cox gets a crew cut", however, would be..

  7. Re:I do believe Mr Cox reads these comments, by haedesch · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I guess those management skills can come in handy when managing a team of OSS developpers...

  8. it doesn't change a thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Think of this: Who will dare accuse a masterized AC of being a communist, anti-business, anti-western, anti-American, anti-copyright, or a child eater for that matter?

    I can't believe how superficial you are.

    First of all there are many well educated, pro-business, American communists. Getting an MBA doesn't change a thing, unless of course the MBA makes you change your political viewpoint and ideas. And ideas is the keyword here.

    I was taught not to judge a person by the color of their skin or their religious beliefs. But if you can't judge a person by their ideas what can (should) you judge them by?