Slashdot Mirror
History of Slashdot Part 3- Going Corporate
Nobody had ever heard of Andover, and from our perspective, that was kind of the point. We had talked to companies that sold Linux distributions as well as a number of web network type organizations, but at the end of the day, we decided that we had to go with someone that would guarantee us editorial independence, and not create serious conflicts of interest by forcing us to favor some particular distribution. Likewise we didn't want to get into a situation where we were 'just part of a network' using all our stories to plug other network sites. Andover was not really a Linux company, so we were able to get a deal that met our needs.
I vividly remember the day we closed the deal. We went to some law firm high up in a huge skyscraper in Boston. Hemos & I signed papers lined from one end of a conference table to the other, along with Bruce (the pres of Andover). After that we went to the boston aquarium for a bit, and went out to dinner with the entire Andover staff at some seafood place that apparently is well known but I'm not a boston person so I don't really know what it was. I remember wanting to just read my email and being incredibly uncomfortable the whole time. I've never been a good person dealing with meatspace crowds. I was on the verge of panic the whole night. I had scallops and tried to smile and be polite when I just wanted to hide in the corner. I've still never really dealt with my ability to deal with crowds.
Following the sale, I found out what it meant to work for a large company. I joined the board of directors of Andover, but soon after realized that corporate boards are probably not the best place for me to spend my time. During that time we hired Jamie, Timothy, Michael and the company hired Pudge, Wes, and a number of other folks who initially worked for other parts of the company, but later came to work for Slashdot. Also we were able to give a paycheck to people who had, up until this point volunteering for Slashdot. Among them was Jon Katz who continued to write for us for a number of years until he decided it was time to write about dogs instead.
Besides an HR department, health insurance, 401k, and that other stuff, having a large corporate backer made a number of things possible. We actually migrated from just 2 boxes to like a half dozen. We chewed through a number of load balancing techniques and were able to scale up from a half a million to multiple million daily page views. We spent literally years getting by on minimal hardware. We spent years optimizing the code, adding layer after layer of caching. I still have mixed feelings on this matter. Had the corporate overlords given us a dozen machines, we could have been free to write a lot of new user features during that time. But instead we used the same database for nearly 5 years.
For me the biggest transition was offloading tasks to other people. With people on payroll, I was able to finally have engineers working on things instead of me doing most everything by myself. It took several years before I trusted the staff enough to take away my own CVS access, a decision that is really necessary. For years I was (fairly) mocked by Slashdot readers for my terrible way of developing code- I'd just write the code live on the site. When it worked, I'd just overwrite the old code live with almost no testing. On several occasions a typo resulted in a hundred emails in my box with readers reporting that Slashdot was no longer compiling. Under the corporate umbrella there was CVS committing, rollbacks, and scheduled deployment of code. I still get impatient with all this overhead to this day, but I know everyone prefers it this way. It's better, but it's definitely less 'Fun'.
Around this time a box arrived on our doorstep containing a bunch of glasses and t-shirts. They were unusual because they were clever and of good quality. When you do this long enough you really can tell when you're getting garbage, and when the people behind the work are smart and clever. The website was ThinkGeek. I brought them to Andover and pushed to have us acquire them. I shoulda got a commission off that deal... now they have like 30 employees and do millions of dollars in business. Most of the people that started the thing are still there (just like Slashdot!) and they are still doing great things (also just like Slashdot!) I still feel a strange connection to ThinkGeek... I think of them as my younger sibling... except that while I sit in the back of the class or maybe play on the chess team, they are starters in all the sports teams and get straight A's.
My first, last, and hopefully only ever COMDEX was in Las Vegas (although I went to Vegas countless times since for fun- NYC, Las Vegas and Tokyo are the 3 cities I love to visit). We had a crazy booth. It was absolutely huge, with bean bags and a plasma TV. ThinkGeek had this little niche in the corner. We had nerf guns. We had a install race- VA gave us a few machines, and we had people race to install Linux distributions on them. Patrick Volkerding. himself represented Slackware, and his machine had a faulty CD drive. It was hysterical watching him come in last. Some (shall remain nameless) distribution had a booth across the aisle from us, and speakers that were inappropriately loud. They would have constant presentations that were deafening throughout the conference hall. So we hooked up our own speakers and starting yelling at them and telling them their distribution sucked and making fun of their catch phrases... after you'd heard the speech 50x, it was pretty easy to mock. At least it was a distro nobody liked in the first place. My punishment for my bad behavior was catching the worst flu of my life. For some reason we flew into chicago, a 3 hour drive home. CowboyNeal and I were both on the verge of passing out, hallucinating with flu, singing at the top of our lungs just to say conscious.
Looking back, I think it interesting that the moment in my life where I most experienced the excesses of the dot com boom was followed by probably the single most terrible bouts of illness of my adult life. Kathleen took care of me for days as I couldn't leave the bed.
Along the way Andover went public in a dutch auction style IPO. I don't have much to say about it except that I think it was the right thing to do, even if long-term it didn't much work out for me personally nearly as well as I had dreamed at the time. No personal jet. No military style compound. But a nice house isn't a bad way to start off your adult life.
Just as I was getting used to flying to boston regularly for board meetings (and racking up crazy frequent flier mile status in the process, getting nearly constant first class upgrades) the 'Merger' between VA & Andover came along. I wasn't surprised when it happened, and at the time there was a lot that made sense. VA had SourceForge (and we had the competing Server 51 project) as well as Linux.com. There was a fairly intense rivalry between a number of people at the companies, although I never really felt it. The bubble that Slashdot has always tried to stay inside has insulated from corporate politics- something that is usually true today as well. I knew the contract we signed guaranteed me the editorial control Slashdot needed regardless of ownership, and I was confident enough in the leadership of VA that I would not have problems with people trying to wreck the site.
Of course all of this happened during the bubble burst where we all went from thinking we would retire by 30 to realizing that we might be broke and jobless within a year. I'm still amazed that Slashdot has survived. From Blockstackers, to Andover, to Andover.net, and then to VA Linux Systems to OSDN to VA Software to OSTG to SourceForge. I've had a lot of different business cards. The names have changed, and a few faces have changed as well, but the core the site, the attitude and spirit remain the same.
Part 4 will run next week where I'll talk more about present day Slashdot operations and philosophy.
Anybody know what happened to Michael?
He was one of the most abusive editors ever, using slashdot as his own personal blog, posting wrong stories, posting political articles that suited his viewpoints, and mod abused people who called him out.
One day, he mysteriously disappears into the ether without notice. Did the slashdot brass kick him to the curb?
And yet you read and post to it. Does that say more about Slashdot or about you?
Developers: We can use your help.
The occasional slashvertisment not withstanding. To be fair though, I'm sure those aren't corporately mandated which was the point of that sentence, just people (ab)using Slashdot to generate some traffic.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
Taco, as a fairly long-time reader and contributor of comments, let me add the following statement:
You gained something more important then that and that's despite all the pissing, moaning and shoveling dreck into your general direction: Credibility & integrity and that's not a bad feat after being scrutinized to hell and back for ten years.
Congratulations to the whole team!
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
So _that's_ why you guys had the cubicle walls at LWCE Javits 2k. ;)
And all this time I thought I was just blocking his stories!
For some people, this distracts from coding. For me, besides the initial learning curve, it doesn't. What distracts me most is pointless meetings, traveling to the other office, etc. With travelling and testing, sometimes a week goes by without touching any code.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
I note by your UserID# that you joined Slashdot exactly when it was exploding in membership, like when AOL gatewayed to the Internet. That ought to make you an expert in how Slashdot got worse when it went from "word of mouth" to mass popularity. But by the same token, not worth listening to your opinion about it. Especially when you're trashing a site you post to several times a day. Who's taking themself too seriously again?
--
make install -not war
Slashdot, specifically that it was worth enduring that jackass because the rest was so good. Besides, the inevitable flamewars in reaction to stories like "George Bush Admits Torturing Kittens" (when the linked article was about farm subsidies or something else totally unrelated) were usually pretty entertaining.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Ignore that. Discussion2 seemingly reparented your post to one about "whatever happened to Michael", and that's that I thought I was responding to.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
...CVS committing, rollbacks, and scheduled deployment of code. I still get impatient with all this overhead to this day
That's got to be more with the specific setup you had than with the philosophy in general, no? A good development sandbox setup where you can do dramatic changes, quickly test, and push to a generally stable live environment increases fun for most developers I know...
Does your significant other love shoes?
A Brief History of Slashdot Part 1, Chips & Dips
http://meta.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/02/1553218
A Brief History of Slashdot Part 2, Explosions
http://meta.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/10/1445216
Quite interesting.
What is interesting is your choice in corporate partners. I wonder if you ever regret not taking one of the other deals that might or might not have made you much more wealthy. Again: Might not have ;)
Just wanted to say thanks for the ongoing story of how /. got started up. I've been coming to this site at least 5-10 times a day since 2000 when I graduated HS and have yet to be disappointed in the material I find on the main page.
Keep up the fantastic work and I can't wait to see what the next 10 years has in store for /.!
-a
Are there any old timers here who might want to out the linux distro from comdex? That part has me very curious. I'm thinking some sort of Lindows-ish distro.
After that we went to the boston aquarium for a bit, and went out to dinner with the entire Andover staff at some seafood place that apparently is well known but I'm not a boston person so I don't really know what it was. I remember wanting to just read my email and being incredibly uncomfortable the whole time. I've never been a good person dealing with meatspace crowds. I was on the verge of panic the whole night. I had scallops and tried to smile and be polite when I just wanted to hide in the corner. I've still never really dealt with my ability to deal with crowds.
It was probably Legal Seafoods. That's right near the aquarium.
Whatever happened to the Slashdot PT Cruiser? Did someone win it? Did they drive it with the Slashdot logos on it?
Y'know, it's pretty easy to bash slashdot and I've been guilty of it myself from time to time. But, even with the trolls and vitriol that gets spewed here, compared to most sites, especially with sites that have issued a million plus accounts, Slashdot reads like de Tocqueville in comparison.
--- These are not words: wierd, genious, rediculous
It was Anthony's Pier 4, yo.
really? wow... that's reallywow.
Schnapple
Otherwise, I'm leaving this dot-com thing I'm doing and I'm shaving the rest of my hair off and becoming a Buddhist Monk!
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
> I've still never really dealt with my ability to deal with crowds.
i think he means _in_ability;-)
I've never been a good person dealing with meatspace crowds. I was on the verge of panic the whole night. I had scallops and tried to smile and be polite when I just wanted to hide in the corner. I've still never really dealt with my ability to deal with crowds.
and then...
(although I went to Vegas countless times since for fun- NYC, Las Vegas and Tokyo are the 3 cities I love to visit)
umm. because you are a masochist?
-- "Oh. This guy again."
"...one nobody had never heard of"
Does this mean if you have not heard of it, then you are a nobody? Or does it mean that it was generally unknown (assuming they meant ever instead of never).
Also, what is the deal with ending a sentence with "of"?
The correct answer is that Soviet Union delivers to YOU!
"...My first, last, and hopefully only ever COMDEX was in Las Vegas... We had a crazy booth. It was absolutely huge, with bean bags..."
I remember in the movie Revolution OS there was an interview with one of the Slashdot crew, at a tradeshow, in a beanbag chair... was that the same tradeshow? Which staffer was it?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I remember that booth. Not on the show floor, over in the 'Linux Pavillion' which, that year, was in a hotel attached to the LVCC. The BSD crew was there too. And the Caldera guys across the way making too much noise.
The only time I've met any of the /. crew IRL.
Best Slashdot Co
Why don't you go drink a big cup of ... oh... never mind.
...and still the nested page views doesn't work! (duplicate content over multiple pages) :D
taco sux0rs.
is there any waay to roll back the clock?
Good for us
And why?
Given your current Corporate Overlords (stock symbol LNUX, owners of linux.com etc.,) how do you feel about conflicts of interest?
The Online Slang Dictionary
I still have mixed feelings on this matter. Had the corporate overlords given us a dozen machines, we could have been free to write a lot of new user features during that time. But instead we used the same database for nearly 5 years.
So for the sake of six machines, how many potential features have been lost and how much of your time has been wasted writing boilerplate caching code? I feel furious reading this and think you / we've been seriously neglected by Anderson. It's like hiring Leonardo da Vinci and only allowing him six pencils a year. What miserly, penny pinching idiocy.
Does any one share my feelings here?
...rein in Katz on dogs!
*rimshot*
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
For those of you wondering where those dreams went, I give you a graph of VA/OSDN/Sourceforge's stock price.
Weren't you worth a couple hundred million at some point Taco?
(Note: I'm not trying to disparage or flame Taco, I'm just trying to use the graph illustrate to all the young-uns how insane dot-com bubble was. And people think the current housing bubble is bad!)
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
While this is offtopic, I don't see where else to post what the parent said. I agree that the new interface need work. It is too slow and some things don't look right.
/. doesn't become like Google about validation.
I think the all-minified.js script is too brutal for some browsers to load. It will also be a good idea to validate the site. That'll take care of the typical problems.
I just hope that
Now that's true love. (No joke. Taking care of a sick person is one of the least-fun things you can do.)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
We didn't gamble because most of us had enough math to know that ,in the long run, the House always Wins.
Best Slashdot Co