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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."

4 of 527 comments (clear)

  1. Insert here by beforewisdom · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Insert the obligatory joke/analogy to Anakien Skywalker/Darth Vader and/or Star Trek Borg assimilating dude here_______

  2. Two Words by stinerman · · Score: -1, Redundant

    Sell out.

  3. Just great! by Hosiah · · Score: 0, Redundant
    Our first sell-out! Count me as one who will never load Gentoo. Or develop for it.

    Uh, yeah, sure, M$ hired him just to learn more about a platform THAT YOU CAN DOWNLOAD FOR FREE AND SEE EVERY BYTE OF SOURCE CODE YOURSELF. Absolutely, I'll believe that for a dollar.

  4. Will my task of Debunking never end? by Hosiah · · Score: -1, Redundant
    Herewith, some myths to dispell:

    (1) Working for Microsoft=the only way to keep your family fed. Red Hat makes money. Suse makes money. The original Mosaic team made money. Halliburton makes money off of killing other countries, but at least they didn't stoop to working at Microsoft. Enron made money...

    (2) We can't blame the guy. Sorry, I can. How small am I, to hold something like this against him? This small->

    (3) Microsoft and FOSS will merge into a fuzzy, wuvvy snuggle-fest and good times will be had by all. Let me give ya' all a book of clue coupons and directions to the Clue Store: Microsoft is dying. Think it through: A company founded on providing programs for people, and charging them Gigabucks for this service, and the service that they perform can be done by *anybody* just by

    * clicking a download link!

    * gunzipping a file !

    * typing "make" !

    and furthermore, that a massive culture of hobbyist programmers (not necessarily living in a cave and living on dandelions, OK? You CAN work an unrelated 9-5 and code the weekends!) are keeping it going, forever. If you *SHOT* every open-source developer tonight, by tomorrow a new one would take interest, and that would be the next Stallman or Torvalds to get the ball rolling again.

    Consider history. Every new technology has had it's Ford, it's Carnegie, it's Hearst, it's tycoon who rode the wave until people figured out that they could just start doing the same thing themselves...

    So Microsoft is dying, and as Neal Stephenson observed, the Mammoth of Redmond is spending it's dying days thrashing around, taking as many others down with it as it can. Which will mean more tricks, more suits, more booby-trapped hardware, more nuisances to work around, until at last the Beast's head sinks into the tar, and the rest of us can get back to making some progress building the information age again, before we had this 800-pound millstone tied around our necks.

    SO THANKS A LOT, DANIEL ROBBINS, FOR PROLONGING OUR AGONY FOR ANOTHER *FUN* YEAR!!! AND DON'T EXPECT ANY OF THAT MONEY TO BUY *US* TO BE YOUR FRIENDS!