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Update on Alan Cox's Sabbatical
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."
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.
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.
What the hell would /. do if Linus spent an evening partying in a whorehouse?
Be jealous, sigh, and compile the laterst 2.6 kernel?
Alan Cox did a lot of work on the "Alpha Linux" stuff for redhat. He always seemed to have the answers when those of us that used Alpha based machines ran into problems. His "online diary" can be found at http://www.linux.org.uk/diary/ and when he was deeply involved in the kernel, I used to read it constantly because the stuff he was working on was the stuff that interested me. This interview just confirms one thing for me. I owe him a great big Thank You, his help to Linux over the years has been invaluable. Should I ever meet Alan, he's going to get a beer on me.
AngryPeopleRule
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
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
I wonder if Mr. Cox has read the article on the 235,000 Fewer Programmers by 2015. Maybe this is why he is getting an MBA?
That's not always just an arbitrary decision. Taller (men) are promoted to leadership roles because it's usually in the best interests of the group.
Tall men are usually more (overly) confident in their abilities and less likely to have a *chip* on their shoulders or the ambition to *prove* themselves to make up for a feeling of inadequacy that short men might have developed.
They're usually lazier and more likely to delegate tasks and, in turn, others (short women) are more likely to want to provide for them. It turns out that that's exactly the behaviour you'd want from a leader.
Short men, otoh, usually take a more hands-on, dictatorial leadership style. That never works.
Take famous tyrants, like Napoleon, Stalin, Bush II, and Kim-Jong Il. They're all midgets. You'd never know it, though, because every one of them went to absurd lengths to make themselves appear taller. Kim-Jong Il wears platform shoes and has that bouffant hairdo. Do you ever recall seeing any pictures or footage of Stalin *standing* up next to anyone? In most of the WWII meetings, he was sitting next to FDR and Churchill, but his feet weren't touching the ground. In other footage, he was always looking down on a crowd, standing behind a railing that concealed his lower body. Remember the footage of Bush shaking Aahnold's hand? I bet it didn't look odd if you didn't notice that Bush was standing on a platform and Arnold wasn't.
>> 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.
Sorry, but I've never respected that attitude. It's idealistic, wasteful, and is more often rationalization than action.
Firstly, what should and shouldn't be is irrelevant in the real world. Idealistic attitudes will get you nowhere but the gutter, and if you don't like it, tough. This is a society - "social" being the same root. Your ideal situation doesn't matter, the actual happenings in the social (interpersonal) world do. I don't think looks should matter either (to an extent), but I'm not going to shoot myself in the foot and declare "if it's not the way I think it should be, I'll boycott it" with respect to society (buying CDs and software is a mainly a personal matter, so it's a different story). You're free to hold your belief, you're free to hold yourself back by clinging onto it, and we're free to not care. Sorry, but your theory will have only one immediate outcome: you will make less money, get worse jobs, and all the trickle down effects of monetary issues will follow. Cheers.
Societal change is a bigger issue than one man/woman looking like a slob; if you want it not to matter, try having intelligent discussions about it with people, and if you're put in the position to hire/fire, do your best.
Secondly, looks have to matter, but to a different extent than current. An unkempt person is a clear sign of an unkempt lifestyle; if you don't take the time to do your laundry, why would I think you'd take the time to do your job well? Throwing on whatever clothes are available suggests you'll do the minimal amount of work necessary for any task - not exactly the person I'd want working for me. Being tall you can't control - that shouldn't matter. If you are willing to invest the energy and time to stay/get in good shape to improve your health (and appearance), it suggests that you're also likely to go beyond the call of duty to present a nice finished product at your job. Your appearance is the simplest reflection of your mind; it's the easiest thing to see when meeting someone, and can tell a lot (though for the most part only negatives). Most people can dress nicely, but very few are willing to look like a slob. Take your pick, but don't blame society when you really just need a haircut.
In my experience (including my own history), the whole 'society shouldn't care so I'll just do my own thing' stance is usually just rationalization. It's an easy way to make your own laziness or hatred of fashion into a righteous crusade. That may not be the case for you, but it is for many (most commonly seen in the goth/punk communities today). It's no surprise that there are far fewer punks/goths/etc over the age of 25 than under. People mature, and when they do, they realize that they're only hurting themselves by shunning societal norms.
(I'm not pointing the finger at you, psxndc, so don't take it personally.)
G
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..