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Gentoo Founder on his way to Redmond

Posted by timothy on from the ms-could-be-the-world's-largest-foss-company dept.

Rotworm writes "Recently former founder of Gentoo Linux, Daniel Robbins, has managed to procure employment with Microsoft. Robbins describes his position as "helping Microsoft to understand Open Source and community-based projects." Seemingly there's no scandals as Robbins managed to finalize the transfer of all Gentoo's IP to the Gentoo Foundation, Inc."

3 of 527 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Former Founder? by cybersavior · · Score: 5, Informative

    Gentoo founder and former Gentoo Chief Architect Daniel Robbins began a new position at Microsoft on 23 May 2005.

    Just an incorrect paraphrasing from the original article.

  2. Re:Isn't this... by papercrane · · Score: 5, Informative

    He took some (all?) of the profits in order to offset his personal cost starting Gentoo. The Gentoo Foundation and the developers all agreed to it because of everything he'd done. I think it's perfectly fine, myself. He lost thousands starting Gentoo.

  3. It is very sad that he could not make money by hansreiser · · Score: 5, Informative

    I think everyone should understand that he had large credit card debts, that he tried everything he could to make it work fiscally, and that the community failed to provide the finances that would make it work.

    His approach was technically superior to the other distros in its fundamental approach, and funding could have cured any detail problems. It was the right approach. He went broke, and we should all be sad at this.

    The nice thing would have been if some government had funded him. None did.

    Thus he works for Microsoft. I imagine he is sadly bitter about it all.

    Namesys is also having payroll problems, though our problem is more due to my divorce than anything else.

    Hans
    (Author of Reiser4)