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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.
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!
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.
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...
but is he Emacs or Vi ?
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...
Hatters? Yes, Yes all of our haberdashers are always very excited about any story mentioning stylish hattery.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
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.
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
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.
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.
but is he Emacs or Vi ?
The answer is almost certainly an unequivocal "Yes."
The only thing you need to learn in Emacs is C-h C-h (hold down the control key and tap 'h' twice).
The uber-help menu will take you where you need to go.
When befuddled, M-x doctor (Alt-x, then type 'doctor' in the mini-buffer) will call up Eliza, the built-in doctor.
Can't confirm if this is really Dr. Eliza Spaceman (spuh-chay-man), the parent of Dr. Leo Spaceman on 30 Rock, but it is fun to speculate.
With service like this, how can these pagan infidels denigrate the Esteemed Mother Amongst Computer Software?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
You, Sir, clearly have no idea whatsoever what you are talking about.
One of the major reasons why Red Hat will soon become $1Bn+ revenue company is the fact that they invested so much into community through Fedora Project. Everybody and their dog bitch about RH product line discontinuation, forgetting that the code base has been split into two superior products, unparalleled in the Linux world. Slowly but steadily Fedora has largely been put back to community care. Community that has learned A LOT from Red Hat and gave back enormous amount of code improvements to various upstream projects. CentOS is there, too - another proof of how much Red Hat Inc. actually care.
They know what they are doing. If they say that James Whitehurst is culturally good fit, I believe them.
hate Redhat? no, i can not hate Redhat, Redhat-7.1 was my first taste of Linux, i thought it was the greatest thing since the invention of the lightbulb, or peanutbutter & sliced bread (you get my point), by the time Redhat-7.3 was released i seen Redhat was targeting a different audience than what i was, Redhat seemed more interested in providing a product for businesses (enterprise & corporate desktops & servers), i was just a hobbyist that loved the PC, and grown tired of ms-windows vulnerabilities and other malware shenanigans (basically windows is a dirty racket), so i start hunting for a distro to call home and found Slackware, been a happy slacker ever since = has excellent out of the box development tools making it easy to rebuild & install a customized vanilla kernel & just about any other application i desire to rebuild, makes a great audio/video & graphics desktop/workstation for me, whew! glad i did not have to blow a couple of grand on a Macintosh...
- my other brain doesn't know good spelling and grammar either...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
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?
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
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
Obviously you have a boulder-sized chip on your shoulder about them, and lots of opinions about their inner workings.
Either (a) you work for them and have an issue. Or (b) you don't work for them and are a FUD spreading dipshit.
Trackball users will be first against the wall.
"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
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]