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CEO of Red Hat Steps Down
bearer_of_bad_news points us to a C|net article which states that Matthew Szulik is stepping down as the president and chief executive of Red Hat. Szulik is citing family health reasons, and he plans to remain chairman of the board. Red Hat has indicated that his replacement will be former Delta Airlines COO James Whitehurst. Quoting the article:
"On a conference call, Szulik said Whitehurst stood 'head and shoulders' above other candidates interviewed in a recruiting process. He was a programmer earlier in his career and runs four versions of Linux at home."
We discussed Szulik's ascension to CEO back in 1999.
> He was a programmer earlier in his career and runs four versions of Linux at home.
Unfortunately he's using Gnome as his desktop!
I remember the 1999 article about Szulik rising to CEO level. Since then Red Hat has done alot and have become very successful in their business model.
Not to mention making a rival in Oracle after buying JBoss, so in retaliation we see Unbreakable Linux.
And despite Novell's best efforts and prostituting themselves out to Microsoft we still see Red Hat in the #1 position.
Red Hat will do great without him (a company after all is bigger than one man) but we have seen a company growing so well under his leadership and that speaks volumes
Make SELinux enforcing again!
is that a euphemism for "he plans to pull off a Reiser"?
Actually Fedora IS one of them ... See http://spevack.livejournal.com/40827.html.
It means the board told him if he didn't step down, his family would soon be in very poor health.
The worst Airline i've ever traveled on and sadly their customer service, from top to bottom; is horrid. There are even fully dedicated sites describing how bad the service is. Hell, just see for yourself. Seeing as the COO's job is to make sure that said Corporation or company is operating to serve it's customers at the behest of the almighty dollar. I have a very strong feeling that Redhat is in for an extremely bumpy ride. I'm actually really sad to read that this appointment is going to take place. It's hard not to hold Delta's performance against him really.
I can just feel the energy as RedHat hatters relish the words that they are soon to release upon Slashdot.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
The former head of an airline to take over the reigns at ???.... that makes about as much sense as letting the former head of an airline take over the reigns at .
Oh... wait...
It's funny reading the old discussion about the CEO's ascension...
"More Alpha support!" "YellowDog is good enough for PPC!" "Alpha users need to band together!"
Heh.
OMG! Wau!
No wait, what?!? You're kidding right? The idea that the new CEO might not be a Linux user, or might not run Red Hat software is so plausible that the confirmation that he is a "Linux user" is seen as noteworthy? What the heck? Would they consider putting someone in that position who was "a Mac user" or "a Windows user" or even "sometimes uses Linux?"
I know very little about Jim, but geez, the idea that it could be any other way makes me shudder to think.
Yes. I shudder when I think. I think it is a venereal disease I got from fsking a penguin.
Back in my day when we chiseled our bits into stone and sent them by mule train from village to village...
Remember when this happened? Interesting choice bringing in a manager whose company experienced a very publicized computer crash during his tenure. Hopefully Mr. Whitehurst carries forward some of the lessons learned from that experience.
Actually, this is a good question. I'm a bit worried because Matthew is a "Linux person". I had the chance to meet him when he come to Bloomington and he has been with Red Hat since the mid 90s and has been a Linux user all this time. I doubt the same could be said for the Delta guy, but maybe not?
I imagine that it really is family reasons. That's too bad. He was really leading the company into global markets and was meeting with some very important people around the world.
Or maybe it means family health reasons... it's always hard to tell.
Seeing as he plans to remain chairman of the board, that seems doubtful
5 posts and no reigns-REINS correction yet? Yeesh.
Seriously, though, can someone translate Szulik's last little bit of CEO-speak for me?
"When there is zero expectation of financial remuneration, everything is Hollywood."
I'm speaking as somebody who saw how close-up how the executive level worked at Red Hat for two years. I saw a lot of bad decisions that were made systematically, dooming Red Hat to a mere niche in the software market.
Red Hat passed up a lot of opportunities, all to satisfy the MBAs and their cronies who took over during Szulik's reign and eased out the founding generation. The problem was that the company became obsessed by meeting financial goals in the short term instead of using their good will and war chest to make deeper, longer term plays to become open source providers for every major software category. Hal Covert (briefly Red Hat CFO) understood this, and Szulik punted him - Covert was probably Red Hat's last chance for greatness.
That's the reason that their stock price has been stagnant for four years - because Red Hat became a predictable, by-the-numbers company that was incapable of making the kind of bold moves that (for example) Google makes. Because he behaved like an accountant instead of an entrepreneur, Szulik squandered Red Hat's future just to find a stable financial base for the present. Worse, he did it at a time when the market was forgiving long term plays left and right, even after the 2000 tech crash. His leaving is about 6 years too late, Red Hat could have been a software giant bringing open source methodology to the entire industry, instead of a mere provider of support for enterprise Linux.
No wait, what?!? You're kidding right? The idea that the new CEO might not be a Linux user, or might not run Red Hat software is so plausible that the confirmation that he is a "Linux user" is seen as noteworthy? What the heck? Would they consider putting someone in that position who was "a Mac user" or "a Windows user" or even "sometimes uses Linux?"
Seeing as you are commenting on my blog post, let me concur with you:
*I* think it would be insane to hire someone to be Red Hat's CEO who isn't a Linux user. But I am just one Red Hat employee. Keep in mind the perspective -- shock that the CEO of your company is stepping down, and sadness because he's a great leader who everyone respects. So hearing "not only is the new guy a Linux user, but he knows and uses Fedora" would make you smile at that moment.
That is all.
I worked for Red Hat from 2001-2004, and I will say that Matthew Szulik is a good man. He is one of those types that remembers everyone in the room, and remembers your name even though you haven't spoken to him for weeks or months. It was a crazy time, taking the company through the transition from start-up to 'real' company. His emails were sometimes non-sequitir stream of conciousness things, but at other times were very visionary and helpful.
It was great to work for a company where everyone felt they were on a mission-- good times, good times.
Good Luck, Mr Szulik.
davejenkins.com |
I've always understood 'Family Reasons' to mean he wanted to quit, and 'To explore other opportunities' was 'don't let the door hit you on the ass'.
AccountKiller
Many CEOs appear more like lawyers or salesmen/women. They may be very smart, but don't strike me as technical minded.
Running 4 different distributions of Linux implies a fair bit of technical knowledge, more than Windows and Mac usage. I find that I use more console commands in Linux than the other operating systems, and to know those commands requires reading man pages or other documentation, something that the average user may not do.
Each distribution of Linux can have different configuration commands and nuances. You may know how to configure the sound card on one distribution but another distribution can be totally different.
Linux comes pre-installed on only a few PCs, and I am going to assume the four systems didn't come with Linux. Most of the time you have to install and often configure it which is (and lets be honest) can be more difficult than Windows or Mac OS.
The bottom line is I don't know of many CEO type people that use Linux at home. I don't think the CEO of my company could do anything productive with Linux without significant help from technical staff, much less install and configure it at home for personal use.
I think the CEO candidate of a Linux company using Linux at home is noteworthy, relevant, and interesting.
"Tempt not a desperate man" - Willy S.
He probably can't afford RHES even with his employee discount.
JTF: In your heart, you know we're right.
The next version of Red Hat Linux will ...
- No longer come with any entertaiment software.
- Have nice icons and background that cost extra, and
- Be delayed from original release date because...
- there will be a major restructuring, while
- all the programmers go on strike.
Chuck Norris doesn't run four versions of Linux at home.
All versions of Linux run from Chuck Norris.
Bringing in talent from outside your industry has worked quite well in the past..
Lest you forget what IBM did in 1993, by bringing in a former CEO of AMEX and RJR Nabisco.. http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/biography/10153.wss I wouldn't mind seeing RedHat duplicating IBM's turnaround, and becoming a $150B company.
Nothing hidden here I dont think. profits are up 12% this quarter per usual This company really has its stuff together IMO i hope it continues to without Szulik who was a big reason for the companys direction.
-- "of course thats just my opinion, I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
The translation of Szulik from Russian is "crook" In Soviet Russia, ...
Here's hoping he can do for Red Hat what he did for Delta. No, wait, that didn't come out right
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
Another great guy from Red Hat is Bob Young who went on to start LULU.com. This guy really groks the whole "open source" thing. Since I've built my million-dollar business on the back of RedHat Linux, I can say with complete honesty, I really appreciate their efforts!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Indeed, if 'family health reasons' was a euphemism for something, he wouldn't be left on the board, especially not as chairman. No, it looks like this is exactly what it appears to be: Szulik has a family member with health issues that require Szulik's full attention. This is presumably a very sad and difficult situation, one that we wouldn't wish on anyone.
The only consolation, and a very partial one at that, is that Szulik has the financial means to indeed leave his job and devote himself to doing his best for his family.
Nano has a very discoverable interface. With the other terminal mode editors, you have to go through the docs, etc;just to save (or even edit) the file you're working on. In nano the necessary shortcuts ar right there on the status line. It saved from having to reinstall windows and just give up on this "free software" stuff, more than once. I still haven't got the key bindings for emacs or vi down yet.
Crap. What did the new CSS do with the "Post anonymously" option??
...after all these years he still can't find his sister and her health is detiriorating. I hear she's supposedly somewhere around the Den though. Well, good luck Sulik!
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
What is the one thing that Open Source needs to take over the world sooner rather than later? Government funding. And what is the *one* thing that airline bigwigs are good at? Getting government funding (in the form of bailouts, etc.). Even Microsoft's budget is dwarfed by the budget of the U.S. Federal Government!
A new CEO of RH using four versions of Linux at home is interesting. But, if I were an investor, I would prefer that he ran one or one version of Linux, a recent (preferably a server version) version of Windows, a recent version of Mac (ideally Leopard), a version of Open Solaris, and perhaps something out of the mainstream. RH's competitor is not other Linux version, it's Windows, Solaris, and perhaps AIX (and, on the desktop, perhaps Mac).
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Michael Dell?
Actually, no, Red Hat revenue and profit are way up, 20% and 39% respectively, mea culpa. Somebody mod parent into oblivion please. Red Hat is still growing just fine.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
How long has he run Linux at home? Is this something that has been going on for years, or something that he got someone to install after his second interview? Context means a lot here!
What about at work? How much Linux or other Open Source software has he worked with in his corporate life? That makes a big impact on seeing things from the customer's point of view.
The one thing I'm really hoping is that he will bring fresh eyes to Red Hat and more focus on their core products instead of implementing $BUZZWORDOFTHEWEEK in each new release.
As a company, they've become very bad at accepting criticism and taking feedback on issues. They also need to spend some time working on their installer and their command line tools.
The fact that you can't do an LVM (or was it RAID?) install in text mode in one of the newer RHELs really bugged me. The fact that they told me the command line tools were not a focus and would never be able to do everything the GUI tools did just scared me witless. Apparently their corporate strategy is to sell you Satellite (at GBP8k + per seat licensing) and for you to manage your boxes through that, hence the lack of focus on command line tools.
Contrast this with SLES where everything you can do in the GUI version of YAST2, you can do in the text version as well. Telling Solaris admins that they have to run X on their new Linux boxes to be able to use the config tools is NOT a good way to win them over!
didn't delta airlines go bust or something?
signature is pants
This is grave news for an Operating System installed on the majority of the worlds Linux web servers, the OLPC, along with JBoss representing 25% (2005) of the Application Server market?
his replacement will be former Delta Airlines COO James Whitehurst.
Now that means all your cron jobs will run late and RedHat will stop giving out those little packages of peanuts.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Now if the CTO didn't run Linux we'd have a problem.
In an ideal world, I would agree with you. But finding a CEO which knows and make use of Linux must be practically impossible. If it wasn't for James Whitehurs, Red Hat would have a hard time finding someone else from the outside. Of course, you can always pick someone from the inside, but you reduce substantially the pool of people who have CEO qualities.
Remember the year 2000? They promised us flying cars. They delivered the PT Cruiser...
Now if the CTO didn't run Linux we'd have a problem.
But Red Hat's business is tech. If he didn't know anything about Linux or open source he'd be unsuited for the job. Risk of cultural mismatch, for one thing.
Female Prison Rape in NY
Red Hat is a business and is selling a product. What operating system the CEO runs is irrelevant as long as he knows how to market a product and keep a company afloat. In fact, maybe it would be a good thing to diversify Red Hat a little more and bring some of their enterprise products to other platforms like Windows and MacOS since the Linux market isn't really growing as fast as anyone had hoped. By embracing Windows and MacOS they could open new markets to their enterprise offerings.
Maybe it's like in Socialist countries, where you could go from General Secretary of the Communist Party and Head of the Armed Forces, to General Secretary of the Communist Party, to Chairman of the People's Assembly, to Assistant Deputy Chair of the North Siberian Republic People's Assembly, to prisoner number 14856734 in People's Reformation Of Incorrect Thoughts Through Death Camp Number 8763, North Siberia.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
And you probably can't afford a whopper with the employee discount?
"If you plant ice, you're gonna harvest wind."
In retrospect, Redhat has been a well run company and continues to do some impressive work. I think we're all better off because of some of the hard decisions Szulik made during his tenure as CEO. My initial thoughts when I read the headline were "what if we get some idiot who plays into MSFT patent-pact trap". Having RTFA, I'm confident that Whitehurst isn't an idiot.
Of course, you can always pick someone from the inside, but you reduce substantially the pool of people who have CEO qualities.
The other problems with promoting from within are:
1) You now have another job vacancy to fill, and presumably are losing someone very good at their job (otherwise, why promote them?)
2) There will probably be resentment from his new subordinates who were his former peers. This can lead to people leaving, and sometimes can cause the new boss to overdo the 'alpha dog' thing as he tries to gain their respect/obedience.
Of course, there can be advantages to an inside promotion, but one has to recognize the problems too.
do i need to explain further ?
Read radical news here
"runs four versions of Linux at home"
:P
Oh yeah ? Well I run four versions of Windows and two Macs on top of my Linux!
Seriously, web development is the worst job evar.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Do we talk about the same Delta Air Lines that once employed Ellen Simonetti, who was fired for material on her blog that the company found inappropriate? Of course this does not mean anything bad about their COO, but I would be interested to hear his opinion on the blogger's incident, if he has an opinion (however, it probably was an issue outside his area of work). Anyway. Good to know the new CEO is a GNU/Linux user, and I wish them well.
"What operating system the CEO runs is irrelevant as long as he knows how to market a product and keep a company afloat."
Of course, a Redhat CEO who didnt run Linux would most likely be utterly incapable of marketing to that segment, and thus fail to keep the company afloat. Witness the multitude of spectacular failures at various other companies.
"In fact, maybe it would be a good thing to diversify"
Yes, that would be an example of the kinds of errors that lead to spectacular failures. Redhats customers aren't Redhat customers because they want a generic blend of proprietary crapplications. They could get that from any number of other vendors.
It is also worth noting he actually did his undergrad in Computer Science and Economics. MBA from Harvard, Linux user, not too shabby for the role.
[alk]
It also gives you more credibility when dealing with other CEOs:
Potential customer: I don't know. This all seems so complicated.
Linux-using CEO: But it's not! I even use it at home!
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I kinda find these statements kinda funny and kinda sad. A company that is growing slightly should just close up shop because its not good enough. A company should grow exponentially forever!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I agree more or less. I would be a little concerned as a shareholder that he uses 4 versions of Linux at home, since he's supposed to be the CEO and not a tech geek. The techies should do the engineering and development, the businessmen should run the business, and hopefully both know how to contribute and avoid interfering with the other.
On the other hand, I don't think his OS choice is irrelevant since he's going to head up an OS company. He should be familiar with the product *as a user*. He should come into his new office, immediately log in to his RH desktop with access to all of his services on the RH servers. If he has a issue, he should call the internal help desk like a regular user.
Of course, he should fire the first tech who answers a problem with "Just edit this file..."
I'm sorry, my original post is a "troll" exactly how?
by removing one olive from each programmers lunch every day!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
"Red Hat purchases Microsoft patent license"
Anyone want to guess at the odds of that?
Linux, or at least Ubuntu, is improving, and the "hard-to-install" myth is falling apart. If you haven't done an install recently, I'd give it a shot. And the myth that Windows XP is all flowers and rainbows to install isn't true either - if you actually install XP, not just do the little configuration-on-first-bootup routine on a computer with XP preinstalled, it's ugly.
You all have Oo.o and Firefox, so get World Wind.
...and this is precisely what RedHat has done by dropping their open products.
I use the closed, licensed server products from RedHat at work, but they are on none of my home systems, none of my friends' small business systems, and they are nowhere to be seen in my life outside of the corporate environment.
Contributions aside, I can see how they could be completely forgotten by most of the Linux community, and this is precisely what they wanted.
Add this to several unwise actions that many in the industry perceive as attacks, and I'm not so sure that the billion dollar market cap is feasible.
I still own RedHat stock from the IPO, but Larry Ellison is going to figure out how to dissolve RedHat eventually. It may take time, because this style of game is new to him, but the fist of the giant will eventually fall.
Oh goodie. Now will the next CEO suddenly have a boner for MS and sign a pact? Google the "new" **vell and **rel folks prior to MS dealings and the respective positive pacts.
Yes, he did a tremendous amount of good. But let's not forget the debacle that came after RH9. Sure, we've got Fedora now. But only after a large outcry against their switch in policy in going towards the Enterprise releases.
Now, these releases have been pretty good. But the 5.0 release truly sucks in critical ways. Diskdump has been completely dropped, and the replacement (kexec/kdump) is completely broken on x86_64. If you're depending on RH for mission critical crash dumps on 64-bit machines, you are completely and totally screwed.
Yes, I know, this is following the general kernel.org approach. But RedHat has their name on making Linux a success in the Commercial space here, and they are completely dropping the ball.
It gets even worse with the 5.1 release. I just brought up a 5.1 kernel to try it out, and it immediately panic'd on booting. The e1000 driver of all things. This was trying to initialize the second NIC port, when there's no cable attached. C'mon, the e1000 driver is (or has been) superb. How in the world can one muck this up?
Anyway, my point is that RH is seriously falling off lately. You have to wonder what's really going on there, and whether this is part of why he's leaving.
I hope his replacement can surmount these problems (I'm certainly depending upon him). But I very strongly doubt that this guy has any clue at all about what it takes to run a professional software company. Instead, the impression that I get is that some PHB with an MBA is coming in, and will run things by the numbers, instead of the technology required.
I'm really sorry to say that, but this fiasco with 5.[01] has really caused me problems and unexpected wasted time.