Gentoo Founder Quits Microsoft

ChocLinux writes "ZDNet is reporting that Daniel Robbins, the founder of Gentoo Linux, has left his job at Microsoft after only eight months. From the article: 'The reason I decided to leave had to do with my specific experiences working in Microsoft's Linux Lab,' says Robbins. 'I wasn't able to work at my full level of technical ability and I found this frustrating'"

Comments

Again?

[chinton]

What, did he have 2 different jobs at Microsoft?

Re:Again?

[oringo]

He has a 3rd job as a slashdot editor.

That's always been my experience

[idkk]

But I suppose, the more experience you get, the more frustrating it becomes!

Re:That's always been my experience

[Hal_Porter]

You should change your tag line and you'd have more luck. It all depends on attitude.

Hal Porter Consulting.
We'll debug your application at the weekend. Then we'll come in on Monday, find the halfwit employee that checked in the code that broke it, put a printout of the diff on his desk, hold his face very close to it and say "NO! BAD! DO NOT DO THIS AGAIN!". Employees can be trained, like kittens or puppies.

Re:That's always been my experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry man, but I followed the link in your sig. I am also interested in some of the things you seem to be, but your pages broke in my browser, so I decided to validate the page via w3c's html validator.

4400+ errors. You really should clean that up.

Re:That's always been my experience

[Anonymous Coward]

link:

http://validator.w3.org/check/?uri=http%3A//www.id kk.com/C012_052_InterstellarTravel.htm

(just to make sure you don't think I'm pulling your chain)

Re:That's always been my experience

[eno2001]

What link? What sig? What the hell are you talkin' 'bout Willis?!

Re:That's always been my experience

[Anonymous Coward]

idkk's site: http://www.idkk.com/

Sorry.

Seems like a nice guy, but his site renders like #$%&@# in konqueror.

Re:That's always been my experience

[Anonymous Coward]

>Hello. I am Ian D. K. Kelly, an English Computer Scientist with many and varied interests,

None of which include web design :o)

Re:That's always been my experience

[Criterion]

You might want to enable sigs in your preferences, else you might give someone the impression that you're not quite on the ball ;).

Re:That's always been my experience

[eno2001]

Sigs are enabled in my preferences, but the person above wasn't referring to a sig, he was referring to a URL link.

Re:That's always been my experience

[3nd32]

He's a computer scientist... but he exported his website from WORD!!!!
*looks at source code*
*eyes burn out*

Re:That's always been my experience

[minus9]

Well the list of interests made me smile anyway.

• Consultancy
• Fairy Stories

Seems fitting :-)

Re:That's always been my experience

[ultranova]

He's a computer scientist... but he exported his website from WORD!!!!
*looks at source code*
*eyes burn out*

Actually, it is much better than what I expected from Word. It looks horrible, of course, but that mainly seems to be because the style sheet has been embedded into the page instead of being put to a separate file, and every tag has its own style info embedded instead of simply referring to a central definition... Hmm. On second thought, you're right, it's horrible ;(.

But still better than what I expected from Word.

Re:That's always been my experience

[Hal_Porter]

The web design is a big primitive, but once you get past that the work that went into it is astonishing -

http://www.idkk.com/C012_052_InterstellarTravel.ht m

Which is kind of refreshing actually, given that most web sites are slick but content free.

Hmm

[Freiheit]

It's a shame that he wasn't able to use his full skill set working for that company. Nothing worse than being at a job you're more than qualified for but not getting to use all you know.

Re:Hmm

[truthsearch]

... except for all the extra time availabe for reading slashdot.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

..which is strange because MS recruiting procedures are pretty rigorous. Weird that they put a ninja level programmer in a non-challenging position.

Re:Hmm

[cbiltcliffe]

Well, come on, though. He had to know what was coming when he took the position.

You don't seriously think Microsoft would let a guy as familiar with Linux as this work in the Linux lab and tweak Linux for maximum performance for their tests, do you? They probably said there were certain things he wasn't allowed to touch, even if it would help. If he were given free reign, then all Microsoft's propagan^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hstudies would have to be futzed some other way.

Re:Hmm

[Capt James McCarthy]

It's a shame that he wasn't able to use his full skill set working for that company. Nothing worse than being at a job you're more than qualified for but not getting to use all you know.

Are you in the cube next to me?

Re:Hmm

[Waffle Iron]

Nothing worse than being at a job you're more than qualified for but not getting to use all you know.

Well, that really shouldn't be surprising in this case. Any time your job is in some specialized "lab" that deals with stuff outside of your company's core line of business, you're very likely to end up marginalized. Such labs often include things like competitive product analysis, interfacing your products with 3rd-party products, labs that build demos for dog-and-pony shows, etc.

I've seen lots of people unhappy in those kinds of positions, and I've been stuck in them myself once or twice. I would have told him think it over long and hard before accepting that job offer.

Re:Hmm

[L7_]

I'm sure they just hired him so that he wouldn't hack on Gentoo and try to make it better; e.g. MS pays him $150k/year to NOT make a better OS. :d

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^

Sign of someone who needs to get out of the basement.

Re:Hmm

[Alef]

You don't seriously think Microsoft would let a guy as familiar with Linux as this work in the Linux lab and tweak Linux for maximum performance for their tests, do you?

I imagine it would even be profitable for Microsoft to pay skilled people like him only to keep them from contributing to the Linux community...

Re:Hmm

[Lord Laraby]

Yes... Well it's no different from the major oil companies hiring the young engineer that invented the more efficient engine, or the better gas alternative... then locking away the formula and paying him to keep his mouth shut. My guess, since Microsoft has probably gotten him to sign a contract not to work on the competition even after he left, we won't see any improvements to Linux by him for some time. Oh well... LL >

Re:Hmm

[Intangion]

im a programmer, and a few years back i took a job at a game company as a tester, just to get my foot in the door, i already had 6-7 years of programming experience and several years of hobby game programming experience. But they just wouldn't let me do any coding, it was the most frustrating thing.. it was my job to find bugs but i wasn't allowed to fix them, and the guys who were supposed to just weren't that talented (except a couple) it also looked like they were going to fire all of the testers after the game released, so i found another job at a smaller game company as a lead programmer making twice as much (and later moved to another making twice as much again ;), ive since gotten back out of the games industry and am now making almost twice as much AGAIN thats almost 8 times more than at the tester position)

what sucks is they did fire all the other testers right after release... (which is why i left games industry, employees get used and abused, then trashed)

Re:Hmm

[Criterion]

This was my initial thought when they hired him to begin with.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't seriously think Microsoft would let a guy as familiar with Linux as this work in the Linux lab and tweak Linux for maximum performance for their tests, do you?

Of course they would. To me it seems that one major point of Microsoft having a Linux lab is for them to push Linux to the limit to find out its strengths and weaknesses and how it compares to Microsoft offerings.

To me it sounds more like he wants to dedicate his time to programming, and that's probably outside the scope of Microsofts Linux lab.

Re:Hmm

[eneville]

Microsoft's propagan^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H

FYI ^W is delete word.

Re:Hmm

[biglig2]

Same sort of thing happenned to me, I'm a brain surgeon and a few years back I took a job as a janitor at a hospital, just to get my foot in the door. I'd been working on my pet dog Skippy's brain for several years, but they just wouldn't let me do any operations, it was the most frustrating thing.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

no, that would be me.

Re:Hmm

[wolf31o2]

Except there's a simple fact that most people miss. Daniel had quit contributing long before he worked at Microsoft. In fact, once the Gentoo Metastructure project was formed to give Gentoo a management structure, Daniel slowly backed away out of the picture. Once the Gentoo Foundation was formed, he left completely. It was probably a good year or two before he ever went to work at Microsoft where he wasn't "contributing" much, so if this was Microsoft's intention, they wasted their money.

Re:Hmm

[cbiltcliffe]

FYI ^W is delete word.

Yeah, I know, but a lot of people don't, so if you use it, they're like....WTF??! So it's easier to just use a few ^Hs.

Re:Hmm

[minus9]

^G^G^G

Round one to cbiltcliffe.

Re:Hmm

[sisimon]

This may not be true. MS know very well, they cannot recruit all big brains from Linux community. You cannot expect this kind of work from Microsoft.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up. That is exactly what we were thinking. You think letting him use his blue badge to pay for meals is good? Try keeping him so busy with free drinks and brown bag meeting pizza - and free candy on the shuttles - that he can't do any work.

It almost worked too, if it was not for that nosey penguin!

The professional route

[truthsearch]

Part of me wishes he left publicly complaining about what a terrible company Microsoft is. But he probably did the right thing going the professional route and only saying the job didn't fit his interests.

Re:The professional route

[srobert]

"Part of me wishes he left publicly complaining about what a terrible company Microsoft is."

  You only do that when you've hit a jackpot or won the lottery and don't need to work anymore.

Re:The professional route

[Billosaur]

But he probably did the right thing going the professional route and only saying the job didn't fit his interests.

But that's not what he said. To quote:

"The reason I decided to leave had to do with my specific experiences working in Microsoft's Linux Lab. Although I believe that the concept behind Microsoft's Linux Lab is a good one, I wasn't able to work at my full level of technical ability and I found this frustrating," he said.

Transaltion: they wouldn't give me the resources and the free reign to do something useful. They were pretty much tapping him for his Linux knowledge and hoping to turn that into some kind of Linux-killer. Took him long enough but he finally figured it out.

Re:The professional route

[truthsearch]

If you sell your low slashdot ID you'll hit the jackpot and not need to work anymore. Then you can badmouth Microsoft at will. :)

Re:The professional route

[Anonymous Coward]

...they wouldn't give me the resources and the free reign to do something useful.

That's free rein, of course.

No wonder I got no reply

[drewzhrodague]

I sent applied several times over the years to Microsoft. I think I got form-letters in reply, thanking me for doing so. I guess there just aren't many jobs for a UNIX systems administrator at Microsoft. Too bad, too, as I think I'd be able to help them, in some small way.

Re:No wonder I got no reply

[JustNiz]

All their web servers run on Sun boxes (or used to at least).

Re:No wonder I got no reply

[truthsearch]

jobs for a UNIX systems administrator at Microsoft

You must be a masochist.

Re:No wonder I got no reply

[Jerry]

The last time I looked Microsoft was using over 100 Linux servers to despense their wares, patches, updates, etc... Akai (sp?) was their contractor.

Re:No wonder I got no reply

[Anonymous Coward]

Slightly more specific -

• They use Linux front ends maintained by Akamai for serving static content.
  
• As of Fall of 2005, the Hotmail team still had Solaris Administration as a job requirement.
  

Re:No wonder I got no reply

[Anonymous Coward]

Could their rejection possibly been due to the fact that Microsoft HR was unable to determine the purpose of your "sent, applied", not even in some small way?

Re:No wonder I got no reply

[Anonymous Coward]

Akai the musical equipment company?

Re:No wonder I got no reply

[rayvd]

Actually I was recruited (somewhat) heavily by MS for a Linux admin job at a company they had just acquired. They needed a year or so to migrate everything to Windows and required an admin for all the servers in the meantime. They told me they'd train me in all their Microsoft voodoo if I'd come and work for them...

It almost sounded appealing. Probably good pay and decent on the resume. In the end it just didn't feel right though. Maybe a mistake? I still don't regret it though.

Re:No wonder I got no reply

[patio11]

Seriously. Good god, who administrates UNIX any more?

Re:No wonder I got no reply

[iserlohn]

Yeah, UNIX machine administrate themselves.

Re:No wonder I got no reply

[drewzhrodague]

No, not a masochist -- just a glutton for punnishment =_)

Zombified?

[Doctor Memory]

Sounds like they sucked his brain out and poured MS oatmeal in the hole. From TFA:

Daniel Robbins has decided to leave Microsoft to pursue his passion for software development with an independent software vendor where he will be focused on building in .NET on Windows.

Re:Zombified?

[amliebsch]

I think I see what happened...

STEVE BALLMER: Dan, we need you to work on customizing these Linux installations.
DANIEL: Sure thing Steve, right after I get done working on this .NET program.
STEVE: Yeah. See, the thing is, you're kind of behind, and we have some tests we need to run. So...yeah. If you could work on that, that would be great.
(ONE HOUR LATER)
STEVE: So, Dan, how are those Linux tests coming?
DANIEL: Yeah, good news, I'm almost started. Check out this .NET object-oriented Outlook clone I've been working on. It uses GTK# and even runs in Mono! Isn't that super?
STEVE: Can you stand up for a second? I need to use your chair.

Re:Zombified?

[stinky wizzleteats]

Daniel Robbins has decided to leave Microsoft to pursue his passion for software development with an independent software vendor where he will be focused on building in .NET on Windows.

A pretty transparent parting PR shot if you ask me. It is very unusual for somebody in MS's position to discuss the specific technologies a departing employee plans to use in his new job. It comes across as desperate, inappropriate, and tacky. MS has also been pushing their "passion" marketing campaign, so the use of the word in that statement is suspicious. I doubt they actually know very much about what he'll be doing, and I am certainly not prepared to take them at their word even if they do.

I think the reasons that Robbins gave for leaving are absolutely poisonous to Microsoft. The idea that even with all their money, they can't keep a Linux guy technically challenged strongly undergirds the increasing awareness that Microsoft no longer gets it with regard to where technology is going in the 21st century. From a technical point of view, they are where mainframes were in the late 70s. Well established, deep pockets, strong existing market structure, and completely incapable of the next stage of IT development.

Re:Zombified?

[caffeination]

The idea of an "independent .Net developer" doesn't ring right to me. Sounds like an oxymoron.

Re:Zombified?

[jbolden]

I think if you look at the technologies the mainframe communities invented in the 70's and 80's many of them are just making to Unix/Linux and/or NT in this decade. They had the tecnological vision. They implemented succesfully.

Where they screwed up was culturally. Mainframe customers were conservative and so IS stagnated. The business community became frustrated and started using much worse computers where they had genuine control (PCs). Pretty soon a great deal of crucial business data was not inside the IS/IT depeartments.

With locked down PCs running only corporate approved apps and very strict change management for the desktops you are starting to see a push in the same direction. Give it another 10 years and we'll be right back in 1992 again.

Re:Zombified?

[oringo]

STEVE: Can you stand up for a second? I need to use your chair.

You mean stapler, don't you?

Re:Zombified?

[mclaincausey]

I think the reasons that Robbins gave for leaving are absolutely poisonous to Microsoft.

Err, what about the fact that he left the MS Linux lab to become a Windows/.NET developer? What does that say about Microsoft?

I hate MS too, but reading TFA instead of an edited blurb is probably a good idea if you're going to comment on it.

Re:Zombified?

[mikelambert70]

My theory of this is simply that with PC's the price is right. There have been many good technologies which have been overtaken by the PC simply because they are cheap and ubiquitous.

Sun is selling the entry level T1 with Niagara CPU at very reasonable $2995. However this is exceptionally cheap for a real server and the price for hardware only climbs very soon if you want more than the cheapest entry option. But for PC's this has been a very general price range for ever.

Things will happen if the price is right. Shift a new technology to a completely lower price level, not just entry price point, and see them take over.

Unix mainframes and minis were great but at tens to hundreds of $k they were out of reach for many. PC is technically a pitiful platform and programming it at low level is pure pain, but the price is right.

Re:Zombified?

[syukton]

no, a chair.

Re:Zombified?

[jbolden]

My point was that this shift occured among who had access to mainframes. In other words they had both a terminal and a PC on their desk. They choose to migrate functionality from the mainframe to the PC.

So cost wasn't the cause here.

Re:Zombified?

[Arandir]

Unix mainframes and minis were great...

Unix mainframes? What Unix mainframes? Unix caught on because it ran on cheap minis. Unix on minis did to mainframes what PCs did to minis.

Re:Zombified?

[Darby]

Sadly, it is all too common that a brush with the Devil leads to a selling of one's soul:
Charlie Sheen = Hookers
Robert Downey Jr. = Crack
Daniel Robbins = ASP.NET

Now hold on a second.
What (TF) exactly is wrong with crack and hookers?!?

Re:Zombified?

[MichaelSmith]

Give it another 10 years and we'll be right back in 1992 again.

Oh god not OS/2 again. I couldn't stand it.

Re:Zombified?

[jbolden]

I agree with your basic point about Unix never running on mainframes. OTOH I think the analogy between PCs and minis is too strong, Unix cut the cost of minis and worked to end vendor lockin. To use your analogy, Unix on minis did to expensive minis what the gray box makers did to large PC makers like IBM, DEC and Compaq.

That analogy sucks but at least I think its more accurate. Can't came up with a good one.

pursue passion in .net on windows?

[jzeejunk]

FTA:
... to pursue his passion for software development with an independent software vendor where he will be focused on building in .NET on Windows ...

If he wanted to build .net apps on Windows why would he leave M$FT? I mean that is probably the place to be if that really was his passion. I can't believe how much BS these people come up with.

Re:pursue passion in .net on windows?

[dedazo]

If he wanted to build .net apps on Windows

Do pretend to know what this guy's passion happens to be? Do you know him?

Let me ask you this - Miguel de Icaza created a .NET clone, and now the founder of Gentoo is going to be a .NET developer. There's a GNU clone of the CLR as well. Do you figure you and a million other slashbots are missing something, somehow? Is it possible?

M$FT

Ho-ho-ho! You used a dollar sign instead of an "S"!! Innovative! Hilarious!

I can't believe how much BS these people come up with.

I can't believe posts like these keep being modded up around here for everyone to ponder. If you're going to claim this is "BS" then I suggest you also provide some sort of proof. What exactly is your point? That you think it's impossible anyone would ever actually enjoy using the .NET platform to write applications?

Re:pursue passion in .net on windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems pretty clear that he wanted to develop. He wanted to build stuff, innovate, create, improve. He had ideas he wanted to see implemented in code.

I don't think he was in a programming role at MS. It sounds like MS wasn't interested in having him in that role.

So he wasn't in a job that allowed him to scratch his itches, and he couldn't tranfer wtihin to company to such a job. So he left the company. Sounds like a good move for him and for his former employer.

As a bonus, he wiped out $40K+ in debt and can pay cash for his new house in New Mexico.

Re:pursue passion in .net on windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

(posting as AC (I am not grandparent poster) against karma claims))

I agree to M$FT is real ridiculous, lame calling. I don't take anything using that word serious.

On the other hand, if you say Mono, I say this

http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/0 9/17/226241

"Anonymous Coward writes to tell us that Microsoft has apparently blocked the Mono 'Birds-of-a-Feather' meeting from being held at their Professional Developers Conference for the second year in a row"

Re:pursue passion in .net on windows?

[dedazo]

On the other hand, if you say Mono, I say this

I'm not going to rehash all the reasons Microsoft has for doing that and I do think it's lame... but that has nothing to do with the relative merit of the technology or its implementations, which was my point to begin with.

The average slashbot (of course already deeply biased against anything that Microsoft does or does not do) sees that as "proof" that Microsoft is out to get Mono, which is completely ridiculous. If that was the case Mono would not exist by now. If Mono's biggest problem is failing to get Microsoft to subsidize their marketing efforts then I say they're doing just fine. They'll have to find other ways to promote Mono to Windows developers - why the hell should Microsof help them do that? Let Novell do it. It's not like Mono is some one-man basement project funded by someone's leftover movies-and-popcorn allowance.

Re:pursue passion in .net on windows?

[biglig2]

What else is the poor devil going to do apart from .NET coding? Imagine the interview if he went for a Linux job:

"Hi Daniel, so you're an expert Linux hacker, sounds great, just what we are looking for. Oh, by the way, where was your last job at?"
"Well, I worked for Microsoft."
"Hah, yeah, that's funny. A Linux hacker working for Microsoft! Seriously, where did you work?"
"Microsoft! I was head of their Linux department! Steve Balmer recruited me!"
"Oh, I see. Say, could you excuse me while I just make a quick call? Thanks. Security? Yeah, we got another code three here."

Re:pursue passion in .net on windows?

[rohan972]

perhaps he's being affected by an NDA

For most...

[brunes69]

.. in the software development field, this is normal.

People in software development are constantly learning more and more about their craft, constantly having access to cutting-edge technologies and APIs. But rarely do you have a job where you can play with this stuff on a day-to-day basis, because actual real-life mean and potatoes development takes place using tools and technology 3-5 years behind the curve.

When was the last time you heard of a production application being written in Ruby on Rails, or in D? Sure, there are exceptions to every rule, but for the majority of us, we are stuck using older stuff.

Which is as it should be. Because if left to our own devices, programmers would always use the most whiz-bang, untested, unstable stuff out there. It's the technophile nature.

Re:For most...

[Pantero Blanco]

"Which is as it should be. Because if left to our own devices, programmers would always use the most whiz-bang, untested, unstable stuff out there. It's the technophile nature."

Of course, that's what the home, lab, or combination of the two is for. One of the niftiest things about open source projects is that they give the bleeding-edge "untested" stuff a testing ground and developer community, and often result in useful software. There generally aren't set-in-stone deadlines or things that absolutely "cannot go down", so people are free to use what they like.

It also takes up their free time, sadly. Oh, well.

Re:For most...

[pupeno]

I would be delighted to be stuck with older stuff if that stuff was Lisp. I think that stuck with older stuff, it is stuck with the fashioned stuff, which like the lattest fashion clothes (for women), they are very uncomfortable.

I love programming and I struggle daily to do it in a market that sucks.

Re:For most...

[Jesus_666]

Actually, I have never heard of D being used in any kind of project. Which I find sad as D looks like C++ without all the egregious design flaws.

Re:For most...

[quanticle]

/*Actually, I have never heard of D being used in any kind of project.*/

Well there is Torus Trooper (http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/windows/tt_e .html).  Its not huge, or terribly useful, but it and all of the other little games written by that author are developed in D, using the BulletML library.

These games are quite fun, too, in an old-fashioned arcade sort of way.

Re:For most...

[JulesLt]

I guess the best compromise is to always be using the cutting-edge stuff on internal tools to improve building the older stuff (which is how the guys at my place are currently using Tapestry and Spring).
That way you build the experience and expertise to bring to production

Re:For most...

[Elixon]

It is not clear from the article what happened.

I feel the same, I'm not "able to work at my full level of technical ability and I found this frustrating". But it is not a problem of not having access to cutting-edge technologies and APIs. My boss accepts any technology I suggest without any problems... But my work frustration is not about technology. To be able to use full level of technical ability one needs the whole team working and cooperating on the highest professional level possible. If there is any problem in the team (communication, rivality, weak team member, ...) then it may limit you from goin on full...

There can be many other reasons then technology, that is all wanted to say...

Re:For most...

[qray]

When was the last time you heard of a production application being written in Ruby on Rails, or in D?

Well last time I heard of a company using leading edge technology they went out of business. Saw many of these in the dot com boom days. Companies latching on right and left to the buzz words of the day in order to get investment money. Sadly most of the time the employees had little experience in the technologies had few tools to deal with performances and stability issues. In the end they couldn't deliver.

I saw that played out a number of times. Most of these companies already had enough risk from the business side without taking such risks on the technical side. Almost like betting you can win the Pick 3 lottery 2 times in a row.
--
Q

Re:For most...

[HuguesT]

You mean like templates and the whole generic programing stuff?

Re:For most...

[CCFreak2K]

...if left to our own devices, programmers would always use the most whiz-bang, untested, unstable stuff out there. It's the technophile nature.

Isn't that also Gentoo nature? No, seriously.

Re:For most...

[Jesus_666]

Not quite. What annoys me to no end are some of the consequences of C compatibility, the lack of checks (for example when handling out-of-bounds pointers into arrays) and the fact that STL-related errors tend to be ridiculously long. And of course: Why the $EXPLETIVE can std::strings covert themselves to const char* but not char* when most functions dealing with strings expect a char* as a parameter?
Sure, C++s design flaws are not exactly showstoppers, but whenever I code in C++ I regularly end up cursing Bjarne Stroustrup, even though he probably doesn't have anything to do with the quirk I'm yelling about.

Re:For most...

[HuguesT]

Perhaps this is a matter of semantics, but those are design choices, not errors.

To me a design error is something that wasn't foreseen when designing a system. Here, upward compatibility with C is an explicit design goal of C++, so it's not an error. The rest that you list are not errors either :

Long STL-related errors is a feature of the compiler, not the language. Some compilers other than vc++ and g++ have shorter errors strings. Anyway, with practice these errors are actually useful.

std::string cannot copy themselves to straight char* because that would make them modifiable in-place. This is forbidden because std::string have copy-on-write semantics, i.e. many strings can share the same pointer, and this is all managed by the C++ object layer. The in-place modificiation of a std::string could easily lead to many strings being modified invisibly and this is not desirable. This would be a genuine design error!

Hence you must make your own copy manually if you want to convert it to char*, for this you must use the std:string.copy() method. In my copy of Stroustrup 3rd ed, it's on chapter 20, page 590, with a couple of workarounds.

The lack of checks on arrays and vectors boundary is a design choice, following the C paradigm of "trusting the programmer". Some compilers including forks of gcc allow boundary checking to be turned on.

Anyway, one can disagree with these choices, I frequently do, but at least Stroustrup took the time to justify them (in his book "The design and evolution of C++") and they are consistent.

Re:For most...

[Curtman]

"Why the $EXPLETIVE can std::strings covert themselves to const char* but not char* when most functions dealing with strings expect a char* as a parameter?"

Why the $EXPLETIVE wouldn't you use strndup() to do that? You want somestring.c_str() to return a freshly malloc'd string every time, or just a pointer to some internal/opaque memory store so you can copy it if you want? They're const char*'s because you can't/shouldn't change the strings they point to. If a char* is what you want, copy it somewhere first, or just cast the thing if you are really sure it is safe to do so.

Re:For most...

[Jesus_666]

Why didn't the STL developers simply add a function that returns a copy (like string.str() as opposed to the static std.c_str())? Sure, it's just a matter of convenience, but still it would have been easy for them to implement and it would have made the language a bit less verbose.

Re:For most...

[Jesus_666]

Note that I mentioned design flaws, not design errors. A design flaw can be a working part of a design that just isn't that good. For example the C compatibility is part of C++s basic design decisions and it works. But it introduces (sometimes unnecessary) redundance into the language (malloc/free vs. new/delete, char* vs. std::string, printf vs. cout etc.) and leads to C++ coders using C practices for which C++ has better alternatives (like many instances of pointer arithmetic).

Maybe it's just because I don't trust the programmer (seriously, after seeing the modern software world who would?) and because I don't believe in mixing code from two different languages (C and C++), but I think that C++ could have been a less annoying language. (Another thing that gets me: Definitions like char foo, *bar, barf;. If char and *char are different types why can they be declared in the same line?)
Between PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, various Basic flavors, UnrealScript, C++ and even Haskell C++ is by far the most annoying language. Most off the annoyingness comes from the fact that to me C++ feels like a hack to make C object-oriented and not an attempt at a new language. I know that C++ is powerful and I know that some people much smarter than me spend a lot of time working it out, but still it feels badly designed.

In case you want to make an argument á la "You hate C++ because it isn't an easy scripting language like PHP": I worked with C++ before I worked with scripting languages. It feels weird on its own right.

Re:For most...

[HuguesT]

Sorry about the "flaw" vs "error".

C++ is annoying in its design I agree, but I still wouldn't say it's "flawed". Stroustrup and the whole ISO committee essentially strove to add modern language features to C without sacrifying its essential quality, which is pure speed and lack of overhead. In this regard I'd say he succeeded brilliantly. The downside is that C++ is not pretty and very hard to learn. On the plus sides, with a good mastery of C++ it is possible to never ever use pointers yet not rely on VM for bounds checking and the like.

Essentially there is only one other language that can compete with C++ on features and speed, and that's Ada. All the other attempts relying on one form of VM or another are simply not in the same ballpark.

Unfortunately for Ada there is a lack of support for it in both the OSS community and the proprietary world, except in the defence/nuclear/aeronautics industries.

Re:For most...

[Curtman]

"Why didn't the STL developers simply add a function that returns a copy (like string.str() as opposed to the static std.c_str())?"

They did. It's called 'copy' surprisingly enough.

Re:For most...

[Jesus_666]

Interesting. Most sources, when asked about how to convert a C++ string into a C character array only know about c_str.

Re:For most...

[Webz]

Ruby on Rails is actually a generalized/modularized version of the production code used by 37signals, authors of Basecamp. That's how it came to be. Their developer, David Heinemeier Hansson, chose Ruby as their primary development language (gutsy, I have no idea why). As a course of building all of their products, he abstracted the framework he created and released it to the public as Ruby on Rails.

(apologies on any inaccuracies on the story. this is how i understand it, corrections welcome)

Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

What took him so long?

Re:Obligatory

[Ucklak]

8 months on the salary they were paying him has given him a large enough nest egg to pursue better interests.

Re:Obligatory

[lkcl]

yeh, but unless he did a special deal with them it's also well-outside the normal one-year stock-option maturity arrangement. which means he lost a _lot_ of money.

Re:Obligatory

[51mon]

"which means he lost a _lot_ of money."

I suspect he'd mention that to the new employer when discussing renumeration, if it mattered.

Re:Obligatory

[JoshMooney]

Yea he could go "emerge world" I mean, explore the world ...

Shocked!

[Elladan]

I'm shocked. Shocked I say!

I was so sure that the founder of Gentoo getting a job at Microsoft was going to end well...

Re:Shocked!

[sp3d2orbit]

It worked out well for Microsoft. Even though he's not working for Microsoft anymore, they've successfully taken one of the most prominent open source figures and turned him into a .NET lacky.

Score:
MS 1
Linux 6.022 x 10^23

Re:Shocked!

[Ravatar]

Who says .NET apps can't be open source? Don't be so dense.

Re:Shocked!

[sp3d2orbit]

RTFA:

"Yes, Daniel Robbins has decided to leave Microsoft to pursue his passion for software development with an independent software vendor where he will be focused on building in .NET on Windows."

Re:Shocked!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that's what TFA says. So, let's ask you again: who says .NET applications targeted at Windows and produced by an independent software vendor can't be open source?

Or maybe...

[brunes69]

...they don't want you to perform these disk tests on their servers.

Or maybe you aren't qualified.

Re:Or maybe...

[drewzhrodague]

...but you have to know the limits of your disks! =_)

probably unable to buy into the b.s.

[slackaddict]

I was honestly shocked when I first heard about Mr. Robbins leaving one of the more geek-oriented Linux distros to work at MS. I'm sure there's much more to the story that isn't being said publicly, but he probably found the hive-like corporate culture incompatible to the freedom he had when managing his hard core distro. Going from being a superstar in the Linux/OSS world to one of the Joe's at MS had to be a huge shock.

I wish him all the best and I hope he returns to actively manage and develop Gentoo again. You can't blame him for wanting to feed his family and I'm sure he'll be welcomed back to our side.

Re:probably unable to buy into the b.s.

[symbolic]

I'd like to echo your sentiment. Gentoo was a valuable contribution to the open source community, and probably my favorite distro.

Re:probably unable to buy into the b.s.

[andreyw]

"hive mind"?

Boy, I wonder how long it took you to come up with that one.

Idiot. Deep in your soul, you're just like all the other losers on slashdot daily taking part in the Microsoft-bashing orgy - wishing desperately you were good enough for Microsoft to give you an interview.

Re:probably unable to buy into the b.s.

[jsnitsel]

It wasn't that shocking if you heard his reasoning. He would have continued working on Gentoo, but at that point he was $40k in debt due to his work on Gentoo. He needed to make ends meet, and working at Microsoft was one way to solve that.

Re:probably unable to buy into the b.s.

[slackaddict]

Interesting... does making you a MS fanboy any more or less an "idiot" than me? Can you not think of something intelligent to say without calling me an "idiot"?

My uncle was a VP at Microsoft. I know what the culture is like. I *do* know what it takes to get an interview.

But, I simply don't like MS. I would never, ever work there. It's not anything I desire or wish. I love my current job and, thank $DIETY, I make enough money to support my side business and take care of my family without my wife having to work.

I don't fault anyone personally for taking care of their family, like Daniel, but there are plenty of things I can do before I work for a company that I personally find objectionable. If that makes me an idiot, then I guess I am.

Re:probably unable to buy into the b.s.

[slackaddict]

I totally don't fault him for taking care of his family and earning a living. Sometimes you've got to do what you've got to do. :-)

Re:probably unable to buy into the b.s.

[JPriest]

He went $40G in debt founding one of the most popular Linux distros in the world and ended up having to work at... Microsoft to make ends meet and fund development. After reading all the rhetoric from the OSS "software is supposed to be free" fundies, and I am the only person to think this is amusing? Don't get me wrong, I am an Ubuntu user myself, but isn't a good thing at least some people support commercial software?

Re:probably unable to buy into the b.s.

[greginnj]

He went $40G in debt founding one of the most popular Linux distros in the world and ended up having to work at... Microsoft to make ends meet [...] and I am the only person to think this is amusing?

Yeah, they even made a movie about it, it was so funny... starring Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings, yet.

Re:probably unable to buy into the b.s.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't blame him for wanting to feed his family and I'm sure he'll be welcomed back to our side.

I didn't know we were picking sides.

Re:probably unable to buy into the b.s.

[arkhan_jg]

Gentoo started out as a personal project, and still remains a very independant project with no corporate sugar-daddy like novell or redhat. These days it's run as a foundation.

I know there was a big drive when DRobbins left the project to reinburse him the $20,000 (not $40k) he was in debt after gentoo, though I don't think he got the full amount; I think he got several thousand in donations though.

Commercial software certainly has its place, as do 'hobbyist' projects like gentoo. It's all good.

Re:probably unable to buy into the b.s.

[jrockway]

> But, I simply don't like MS. I would never, ever work there. It's not anything I desire or wish. I love my current job and, thank $DIETY, I make enough money to support my side business and take care of my family without my wife having to work.

Translation: I wuv my mommie.

Guess I'd get tired too...

[bitbiper]

after dodging chairs all day...

Good Move

[modmans2ndcoming]

He went from some poster boy at MS to becoming a CTO at an ISV in the health industry.

What? They're not lying you idiot

[brunes69]

Do you really think they would say that if that was not what Daniel was actually doing? It is easily verifiable. The guy is not stupid. Daniel *is* going to work for a company on .Net stuff.

Re:What? They're not lying you idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

duh! the point is, his passion for .net wasn't the reason to quit. whether his new job requires that isn't the point.

Specific Experience

[wmajik]

The reason I decided to leave had to do with my specific experiences..

"Specific experience" with Microsoft eh?? I had one of those before! Like the time I switched over to that other non-really-real search engine company and the CEO started making monkey noises (something about "I love this company!!! RAWR!!") and throwing a chair around the room.

I love specifics :)

Back to the old ball and chain a good thing?

[fak3r]

'I wasn't able to work at my full level of technical ability and I found this frustrating'

Eeek, welcome to my (our?) world! Go back to Gentoo, perhaps there's a way to make a living off it after all (if not, at least you'll have that happy feeling back!

Nice Editing Job...

[ThinkFr33ly]

What a great job the poster did at editing out any pro-Microsoft sentiments in the article summary.

We wouldn't want to have that filth on the front page of Slashdot, now would we? Here is the full quote that was only partially included in the article summary:

"The reason I decided to leave had to do with my specific experiences working in Microsoft's Linux Lab. Although I believe that the concept behind Microsoft's Linux Lab is a good one, I wasn't able to work at my full level of technical ability and I found this frustrating," he said.

Also, earlier in the article:

"I didn't make the decision to leave Microsoft due to concerns about the company as a whole -- Microsoft has just had a string of very successful product launches and I anticipate that it will continue to enjoy great success," he said.

Re:Nice Editing Job...

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

"You're new here, right?"

"What do you expect, this is Slashdot..."

"Zonk posted it, need I say more?"

Profit!

Re:Nice Editing Job...

[Gonoff]

will continue to enjoy great success

By MS own definituion of success, they will certainly carry on succeeding for some time yet.

What definition is that?
They will continue to release shoddy software with many flaws that should have been removed before it got out of beta certainly but, more importantly to them, they will carry on getting a lot of money from people.

Re:Nice Editing Job...

[GenKreton]

The only reason comments like those are made is so he can have references and future employers won't be less likely to hire him because he will feel freely to badmouth his them if he leaves. Nothing can be more fake than comments like those so I don't see how the slashdot editors failed at all. We were just being protected from the necessary babble ensuring nobody is mad and everyone can still find work.

Re:Nice Editing Job...

[ThinkFr33ly]

Ah yes, of course. It couldn't possibly be that his comments were honest or anything.

I guess his choice of leaving Microsoft to do development of .NET application for Windows is also just a ploy for future employment as well.

Get a grip man.

Re:Nice Editing Job...

[pdxaaron]

So the job of an editor is to change a person's statement to view what the editor believes they mean versus what they actually said? Let me edit your post in this fashion and lets see what happens...

The only reason comments like those are made is so he can have references and future employers won't be less likely to hire him because he will feel freely to badmouth his them if he leaves. Nothing can be more fake than comments like those so I don't see how the slashdot editors failed at all. We were just being protected from the necessary babble ensuring nobody is mad and everyone can still find work.

Me like mouthing fake slashdot babble.

Hmmm... Maybe it does work.

Re:Nice Editing Job...

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is that if he liked it so much why did he leave?

The summary nicely zooms in on the key facts. 1) He left. 2) He said he left because he was too l33t. Since no one has a different explanation that seems reasonable.

Re:Nice Editing Job...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an even bigger faggot than the parent. You idiots need to waste less time on slashdot.

Re:Nice Editing Job...

[jswalter9]

Yeah... I say politically correct things about my former employer too.

It probably went like this...

[CRCulver]

Anyone suspect a plot just to remove him from a productive Linux project to a place he could do no harm? It might have gone like this:

Manager: So, here's your office.
Robbins: It's empty. I don't even have a computer.
Manager: That's okay. Look, here's a ball. You can bounce it off the wall all day.
Robbins: And I'd get six figures a year just for that?
Manager: Sure. Enjoy.

Re:It probably went like this...

[jetxee]

It went perfectly well. Just the size of the ball was not right.

Re:It probably went like this...

[Joehonkie]

That doesn't sound like a problem to me...

Re:It probably went like this...

[PornMaster]

I think he may have asked when he'd get to -funroll-loops and they gave him a slinky to straighten.

Re:It probably went like this...

[Like2Byte]

This really happened...

It was 1997 or 1998. I was working for a multimedia company making training software for submariners. Two recently retired Navy Submarine Chiefs were hired to do some story-board writing. Typically, this entailed an Access 2.0 database with a vb front-end so they could enter their work.

The day they were hired the hiring manager, an ex submarine CO, hadn't procured an office to place them in...Nor desks, nor chairs, nor {{drum roll}} ... computers. When they inquired as to how they were going to get anything done without a computer to do it on the manager excused himself. Ten minutes later he came back with a stack of printed blank 'story-boards' and two sharpened #2 pencils.

They lasted at the company about three months - just long enough to get jobs at an aerospace corporation where the employees were taken seriously.

Re:It probably went like this...

[skoaldipper]

You make light of such a scenario, but many Defense department contractors establish such provisions for recent hires; necessitated by federal requirements, while Engineers earning 6 figures await their security clearance. They call them leper colonies.

Re:It probably went like this...

[0x0000]

jobs at an aerospace corporation where the employees were taken seriously [emphasis mine]

Heheh. Good one. You had me going right up until that last statement.... *snicker* aerospace ... take s/w seriously *guffaw* I'll have to remember that one...

Re:It probably went like this...

[wolf31o2]

It might be plausible had he not removed himself from the project well over a year before his job at Microsoft ever came about. Even before that he was lessening his role more and more, for both financial and personal reasons. The simple truth of the matter is that Daniel Robbins hadn't done much for Gentoo in quite some time. Sure he started the thing, but it was the 300 other people that are still active that were doing all of the work by that point. Daniel even at that time was focusing on "paid work" more than Gentoo, as he had racked up a pretty hefty personal debt bringing Gentoo into the world.

I sincerely wish Daniel the best of luck in his new position. He is the type of person that needs an itch to scratch. Being the local "Linux expert" at Microsoft probably isn't the most fulfilling job for a former open source developer like Daniel.

I wonder what the final straw was for him?

[DebianDog]

(Dan) I want to port .net native to Linux
(Microsoft) Umm... NO!!!
(Dan) Later Fucktards!!!

Note: Joke leeched from Nucrash on ZDNet

Stool Softener

[Anonymous Coward]

Gentoo sounds like a laxative. Besides, do we really need any more crap from Microsoft? It's good thing he quit then.

Re:Self-Important, Classless Move

[NDPTAL85]

He wasn't a mid-level guy. He is the founder of the Gentoo Linux project, he didn't just "contribute" to it. At that level you don't have to "behave" because your are far more talented than a true mid-level employee. This guy can write his own ticket.

How could this be?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I wasn't able to work at my full level of technical ability and I found this frustrating"

Yeah, like porting Clippy isn't important...

Bummer

[187807]

From TFS:
"...has left his job at Microsoft after only eight months."

Sheesh, he didn't even have enough time to finish compiling Gentoo once.

Re:Bummer

[Anonymous Coward]

after only eight months

What do they mean, "only"? That's an eternity in the IT industry!

Re:Bummer

[bertramwooster]

Sheesh, he didn't even have enough time to finish compiling Gentoo once.

thats not coincidence.

Re:Bummer

[Excelsior]

The eight months also gave you sufficient time to come up with an original joke. Oh, wait...

Re:Bummer

[apoc.famine]

I'm sick of this anti-Gentoo bullshit attitude on slashdot. I can complile Gentoo TWICE in this much time. Enough with the lies and outright slander of a fine OS.

Re:Bummer

[Anonymous Coward]

Elitist - We don't all have a farm of machines to use distcc

Follow up interview

[gooman]

After an eight month study, Mr. Robbins concluded that TCO for Microsoft was significantly higher than Linux.

Mr. Robbins was overheard to say, "While Gentoo may cost countless hours of tweaking for bleeding-edge performance, Microsoft required the sale of one's soul to a man named Lucifer and yet resulted in only average performance."

When asked for their reply, Mr. Balmer cursed and threw a chair at this reporter. Mr. Gates only response was to place his fingertips together while saying, "Excellent."

No further comment was available.

Embrace and extend?

[BigZaphod]

Perhaps they wanted to "embrace and extend" his abilities by turning him into a windows coder or something...

Re:Embrace and extend?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you trying to imply that Microsoft wanted to absorb him just like the Borgs do with brilliant People like Jean Luc Picard ????

Did the source go with him?

[saboola]

Tomorrow on slashdot: "Wintoo Announced" "Win32 installation that compiles itself to the specific needs of the hardware upon installation. Developers for Wintoo are remaining anonymous for the time being."

Re:Did the source go with him?

[Anonymous Coward]

holy cow.

I know you were tryin to be funny ... but that *is* a genius idea.

have it turn all horseshit off by default, and place the swap file in a correctly sized seperate partition too.

turn twenty hours work to make windows useable ... that is ... a good game platform, into a 30 minute gentooish install.

wish I could implement it.

Re:Did the source go with him?

[igny]

Or Gendows. Oh wait, Genspire.

Re:Did the source go with him?

[spongman]

Maybe he'll go on to work for AOL where he'll no doubt create a fully customizable AOL client called MeeToo.

Re:Self-Important, Classless Move

[Rinkhals]

The man had a proven track record.

There was a lot of publicity (particularly from MS) about his moving to a "better" platform.

There was a strong feeling of betrayal, especially within the GenToo community.

Personally, I don't blame him wanting to put his side of the story.

If you feel that's arrogance, I think it says a lot about you.

Some history on him

[porkThreeWays]

I think it's important to understand the history of this whole situtation to understand its current state. A few years ago, he came up with the idea for Gentoo. It was innovative at the time because there were few source based distributions out there. The idea of the source based distribution wasn't new, but portage definatly was/is the best source based package manager I've seen out there. He sunk a lot of his own personal money into gentoo that he never got back. When he left to work at MS, it pissed off a lot of purists and a lot of people shunned him. I think his move not to come back to the open source community (right now, anyway) has a lot to do with the fact he poured so much of himself into open source, and once he left to try and not live paycheck to paycheck, people immediatly forgot all of his contributions to gentoo.

Re:Some history on him

[codehead78]

That's the problem I have with OSS purists. There is this sense of entitlement to free code and no notion of rewarding someone who works hard besides a pat on the back. I believe this hurts OSS as a whole. I don't think the openness of code, which is a good thing, should be tightly coupled with getting something for nothing.

You could say it fuels projects by forcing contributions but I believe popular OSS projects take off for different reasons, not because people had to pitch in, but because they wanted to.

Re:Some history on him

[Massacrifice]

Which makes me think, maybe after spending so much of his own money on Gentoo he took the Microsoft offer for a G.O.O.D. job. After he made enough money and paid back his creditors, he just dumped them and went back home to a place he knows will provide him with just enough salary to feed his family and pay the mortgage. Exit MS, exit OSS, hello worry-free life.

(GOOD job = Get-Out-Of-Debt job)

So I dont expect him to appear on the radar anymore. Ciao Dan, and thanks for all the ebuilds.

Re:Some history on him

[caffeination]

You're right, but you've got to see the other side of the story. The FOSS community's main experience with Microsoft is their many, many, many attempts to sabotage its efforts. There are going to be consequences for picking Microsoft out of all the IT companies in the world (though I think they came to him). I'm inclined to say that there should be as well. Don't forget, all that really happened to him was social. A move in the other direction by a born-and-bred Microsoftie would entail lockdown on that person's computer and stern letters reminding them of NDA clauses in their contract (this comes to you direct from my arse, yes, but the point is that that's the level of "shunning" they'd be dealing with). It's clear to me which side harbours the real zealots.
I don't think many end users such as myself were that bothered by his move, but the developer community has a higher proportion of "purists".

Re:Some history on him

[joshmccormack]

As far as there being few source based distros, I suppose so... but BSDs, which he got inspiration from, are all source based. Not saying Gentoo doesn't have it's redeemeing qualities, and you did say source based distros weren't a new concept, but there were already options for running an open OS and building it from source.

Re:Some history on him

[cyber-vandal]

I'd say it was more to do with his choice of employer. Why did he go to work for the biggest detractor of OSS. Were there no positions available with a more OSS-friendly corp rather than the company that does its very best to undermine it at every turn?

Re:Some history on him

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to mention the debt portage owes to the BSD world as well.

Re:Some history on him

[asv108]

When he left to work at MS, it pissed off a lot of purists and a lot of people shunned him. I think his move not to come back to the open source community (right now, anyway) has a lot to do with the fact he poured so much of himself into open source, and once he left to try and not live paycheck to paycheck,

Yeah, because I'm sure Microsoft is the ONLY PLACE where the founder of Gentoo could get a decent paying job.

Re:Some history on him

[typical]

That's the problem I have with OSS purists. There is this sense of entitlement to free code and no notion of rewarding someone who works hard besides a pat on the back. I believe this hurts OSS as a whole. I don't think the openness of code, which is a good thing, should be tightly coupled with getting something for nothing.

I can't agree. Richard Stallman, which is about as Free purist as you can get, emphasizes very distinctly the difference between gratis and libre.

If you are working as a volunteer on a hobby project, yes, people are probably not going to spontaneously cough up money for you. If you are relying on them doing so, you are probably going to be disappointed. If, however, you are doing the project because you want to make something cool, then you will probably be happy.

OSS need not be volunteer work -- look at the engineers paid to work on Open Office by Sun. It's just works very well if you're planning to do volunteer projects, so many volunteer projects are open source.

Re:Some history on him

[luther349]

good point. but when you leave and go work for linux's worst enemy your gonna get everyone mad. he coulda worked for ibm or something anyone but m$. but they didnt forget what he did with gentoo they just lost respect for him. but source based distros arnt my thing so i never watched gentoo that mutch.

Re:Some history on him

[16K Ram Pack]

I've written a few small changes to small OSS projects, because I've had to modify the code for myself, and I'm glad to give back my changes to the author. I've also made a few cash donations to projects. I don't mind that the OSS things I've built are free and used, and that I get no gratitude. Generally, they are a small subroutine I've written that I use myself, which I know can't be marketed on its own, so hey - have it. I'm not, as a rule giving away software that has value.

What I object to is people whining about what's not in an OSS project, and doing nothing to address it themselves. I like to feel part of something I'm using, whether code, cash, or answering simple support requests.

drama

[buddha42]

They probably made him use redhat enterprise and forced him to use the rpm-provided versions of software.

Re:drama

[wed128]

This is the best explanation i've read so far, and it's probably right.

Re:Yeah right

[EnsilZah]

The flying chairs are fine, it's the landing ones you have to watch out for.

Re:Self-Important, Classless Move

[E-Rock]

He's newsworthy, in some circles, and his move to MS was certainly noted. In his departure he didn't badmouth anyone or bitch and moan. I'd personally like to know more about why he left, but the way he did it seems pretty classy.

Make me an offer.

[Andy Dodd]

How big is this jackpot you propose?

p.s. GP poster's ID is not low, 4099 is damn high. :)

Re:Make me an offer.

[FurryFeet]

Not to troll or anything, but while 701 is a nice enough number, a username of "Andy Dodd" is not, shall we say, all that enticing. Had you taken a cool(*) name that was available back then (say, "Frodo Baggins", "Darth Vader" or "Steve Jobs") you probably could be rolling in dough.

Better luck next time.

(*) 'Cool' in this context refers to 'Geek Cool', which is in itself quite uncool.

Re:Make me an offer.

[Andy Dodd]

Good point.

Also, not portable in terms of potential customers.

Work for Google

[Anonymous Coward]

Daniel - Google is probably interested in your technical abilities :)

Re:Self-Important, Classless Move

[disappear]

He left a month ago. You think he contacted the news media, after waiting a month? Think this through a minute, mmmkay?

(Disclaimer: I know and like Daniel. I worked with him at Microsoft. I'm not there anymore, either.)

Secret Agenda Revealed

[Nom du Keyboard]

I wasn't able to work at my full level of technical ability and I found this frustrating

Maybe the secret agenda of the Microsoft Linux Lab is to corner the most talented Linux developers and discourage them so completely that they'll never compete with MS again. This one got away, but how many more have been ensnared?

Re:Secret Agenda Revealed

[/dev/trash]

He's tainted now. Any new code he writes, will always be in question. Did he get it from Microsoft?

Re:Secret Agenda Revealed

[tomstdenis]

Simple test: If the code works the answer is no. :-)

Cheapshot but I hate Microsoft so it's well worth it.

Tom

NewBorg

[ElboRuum]

This is just the sort of reason why, when one of these little Linux/MS "updates" shows up, I just shake my head in despondency, largely because of what you mentioned, that the purists in the Linux community looked at him like a sellout. These are the same sort of "enlightened anti-groupthink" individuals who've been tearing at the buttocks of MS for years, all to the delight of Slashdotters everywhere. And people call MS users "drones"... Whatever.

The longer I read Slashdot, the more I believe there should also a picture of Linus Torvalds in a Borg headgear with maybe a green laser instead of red, right aside of good ol' Billy G. Talk about an exercise in groupthink, 90+% of Slashdotters seem to have drank the Kool-Aid where Linux is concerned.

Now you'll excuse me while I brace for the inevitable modding down into the 10th Circle of Heck to which this post will be subjected.

Re:NewBorg

[SalsaDoom]

And you deserve to be modded down too, but I won't do it. I'm a gentoo user, have been for many years now. When I heard drobbins was leaving for MSFT I was pretty choked about that in a way, but when I heard that it was because he had financial troubles and just needed a job that paid well... well, I understood. I wasn't entirely happy with it, but I understand that a man needs to pay the bills.

Now -- according to you, the everyone was seething about drobbins leaving for MSFT. It wasn't like that, we were all disappointed that drobbins had to end up at a place where we figured he wouldn't be happy and that was it. I spent a lot of time on the forums and on the irc channels back then and I never heard anyone call him a traitor or other shit like that. It made us sad, not angry -- those of us who are adults understand that you need a job that pays and sometimes that means not working on OSS all day long. drobbins MADE SURE that Gentoo would be free before he left and that proved to use that he was a good sort.

I didn't hear from these "purists" in the linux community, I don't think you did either. Some jackass somewhere might have said something but they were just some jackass somewhere and not a representative of anyones beliefs but their own.

Botton line: The Gentoo Linux community understood that their former leader had financial problems and needed a regular paying job. We wished him the best and still do.

--SD

Re:NewBorg

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? I think slashdot is more pro apple then pro linux. Maybe those mac heads are just better organised, or at least their moderators are. OVERRATED!

Re:NewBorg

[Iaughter]

Slashdot sucks and so do you for reading it, freaking lemming.

Now go ahead and post this message down, fanboy

Re:NewBorg

[i_am_not_a_bomba]

"Now you'll excuse me while I brace for the inevitable modding down into the 10th Circle of Heck to which this post will be subjected."

Oh look you got +5 insightful

Those groupthink borg slashdot nerds must be having a bad day.

Or they don't exist except in your mind.

One of the two i guess.

Re:NewBorg

[luther349]

no it would be tux in borg gear lol. linux needs to start assimilating every m$ user in there path lol.

Understandable, from my experience

[Anonymous Coward]

While I use Gentoo, I don't know too much about it. But from what I've seen, Daniel must be a very sharp programmer. Very strong people typically have a rather difficult time landing decent jobs. There just aren't than many interesting and fulfilling jobs out there.

People who are interviewing are typically looking for people to work for them. If you are a very strong/experienced person, that is going to be a hard role to fill. You are their peer, if not more. Nobody wants to hire someone who is going to challenge them.

I recently had an on-site interview at Microsoft. Seattle is really nice and Microsoft is, after all, Microsoft. Had they offered me the job (which they didn't), I would have taken it. But I would not have been happy there and would have probably left after 8 months or so. Here are my impressions from the experience...

Contrary to popular opinion, Microsoft does hire lots of *nix people. But you aren't going to be doing cutting edge work. They don't even use C++. No, I don't mean they use C#. They use C and lots of reference-counted pointers. No STL at all. Windows is really pretty ugly inside. If you are programmer with very high standards, you aren't going to like it.

I don't know why I didn't get the job. But I definitely wasn't a good fit. I think Daniel was of such a caliber that they just had to hire him. In the end, he wasn't a good fit either.

Re:Understandable, from my experience

[Anonymous Coward]

"Here are my impressions from the experience... Microsoft does hire lots of *nix people. ... They don't even use C++. ... Wndows is really pretty ugly inside."

Wow, you experienced that all from a job interview?

Re:Understandable, from my experience

[dodobh]

Nobody wants to hire someone who is going to challenge them.

Some of us would love to be able to hire someone better than us, or who would challenge us. If only because it makes the work more enjoyable. Which is why we have three admin type positions empty for 6 months.

I RTFA, conclussion: you're full of it.

[jotaeleemeese]

Did it cross your brain that when one sends an email it may be on reply to an earlier one?

Microsofties, think out of the box for bunnies sakes.

In other news Google hires founder of Gentoo Linux

[CYDVicious]

In other news Google hires founder of Gentoo Linux, and Office Depot acquires new contract with Microsoft for office chairs.

Dunno about the PP, but

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been authorized to go as high as ONE dollar (Canadian) on behalf of my client(*).

(*) Who shall remain anonymous until bidding has ended.

Translation:

[LiquidEdge]

"They didn't let me do everything I wanted and wouldn't do what I told them to do, so I quit."

Re:Translation:

[smittyoneeach]

You need to expand 'they' in your analysis.

Often, there is a king who wants to alter the course of the enterprise, and brings in a Robbins Hood character to calibrate the Sherrif of Nottingham, who's a right corrupt sort of twerp, and give some life back to the enterprise.

The Sherrif, while not exactly intelligent, has no lack of low animal cunning, and ambushes Hood and his Merry Men. The death of Friar Tuck, played by an unexpectedly valiant Peter Quinn, drips pathos.

So Hood rallies the troops, heads South, and conquers France instead.

Happens all the time.

Recent Microsoft successes

[metamatic]

Microsoft has just had a string of very successful product launches

Name three?

Re:Recent Microsoft successes

[Anonymous Coward]

Visual Studio 2005
SQL Server 2005
Small Business Accounting 2006

Re:Recent Microsoft successes

[ThinkFr33ly]

Visual Studio 2005
SQL Server 2005
The .NET Framework 2.0

I've used these fairly extensively (since beta 1 of all three), and they are without a doubt quality releases.

In March they will be launching Team Foundation Server and judging from the Beta 3 and Dec. CTP releases, this is an excellent product as well.

Re:Recent Microsoft successes

[Anonymous Coward]

Visual Studio 2005
SQL Server 2005
The .NET Framework 2.0

I've used these fairly extensively (since beta 1 of all three), and they are without a doubt quality releases.

Just because you use them doesn't make them quality release(s). None of these products are even on 2 percent of Windows users machines.

Re:Recent Microsoft successes

[Anonymous Coward]

"Just because you use hem doesn't make them quality release(s). None of these products are even on 2 percent of Windows users machines."

WTF does that statement have to do with the price of tea in China? Seriously, dude, what half-assed mental process made you come up with that comeback?

It involves misinterpretation, personal insult, non-sequiter ad-hominem, AND fake statistics in the space of 2 sentences.

In case it escaped you, the parent poster felt they were quality releases BECAUSE he had used them and found them to be productive. Whether 2 other people or 2 billion others used it wouldn't impact whether it was a quality release.

Re:Recent Microsoft successes

[metamatic]

So those are making a profit now, are they?

Re:Recent Microsoft successes

[metamatic]

Read the subject. The discussion was *successes*, not quality software that hardly anybody has used. The point about Microsoft is they only make money on Office and the OS. Every other division runs at a loss. If they had some more successes, that would change.

However, barring a miracle, SQL Server will remain a distant third in the database market (after DB2 and Oracle eat 90%), Small Business Accounting will remain a distant third (or worse) in that market (after QuickBooks, Peachtree, Sage, MYOB, etc), and Visual Studio is only used by people so invested in Microsoft that they want to develop more Microsoft-Windows-only software.

I was wondering if there were some examples of things (a) I'd heard about, (b) Microsoft had made money from, and (c) Microsoft had gained a sizeable fraction of the market with. You know, real successes.

Re:Recent Microsoft successes

[mysticwhiskey]

Don't get me started on VS2005. Quality release? Hardly. Our enterprise level app ran fine on VS2003. The lure of Edit-And-Continue functionality of the IDE, and the inclusion of generics in the 2.0 framework were very, very tempting. And now that we've "upgraded" to 2005, we realised it wasn't worth it.

The slooooooow IDE is bad enough, without the IDE constantly complaining of out-of-memory errors, Windows Forms designers deleting code, and the need to shut down the IDE and restart it when encountering assembly caching problems in the forms designers. And this all happens on fairly hefty hardware too: 3Ghz 2Gb P4 systems where one can type much faster than the Intellisense code-completion can keep up? Hmmmmm.

Re:Self-Important, Classless Move

[hrvatska]

I take it from the article that he informed the media about his departure from Microsoft.

What in the article leads you to think he informed the media? It may be that someone else did, and the reporter contacted him to verify.

Professionals don't publically decry former employer on the way out -- regardless of their disdain.

Hard call what he said as decrying Microsoft. He was professional and circumspect in his quoted comments.

Further, to assume that anyone would care that he is no longer a microserf goes beyond the the pale of self-importance and arrogance.

Judging from the comments on /. many people are interested in this.

Re:Self-Important, Classless Move

[Shag]

He left a month ago. You think he contacted the news media, after waiting a month?

Well, ya see, the Vice President wanted the ranch owner to tell the local paper first...

Gimme a break

[heroine]

5 job changes and layoffs later you'll find not working to your ability is the way it's done in that country. American job titles are not egalitarian like Hong Kong or Japan. The software engineering level is pretty much the same no matter where you go or what you do. Only if you network your way into management does the work get creative or challenging.

Hard to believe with all the information available from generation after generation of celebrity Linux programmer doing the same thing, they still have this attitude of quitting day job after day job thinking the next one is going to be better but never really getting anywhere.

Re:Gimme a break

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

The software engineering level is pretty much the same no matter where you go or what you do. Only if you network your way into management does the work get creative or challenging.

How many managers do you know that are able to spend significant amounts of time doing challenging technical work? I'm assuming you're talking about technical work, because I suspect a lot of technically minded people aren't going to find management work very creative or challenging (at least not in an "I have a passion for it" way).

I'm not saying you don't know any managers doing lots of challenging tech work. In fact, I think it would be cool if you could list the names of the companies where they work so we know where to go for fun management jobs. :P

Re:Gimme a break

[heroine]

Pioneer, Canon, Panasonic, Sony, Kyocera, LG/Phillips, Samsung. Management jobs are very hard to get at these places unless your resume says MIT or you're a famous entrepreneur, but it's the most prestigious, challenging, and technical work you'll find.
You probably aren't hearing about the good jobs because your resume doesn't say MIT.

Re:Gimme a break

[typical]

Only if you network your way into management does the work get creative or challenging.

That depends on what you consider creative and challenging.

Some people really enjoy figuring out how to take resources (in this case people) of limited complexity (at least in how you must work with them) that they have limited information about and use heuristics and experience to try to use them most effectively. I suspect that these folks tend to like working with a limited-knowledge situation.

I'm pretty happy using resources (software) that have a high degree of complexity that I have the ability to obtain whatever information I need about. The challenge comes in the fact that the complexity is high enough that I need to produce tools to bring that complexity down to a reasonable level.

It's a different set of problems, but I simply don't agree that you must be in management to have problems that require creativity or challenge you. There are probably workplaces where this is true, but I definitely do not agree with this as a blanket statement about the American software industry.

Wow ... 8 months!

[Stephen Samuel]

I'm surprised that he lasted that long!

Back around 1996, I had an opportunity to interview at Microsoft, but I ultimately declined. Although it would have probably been interesting and a nice addition to my resume, I'm quite clear that I would have been uncomfortable the whole time I was there. I'd been in the Unix world for too long, and had very little respect for MS's solutions. Pushing that on unwary comsumers would have just felt too slimy for me.

Perhaps a similar unease finally settled on him too.

It may be that the 8 months is because he was having a hard time finding someone to hire him... ABC Coding Solutions (presuming that this is the proper company) seems like a rather pedestrian company for someone of his ability to move to.
I'm guessing that many Linux-based companies would just look at his resume, say "He's working at Microsoft?!" and put the resume in the circular file.

Re:Yeah right

[caffeination]

Sounds like a good concept for a screensaver, instead of Flying Windows.

Ask ma about "Akai" ;-)

[D4C5CE]

The last time I looked Microsoft was using over 100 Linux servers to despense their wares, patches, updates, etc... Akai (sp?) was their contractor.

Not quite (that's a consumer electronics brand), but I guess maybe "ma" as in Akamai could help...

But back on topic, this guy cannot seriously have expected to help build the future of Linux at Microsoft... They probably wanted to learn from him very much indeed about how penguins can fly, but that would quite likely have been out of about the same motivation as the Fowling & Duck Shooting Association might have for hiring an ornithologist. ;-/

i don't blame him

[Flunitrazepam]

i'd be frustrated too after 8 months filled with days spent trying 'emerge longhorn'

Re:i don't blame him

[iggymanz]

actually, what happened is they only needed him to compile gentoo; now that it's done, they let him go

Re:Self-Important, Classless Move

[rolosworld]

It first appeared on wikipedia, then on digg.com.. then disappeared from wikipedia and now appeared again...
http://digg.com/linux_unix/Gentoo_founder_resigns_ Microsoft.

oh crap..

[BillGod]

oh crap this is http://slashdot.org.cn../ I keep forgeting to use the US version so I dont see any sensorship!!!

Yup, maybe they didn't want him to work.

[Futurepower(R)]

If he had only understood that he was supposed to do nothing... He could have had an extended paid vacation. "Just don't do any of that Linux stuff."

Robbins *cannot* code

[Hackeron]

Portage is proof of this. Have you seen how bad the code is? - You cannot tell where the backend stops and where the frontend begins.

Try to import portage and see how far you get? -- the emerge frontend does *everything*, portage is just a couple IO functions easier achieved with cat.

If Robbins feels he wasnt used to his full potential in Microsoft, then, hmm, nice to know the "real world" is much easier than all us students expect ;)

Re:Robbins *cannot* code

[0-9a-f]

Success is not about your ability to code. Gentoo was successful not because it was great code, but because it was an idea whose time had come.

When you stop just writing code, and actually come up with a great idea, even the best coder in the world will need to write the code out as fast as he or she can, for the simple pleasure of seeing their idea actually take form.

There is a myth doing the rounds which suggests there is always time for a rewrite, but practice suggests that the people who have one good idea usually have better things to do - and are often on to their next good idea. Plus, no-one ever thanks you for a re-write.

Re:Robbins *cannot* code

[Hackeron]

Yes, I agree with you 100% - Robbins is a fantastic project manager, gentoo to this day has bar none the best documentation of any opensource project I've seen and to get a Linux distribution off the ground like that with over 100 competing, Robbins is a great man.

I was responding to the comments of "he must be such a sharp coder", his code is quite possibly the worst python code I've ever seen, hacking portage was just painful.

Re:Robbins *cannot* code

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure how fair it is to blame Daniel for portage. He wrote a small fraction of it and was hands-off of it the last couple years he was with Gentoo.

Re:Robbins *cannot* code

[wolf31o2]

A lot of this is really true, but it isn't just because of Daniel. Lots of the portage code was thrown together very hastily. Most of the features were tacked on, without any concept of how much of a mess it was making the code. The current portge team has been working to rectify this situation, but it is very hard to do when you have something like portage and must keep backwards compatibility while still keeping yourself sane. There was the portage-ng project which was supposed to be this miraculous re-write that simply never happened because ti was damn near impossible. The guys are trying to clean things up and make it more usable, as well as more modular and better designed (yeah, they actually have a design for it). I expect it to take a long time to get portage cleaned up, but at least it is being worked on by some good people.

Re:Robbins *cannot* code

[Anonymous Coward]

He wrote the whole thing, then it was hacked further the last few years - I'm sure parent is talking about around the gentoo 1.2 days where Daniel was the lead developer of portage, I was there, I saw the mess :(

Bad case of 'The morning After...'

[Anonymous Coward]

cotton mouth, groggy, dirt on your clothes...
"what the hell am I doing a Microsoft"

Not to be contrary...

[ElboRuum]

But, I'll indulge, just a little. Now -- according to you, the everyone was seething about drobbins leaving for MSFT. It wasn't like that, we were all disappointed that drobbins had to end up at a place where we figured he wouldn't be happy and that was it.

Well, not according to me, since what I said was a reply to someone else's insinuation. Nevertheless, I won't divest myself from your statement in this regard. I've had enough friction with the Linux faithful to know that certainly some must feel like he was a sellout. I would like to believe your assessment as you've mentioned, because, well, it's a great deal more positive, however, Billy hasn't been rendered as Locutus because the Linux or Mac community is known for its fairness where MS is concerned.

A conversation heard in the lab

[Bloater]

PHB: "So, you're persuing technical excellence today?"
DR: "Yep"
PHB: "Same as yesterday?"
DR: "Yep"
PHB: "Still compiling is it?"

Drama Queen

[Anonymous Coward]

If ever there was a coder Drama Queen, Daniel Robbins is the epitome. Geeze. (Tho Gentoo rocks)

I would disagree

[jd]

It depends too much on context to be easily categorized. I would argue that people drawing up specifications and designs should not be concerned at all with new technologies, because specifications should be implementation-independent. I would argue that QA people should certainly use proven methods, as they have to be certain WHERE problems are introduced, and that requires limiting the number of variables. Again, with maintenance Software Engineers, mix-n-match of new ideas with old designs is often not a good idea unless it significantly simplifies things.

For original authors, however, the ONLY consideration beyond implementing ALL of the requirements in full, should be to keep the software as simple. Anything - anything at all - that complicates the implementation unnecessarily should be banned. (Necessary complications would include maintenance considerations, probable future extensions, etc.)

If, for any reason, you find that the best way to get from specification to the simplest, most elegant final product is to write in C, you would write in C. If, when applying the same test, you find the optimal solution is to write in PHP, write in PHP. If Occam would prove to be perfect, use Occam. Hammers are great for nails, you DON'T use them to cut wood, no matter how much experience you have with hammers. The right tool for the right job, first, last and ALWAYS. No exceptions.

Yes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop singing out of key and get back to work!

There is more valuable knowledge that frustrates.

[cerebis]

While learning about bleeding edge tools will always be one form of knowledge (and a bottomless one), it doesn't speak greatly of a programmers judgement if they're regularly attempting to employ the latest tool in whatever project they happen to be working on, being denied by the project management and then getting frustrated. To me that says junior developer.

Sure, there will be instances where something new fulfills a need that simply isn't addressed by older tools, but real examples of that are rather rare. What is a more commonplace source of frustration, and one where the knowledgable person should really find it unbearable, would be thing such as honestly having substantially better design skills that the project's designers.

If you have a great deal of design experience and recognize the weaknesses in a particular design, but you're hired simply as an implementer and told repeatedly to "just implement what we've got", you're going to get frustrated and in this case that frustration is justified.

I think that is probably a better analogy with this person. Hired as an educator sounds like extremely nebulous and hands off role. Someone who founds a Linux distribution is going to be a hands on sort of guy. If all you can only watch the other kids on the swing set, you're going to get sick of it.

You shoulda seen it coming.

[Stumbles]

'I wasn't able to work at my full level of technical ability and I found this frustrating'"

I hope he wasn't really expecting Microsoft to use his full potential for of all things, Linux.

He actually took a new job

[MikeSty]

... working with his cousin Baskin'

Why is this an article?

[psyki]

Let me get this straight. Employee goes to work for Company, finds Work is not exactly what he wants, leaves Company.

Again, why is this an article? Just because the employee is recognized in the Open Source arena? Because Microsoft was the employer? Maybe if there was something controversial about his experience at Microsoft, or at least interesting it would qualify.

+1 INSIGHTFUL

[Anonymous Coward]

But people who point it out get regularly modded into oblivion. :-(

How many people...

[Anonymous Coward]

...actually use Gentoo? If they all chipped in *one dollar* a year a piece, how much cash is that, if it went to the founder so he wouldn't have had to go to MS? That's what I never understood, why exactly did he leave in the first place, just money? Or something else? If it was money, well, shame on the gentoo guys for being cheapskates. If it was something else, what again?

it's called GeNToo

[a.d.trick]

http://gentooexperimental.org/nt/

Re:To be contrary...

[wolf31o2]

This is pretty close to the truth. Amongst the Gentoo developers, the general consensus was "Well, he has to eat, doesn't he?"

Daniel didn't leave Gentoo for Microsoft. Daniel had already left Gentoo. It just happens that he kept himself low on the radar until his job at Microsoft, which spawned this giant set of conspiracy theories from the uneducated on the matter. As far as Gentoo was concerned, it was a non-issue. Daniel is a good guy and we all wished him luck. There were no harsh feelings and nobody that had a clue what was going on thought that the sky was falling. It was pretty much the same sensationalist jackasses that make a big deal out of everything that made a big deal about Daniel's "defection" to Microsoft.

Oh my gawd.... somebody important finds....

[3seas]

Microsofts pervasively integrated and well manifested "user frustration function"....

Re:Yeah right

[MrHat73]

I reckon theres a need for a Windoze screensaver that has flying chairs instead of Windows....

oh my...

[nkeric]

I used to think MS want daniel to bring something similiar to gentoo's portage (package management system) to windows world...

Quick to judge

[kylef]

Contrary to popular opinion, Microsoft does hire lots of *nix people. But you aren't going to be doing cutting edge work.

I suppose working with Anders Hejlsberg on the C# compiler is boring, eh? And writing a Bluetooth stack for Windows Mobile devices... that's probably as boring as implementing Quicksort now, isn't it? Or working on the new Visual Studio Team System source control software... that's cake, since we all know how to implement a simple, scalable revision control system, right?

Here's a thought. Maybe -- just maybe -- your brief interview experience did not expose you to some of the cutting edge work that Microsoft is doing...

They don't even use C++. No, I don't mean they use C#. They use C and lots of reference-counted pointers. No STL at all. Windows is really pretty ugly inside. If you are programmer with very high standards, you aren't going to like it.

Thousands of software engineers working on C code are collectively rolling their eyes right now.

If you think that "high standards" require use of C++ and the STL, then you might want to rethink why you didn't get that offer. Here's a hint: software engineering is not about the language, but how you use it.

Unless they've rewritten it lately, the Linux kernel is written in C. BSD is C as well. In fact, most modern operating systems were written (and are now extended and maintained) in C. I suppose your conclusion about Windows applies to those systems as well?

Oh wait, I almost forgot... while interviewing, you had a chance to skim all 50+ million lines of code in Windows and determine that they were ugly. I guess we'll just take your word for it, then.

Re:To be contrary...

[Mitiaj]

As far as I know Microsoft rules, Dan will not speak out his MS experience until 3-5 years passes. The pay a lot of money to their lawyers for guys like him to keep their mouth closed. I can only imagine what crap they wanted him to do.

Oh come on!

[kmartshopper]

You mean he wasn't able to actually use his abilities to optimize a Linux install during the TCO studies to help it perform up to par with Microsoft's OS?

I mean who needs anything higher than a stock 2.2.19 kernel and NO USE FLAGS?

I'm surprised he made it out alive!

Compare with his previous job;

[Progman3K]

Going from working on the coolest Linux distro ever to working on something as bloated as Windows IS frustrating.

Good luck in whatever you do, Daniel!

My apologies to Mr. Robbins

[Hosiah]

I was quite harsh on Daniel Robbins when he left to "join the enemy". It now appears that this may have better outcomes than if he'd stayed at Gentoo the whole time. And paying job or not, you can't tell me he won't at least peek in on Gentoo on the side from time to time...

Now all he has to do is dig the Borg sockets out of his skull...

Huh?

[typical]

Contrary to popular opinion, Microsoft does hire lots of *nix people. But you aren't going to be doing cutting edge work. They don't even use C++. No, I don't mean they use C#. They use C and lots of reference-counted pointers. No STL at all. Windows is really pretty ugly inside. If you are programmer with very high standards, you aren't going to like it.

Uh...

You know, I have to say that there is just about zero necessary connection between the language you are using and whether or not your work is "cutting edge".

I suspect that if you're writing Java, you're more likely to be writing server-side code or front ends, and if you're writing C, more likely to be systems coding. Do you not think that systems coding has new and interesting ideas present? The residents of LKML would probably disagree.

I also can't figure out why the STL would be necessary to do "cutting edge work". It's a just a decent utility library. There are many libraries like it. You could write one yourself.

As for Windows being ugly inside -- Windows is ugly *outside*. Win32 is an ugly API. I would be rather surprised if Windows' internals were stunningly beautiful.

/. never ceases to amaze me.

[tshak]

I know plenty of ex-MSFT employees who left to work for ISV's for various reasons. Just because you enjoy .NET development doesn't mean that you want to be working on a MSFT product. .NET development may not have even been the reason for joining this other company (actually, it probably had little to do with it). He probably found a great opportunity with an ISV that he finds interesting which also happens to utilize .NET as their platform.

The hacker and the artist

[typical]

I spent a lot of time on the forums and on the irc channels back then and I never heard anyone call him a traitor or other shit like that. It made us sad, not angry -- those of us who are adults understand that you need a job that pays and sometimes that means not working on OSS all day long.

I think that an awful lot of people would be very surprised how many of the hackers that write open source software have a day job in which they write closed source software. If someone wants to attack those hackers as "selling out" or a "traitor", it'd be kind of silly. Lots of hackers (I suspect the majority of hackers) write open source software because they want to make something *good* for themselves and their fellow hackers. They want to enjoy a world time pressures, bad administrative-level ideas, language and platform requirements are all just a bad dream, and they can create truly nifty stuff. It's not because they consider themselves soldiers in some crusade -- sure, it's a fun idea to play with, but it's not really why people spend their time working on something neat. Open Source just allows hanging out and showing off with other hackers, and making it easier for other hacker-types to give a hand.

Maybe a good analogy for hackery would be the guy who is a commercial graphic designer by day and an artist by night. All day he has to churn out relatively boring things for people who often come up with absurd requirements. He has to work under time pressure and doesn't have the freedom he'd like to experiment with his ideas. However, at night, he can try out his ideas, do really interesting stuff, and so forth. Just because he has to churn out bread-and-butter stuff doesn't mean that he can't legitimately explore at night.

Put simply, the hacker is the artist of the computer world.

Since he refused to be assimilated

[queenb**ch]

I guess we should start calling him Seven of Nine now?

2 cents,

Queen B

Re:In other news Google hires founder of Gentoo Li

[luther349]

with google planing there own linux distro that pretty dammed possable.

emerge unmerge Robbins;emerge sync;

[twoblink]

#USE="microsoft" emerge Robbins;

`/var/tmp/portage/Robbins-0.7.32.20030219/work/Rob bins0.7-0.7.32/plugins/Dan'
            make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
            make[1]: Leaving directory
`/var/tmp/portage/Robbins-0.7.32.20030219/work/Rob bins0.7-0.7.32/plugins'
            make: *** [all-recursive] Error 1

#emerge unmerge Robbins; emerge sync; sync; sync; shutdown -now

Re:Yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

why are you string interpolating a variable by itself?

Actually...

[SFSouthpaw]

his resignation doesn't take effect right at this moment. He merely typed: Take_This_Job_and_xor_Shove_It.sh
This launches an automated Gentoo install under Qemu. Upon completion of basic CLI install, vi is used to compose the final draft of the letter that will be copied into a new message created in a freshly compiled copy of pine, that will be sent to the TPC Project for Faxing to MS's H&R department, whose fax machine will promply crash...

Re:Self-Important, Classless Move

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, his Wikipedia article has had this info about him for about two weeks, so *some* people have known for a while...

win32 aint ugly! gtk is!!!

[cheekyboy]

Dude, win32 isnt bad.

There are many layers to it, from GDI to Winsock to MFC.

yes, some parts are just lots of macros in the include files, and some parts do feel like they
are half implemented, but at least its documented, unlike the crud gtk was in the past that was
slapped together at 4am.

At least win32 code written in 1995 still compiles and runs. Id like to see how many source distros in linux from 1995
will compile without complaining about redefined funcs/structs etc... even freebsd had issues.

X11 is probably more ugly/1970s

Daniel...

[tetabiate]

you didn't see any MS code, did you?

  - Anonymous Coward sig

Going to MSFT for better pay?

[SlashDev]

Are you telling me he couldn't get a job elsewhere that paid well? Pulleeeze. I know lest than half as much about Linux as he does, I make 75K/Year. He went to MSFT because he wanted to be part of something big, very big.

You know...

[ElboRuum]

Well, not saying you're wrong, but there really are other explanations.

1) If they exist only within my mind, then you didn't read any of the top-level replies under the 3 threshold. There's enough anti-MS invective in there for a claim of groupthink.

2) If a person wanted to refute my claim, all they would need to do is mod that up. In this regard, I fully expected to be modded up.

3) Or, in the most positive regard, there are those on this board who feel as I do about the inherent stupidity of the OS wars, and those vassals who frequently volunteer for service on either side, they're just the minority these days.

The fact is, you put a post like the original up, you'd swear you were on the banks of the Amazon watching piranha feed. Of course, you can obliquely claim the incipient fairness of Slashdotters if you want all while ignoring the seemingly infinite number of hackneyed jokes and hamhanded snipes even at the mere mention of MS if you like. Denial is the Internet's favorite antidepressant.

A little dated... but I'll reply anyway...

[ElboRuum]

Frankly, thats a load of horseshit, and if you don't know why I don't think there is anything anyone could say that could change your mind on the subject. If you like MS thats fine, but Linux people as a general rule don't and with good reason.

Let's take this one step at a time.

1) If I don't know why it is a load of horseshit means that anything anyone could say on the subject wouldn't be able to change my mind, well, that too falls into a pile of equine dung. I'm sure people have reasons, but they never seem to get halfway through explaining them without expressing some level of detestation for MS or its products. Honestly, I've never been able to understand the concept of loathing when it is applied to a tool that you have a choice to use or not use. It's as though that choice is not enough. You get the feeling that nothing short of burning or burial will be enough. Of course, I will entertain any reasonable explanation of the disgust/loathing/resentment if one was provided, but to date, no one has, as yet, really given one.

2) Like MS? Not really, I just don't have much against it. I don't have much against Linux or Mac either (other than the fanboyism I've seen, but that's not a failing of the OSes and/or products). That aside, I'd really love to hear the good reasons for the rancor.