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."

Comments

Great, more OSS fracturing

[crazyjj]

Mod this offtopic if you like, but this sort of situation always serves as a reminder to me of why the open source movement is at such a disadvantage and never seems to make any real progress. The open nature of OSS has always been cited as a strength of the movement. But it would be more accurate to say that it only encourages division, fracturing, and confusion.

Every time some individual developer or group of developers gets their panties in a bunch about something they disagree with, they take their ball, go home, and start yet another fork of whatever-the-fuck software. In the end, this doesn't result in creativity and innovation so much as a confusing cacophony of competing software and projects which never realize their full potential because half the development team got pissy in the middle of development and left. It's not only hopelessly confusing to consumers (just TRY explaining the concept of "distros" to your grandma sometime), but it make OSS feel like it's in a constant state of half-assed/never-finished/abandoned, as opposed to commercial software--where a central leadership maintains control (and controls people's salaries and the IP).

I know this is not a popular sentiment on /. (to say the least). But, what the fuck. I've got some extra karma to burn.