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Alan Cox Exits Intel, Linux Development
judgecorp writes "Linux kernel developer Alan Cox has left Intel and Linux development after slamming the Fedora 18 distribution. He made the announcement on Google+ and promised that he had not fallen out with Linus Torvalds, and would finish up all outstanding work."
Also at Live Mint, which calls Cox's resignation notice a "welcome change from the sterility, plain dishonesty of CEO departure statements."
Cox says in that statement that he's leaving "for a bit," and "I may be back at some point in the future - who knows."
You know, grandma, Linux distro's are restaurants, where you can eat, but they also share their recipes in cookbooks(if you want): everybody has a bit different choice of the recipes they like, not all of them can be used with all kind of stoves ("Debian" can use most kinds of "stoves": i586, arm, ...) and
but all in all, the food served and the contents of those books is quite similar - as there are only so many recipes in the world.
In some of those restaurants you have to cook the food (or better said make it warm) yourself - e.g. at Gentoo's :-)
But he community there is lovely, and their help you.
The cooks that put together those recipes may not be the best in the world (not all of them are chefs in a restaurant with 5 Michelin stars),
but unlike those chefs, they believe in sharing the recipes.(and this really seems to be the best way, as in such a way the cheap, quite good quality food can get to the masses - see e.g. the current rise of the fastfood chain called Android.) And many of these cooks, give you even the meal for free, or cheaply.
The joy/price ratio is high, though maybe not for everybody.
(there are e.g. "snobs" who still prefer those "Michelin" restaurants. In last years, the one offering apple-only diet, is quite popular, providing visually very nicely served, but quite expensive meals
or there is still that, almost monopoly(with huged Windows), where they serve those very little pieces of food ("micro"), softly boiled :-)
Seasonal affective disorder is a serious problem at northern latitudes. Personally I've been much more productive and happy since I had my employer buy some full spectrum bulbs for the lights over my cube. It's probably the best investment they ever made since it was like $20 and they're already 3 years old, 3 winters of increased productivity has to worth over $100k.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
In his case, it definitely doesn't mean that. Having corresponded with him in the very early days of Linux, I found him to be supremely competent, surprisingly helpful (given his workload), and genuinely pleasant. None of those attributes align with your interpretation of the phrase.
I can't think of anyone who has given more to the Linux community than Mr. Cox - not even Linus, actually - and his departure will be felt immediately, and profoundly.
On the website of a business that Alan seems to run separately from his job at Intel, he had aldready mentionned familly illness. (http://www.ultima-models.co.uk/news.html). I guess this is the "familly reasons".
Alan Cox has already contributed enourmously to Linux but hopefully things will get better for him and his familly, and he'll be able to contribute even further :-)
Lately he has been trying to cover a bit the mess than Intel had done with the Poulsbo hardware (GMA500). As an owner of such a hardware, I'm very grateful for this. So I now wish him and his familly all the best in the hard time.
Oh please, like constant fracturing and duplication of effort is always a benefit.
Oh please, like there isn't massive duplication of effort in the closed source world. In fact, there is substantially more, because there is so much less code sharing.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"