Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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:When in doubt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Microsoft has headhunted the competition before. This is not new for them or anyone else. The only difference here is that MS has a known, powerful, flexible enemy in Open Source. We're like a hydra; cut off one of our heads, two more will (eventually) grow in its place.

    Plus, the "change things from the inside" thing isn't new either. The MS Macintosh Business Unit, formerly MS Bay, consisted primarily of Mac shareware and commercial SW developers who had been hired to work on Mac Office and Mac IE. These were guys who thought, ate, drank, and slept "Different." They are the reason Mac Office tends to leapfrog Windows Office in features and overall quality with every release, and also why IE on the Mac didn't suck. Anyway, even these guys ended up chugging the Kool-Aid - when Apple started releasing competitive products (most recently Safari), these guys acted as if it was their God-given right to be the exclusive developers of these types of software, going on record in the Mac press, denouncing Apple for daring to create competing products. Somehow they'd gotten into the MS mindset of expecting that their (MS's) stuff was supposed to be the only stuff around to support the OS, or to be treated as first-class citizens. The difference was that Apple didn't have to support this same opinion.

    Back on-topic a bit, I think the gentards have nothing to worry or be ashamed about. Even though he'll probably turn with time, this isn't a pride thing. Maybe he just needs to eat, and wants to use his skills as a means towards that goal (shocking!). Who knows, maybe working for the bad guys really will change them for the better.

  2. MS dont give out free lunches... by spagetti_code · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Microsoft dont do anything out of the goodness of their hearts. They are a corporate entity with a fiscal responsibility to their shareholders.

    He will be brought on board to continue the MS strategy of embrace, extend (in a proprietary fashion) then replace. MS do not want to support linux in any way, they want to kill it. Dead. Every linux box sold represents money ripped from their pocket.

    My guess is that this could be something like:
    - get linux to run well on MS virtual machines, so linux can become just an app running under 2k3, and therefore slowely sink into oblivion.
    - work on their command line tools. Looks like they have finally realised that the {Li,U}n{u,i}x way of providing powerful command line utilities is actually pretty useful (perhaps learned from the struggle when they first tried to convert hotmail to NT :-).

    Interesting times ahead.

  3. I wish him well by overshoot · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Dude put some good work into a fine distro, sorry he couldn't make a living at it. I'll never knock anyone for keeping the family fed.

    Anyone else notice that this isn't the first ABQ->Redmond migration for a "distribution" founder?

    --
    Lacking <sarcasm> tags, /. substitutes moderation as "Troll."