Alan Cox Leaves Red Hat

ruphus13 writes "Alan Cox — one of the lead Linux kernel developers at Red Hat — is leaving the company after 10 years and is heading to Intel, where he can focus on more low-level development tasks. Some are speculating whether this is indicative of a shift to a more 'application-centric' vision at Red Hat. From the article: 'Red Hat is integrating more application related, user- and enterprise-centric tools into its well-established "low-level," "core" development and support tools. It'd be more worrisome if Red Hat neglected to strike out in this direction. Cox was with Red Hat for ten years, and regardless of any suspected change of course within the company, that's a fair amount of time.'"

Comments

The best of luck!

[popoutman]

I wish Alan the best in his new position. Redhat have lost a great developer, and Intel have gained a fantastic resource. It's also great to see that the leaving was very amicable as well. This should be a win-win for Linux as a whole.

There is speculation...

[Chris_Jefferson]

Where does there always have to be speculation, from completely uninformed people? From my little knowledge of Alan Cox, from mailing lists, he always seems like the kind of guy who likes the lower-level details, and I imagine that few companies will be more interested in tweaking and improving the low levels than Intel. If they saw his obvious talent, and offered him a better job at better pay, then why not move? Alan Cox leaving Redhat doesn't have to say anything bad about them, maybe it says something good about Intel, and the things they are getting more involved in?

Re:There is speculation...

[Spoke]

Yep, that's exactly what I was thinking.

For as long as I've been following (and been ever so slightly involved in) Linux development, oh, say from the mid-late 90s, Alan Cox has nearly always been there hacking primarily on device drivers.

Intel has steadily picked up more Linux kernel hackers over the past 5 years or so who seem to focus on device drivers (e1000 NIC drivers) but also employ others who have very broad-based and deep knowledge of the kernel. Alan Cox seems to be a good fit with his long history of kernel development and focus on low-level drivers.

So good for Alan for changing things up a bit, and good for Intel for hiring another full-time Linux developer! Hopefully this leaves room for Red Hat to pick up another developer in his place.

Alan Cox is a Good Influence

[Sponge Bath]

What I have observed about Alan Cox in the lkml:
1. Does not buy into hero worship of kernel developers no matter how senior.
2. Does not get nasty when outsiders address him in the mailing list.
3. Is a champion of 'perfect is the enemy of the good' principle.
4. Does not froth at the mouth when someone mentions business reasons for needing a particular addition or change.

There are many on that list with big names that stumble on one or more of the above.

Re:Anyone care to speculate about his compensation

[timeOday]

My guess is, a bit north of $100K. The top of the engineering ladder is not all that high, and gurus don't make all that much more than bumblers with equal years of experience. (I'm not talking about RedHat in particular, just my observations of engineering in general.)

Re:Alan Cox?

[Tet]

I once met a girl at a party who said that her limited claim to fame in the geeky world was that she went to University with Alan Cox, the guy that wrote AberMUD. She was completely unaware of his fame in the Linux world...