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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'"
But I suppose, the more experience you get, the more frustrating it becomes!
Ian D. K. Kelly
idkk Consultancy Ltd.
"Quality through Thought"
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.
"Welcome to america, where we drive on parkways and park on driveways."
Sounds like they sucked his brain out and poured MS oatmeal in the hole. From TFA:
.NET on Windows.
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
Just junk food for thought...
FTA:
... to pursue his passion for software development with an independent software vendor where he will be focused on building in .NET on Windows ...
.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.
If he wanted to build
sarchasm
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.
ConsultingFair.com
"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.
after dodging chairs all day...
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.
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.
"...has left his job at Microsoft after only eight months."
Sheesh, he didn't even have enough time to finish compiling Gentoo once.
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.
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
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."
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.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
They probably made him use redhat enterprise and forced him to use the rpm-provided versions of software.
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
"Computers will never truly be free until the last windows user is strangled with the entrails of the last mac user."