Red Hat Co-Founder Bob Young Resigns

Anonymous Coward's Cousin writes "Yahoo news is reporting that Red Hat co-founder Bob Young has resigned from the board. From the article: 'In a funny way, my resignation is perhaps the finest compliment I can pay to everyone associated with Red Hat today, I have complete confidence in the future of the company'"

Comments

Bob Young a corporate Linux pioneer

[Debian Troll's Best]

The resignation of Bob Young is both surprising and saddening. Bob has arguably been one of the key figures responsible for the rise of Linux in corporate settings, complementing the technical nous of people like Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox, with an innovative and daring business model. The deep penetration of Linux into massive corporate entities such as IBM probably would not have happened as rapidly as it did without the pioneering advocacy work of Red Hat Inc, and Bob Young.

However, Bob's record hasn't been free of the odd black mark. Competition between the various Linux vendors for lucrative support contracts and bundling deals has often brought out the claws. For example, in 1999, a small group of anonymous users started posting extensively to the Debian discussion groups, claiming that Bruce Perens and Ian Murdoch actually used RPM on their Debian boxes to perform package administration, instead of apt-get, (which they also claimed was contaminated with IP belonging to an un-named x86 Unix vendor). The whole aim was to discredit these high profile individuals and have them forcibly removed from the Debian project. However, the whole scam backfired about 2 weeks later when the Debian list server admin revealed that the offending posts had originated from Red Hat's own network, and in fact were being sent directly from Bob Young's personal workstation, where he had concocted an apt-get driven script which automatically spammed the Debian mailing lists with pro-RPM FUD. Bob later admitted his part in the scheme in a Linux World interview in 2002, admitting that he had used a modified apt-get to "install packages of anti-Perens propaganda on the Debian mailing list server", and quoting "the superior ability of apt-get to deal with flamebait and troll dependencies over our own RPM tool". That particular story had a happy ending for the Debian commnunity fortunately, as Bruce Perens went on to have a highly successful career at HP, working as a LInux advocate.

Re:Bob Young a corporate Linux pioneer

[ratpack91]

I have to applaud you for getting +4 out of the mods. Well done. Half of all mods have below average IQ. It shows.

How does this effect their 'defensive' patents?

[Rogerborg]

I'll lay money that in two years, we'll look back and with hindsight say this was the point where RedHat started to become another SCO. Young is a man of principle. What do we know about the remaining board?