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Raster on Leaving Red Hat
I need to make sure people know the following:
I have nothing against my Red Hat in general - it's all against one person in specific - they abused E's user base and fdinally broke the camels back with a last straw. the mailed to a mailing list I was on and effectively stated that E users are a crowd that "festers around me" (thats a literal quote) - that was the last straw - and seeing they were in management they directed development andthus made red hat policies as they were - I'm keeping the name of this person out of it - but Red Hat needs to know I will NOT stand for their management staff offedning me and the Enlightenment user base like that without repurcussions. I care about users very much and I can't take any more of this kind of stuff. I have mailed Red Hat themselves and higher management and told them to do something about it. I do not want this kind of attitude prevailing - my negative comments about Red Hat are specifically directed at this induvidual and he is a big reason I left.
I think the rest of Red Hat have their heads screwed on right... just one does not.
Anyway - if you can paraphrase this or something that'd be good. anyway .. now to get on wiht driving.. :)
CT : I decided not to paraphrase, so you've got the story (typos and all) right from Raster. And best of luck to ya man. And I guess I hafta forgive you now for the "Meat Pie" thing...
yep, i've worked at a company where the pointy haired boss syndrome was everywhere. i started working at a smal start-up with 22 people that balloned to 80 after an ipo.
:)
the ipo forced the ipo forced the company to put in a middle layer of 'touchy-feely, non-technicals (or those with some tech skills had limited experience). the result, a death march nightmare. products released early because of screaming from marketing, then screaming from 'managers' leading to all-night programming sessions that delivered the compiled code. but have a guess what a small bug would be in it. this is called fire chasing management.
i tried working within the system but ran into brick walls as the pointy haired boss would just nod and say yes to the work i had been doing but taking no action. so what did i do, flame at the boss, employees and the rest of the world?, na just left on good terms and found another job. no hysteria, no snarling.
so for all you young slashdotters out there, if yr in a job where boss is a moron, try working the system. if this doesn't work, leave yr job on good terms and find another and let the company to it's own destiny.
the pointy haired boss network can be yr downfall. a company i know had a 'programmer' who sat on their rear for months/weeks (phb's not doing their job) not doing their job properly, quit and leave them in the lurch before a big roll-out and his former boss happened to bump into his new boss. guess i wouldn't mind to be a fly on the wall
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
Don't bother searching the mailing list archives on enlightenment.org to find the culprit. I jaunted over there to do a search on "festering" and got:
This mail archive is currently broken
i feel sorry for redhat. here you are, trying to be an idealistic company selling an unambiguously morally acceptable product, hiring people when you could very well have taken their work for nothing and charged the same price. on one side you have the empire just waiting to crush you and mobilizing their stormtroopers to kill you off before you can get powerful enough to really challenge their authority.
but on the other side, you have the rebel alliance who hates you because youre a corporation, because you actually require money to live (as do all companies) and because you have to pay for all those people you hire that write software that everyone downloads from your ftp site. because you have to support their gospel with your advertising dollars. because you have to pay technical support to help further their Cause.
and you have to listen to them all bitch about how expensive it is when nearly all of them got it for free.
redhat can never win.
if they ever can triumph over microsoft, every GPL freak, 3l337 h4xx0r, and libertarian psycho will ditch them because theyve "sold out".
A corporation's number one job is to make money. But there are a LOT of different ways to make money. Why can't people understand that? The idea that Redhat will "become the next Microsoft" is ridiculous. The instant they piss you off, you download their stuff FOR FREE. And there's NOTHING THEY CAN DO ABOUT IT. Redhat doesn't know any more about Linux than any of us can, they can't hide any API's, they don't own any standards. Even the things they invent they have to put out for public inspection and usage, even in competing products.
People seem to think that Linux can get there on its own merits. But we all know thats not true. Tucker. Betamax. Amiga. (i hesitate here) Macintosh. Lets face it, money talks. Only big companies and the government have money, and, more importantly, power.
People should stop fearing Redhat because they are trying to get powerful. The judicious exercise of power by someone friendly to us (for once) is why everyone should support Redhat. Who can deny that they have already had a huge influence? Besides, we all know that if they ever do anything to piss us (the linux community) off enough, we'll kick their ass. This whole Raster thing makes my point, I think.
So give them a fscking break will ya?
unc_
I don't think he meant for it to get this big. His original letter was to a mailing list I believe, and one of the people there submitted it to Slashdot.
If I were in a crappy situation that had something to do with a product I was working on, I can totally see putting a message on a list for it to say things were bad and I was leaving. However he didn't ask anyone to spread the word, and he didn't send it to Rob as a news story. So in that case, it hardly sounds like publicity.
This is looking more like a lesson in "How NOT to manage your Geek." Perhaps his managers missed those last few /. discussions on the subject.
/.
This pretty much invalidates most of the 400+ messages to the previous info.
It still sounds to me like Red Hat is doing right by us. I mean, they are STILL releasing everything as GPL.
Careful folks, or we might give Paranoia a new definition: see
Andrew Gilmore
(gotta do something while my home directory gets restored from tape!)
------ Nope, Not me, you can't prove I said that!
I hope Red Hat learn from this that although attracting big business is important they shouldn't forget their roots. Projects like Enlightenment are the heart and soul of Linux, and help to keep it alive and improving. Diversity is good!
I'm sure Linux could be turned into a better Windows than Windows, and maybe that would be a good thing in a lot of cases, but we don't have to lose the ability to configure the look and feel of system. Just because I use Linux for serious work, there's no reason my desktop should look bland and corporate (yes, I use Linux and Enlightenment at work).
Actually, I'm not too happy with the way Gnome tries to hide the fact that Enlightenment is running as the WM and maybe a little separation of the two will be good for both. I like the Gnome apps, but I want Enlightenment to control the way my sceen and windows look, and the trend seemed to be towards Gnome taking over the whole show...
Yes, I definitely thing the split will turn out to be a Good Thing for all parties.
Call me skeptical, but do you have proof that this actually was from Raster? (A pgp signature or something?) According to his website he denies having written the article /. mentioned last time and said that anything else he had to say would be on his own website.
This could still just be some jerk fucking us (and him) around.
Not that it's our business anyway. It's between him and Red Hat.
axolotl
The early developers of Unix and the standard C library can't spell worth beans:
creat()
strcmp()
...
cpeterso
I'm glad raster gave us one sentence telling us his beef isn't actually with ALL of Red Hat, just one person in particular.
This whole thing kind of strikes me as a semi-publicitiy stunt. People shouldn't write publicly about their former employers unless it's really, really bad. And in this case, it was just a minor personality conflict.
Kind of ridiculous. If you don't like it, just quit. It's that simple.
Posted by d106ene5:
All this seems much ado about nothing. Some guy out there wanted to quit his job so he did. Who really cares? Let the man make his personal decisions in peace.
This celebrity obsession is really tacky and inconsiderate to "Raster".
Guess I don't agree. RedHat hired him knowing who he was and where his passions were directed. If they had wanted someone who would bend in the wind, they might not have found someone with his talent. My experience has been that the people with the most talent are typically excessively passionate about their code/projects. 'E' and its users are apparently more important to Raster than his manager's ideas about what might be best for the company. What someone at RedHat failed to realize is that this kind of passion is/was a GoodThing(TM) for RedHat.
On the other hand, some project managers have become managers either because they've lost their passion for the work or never had it in the first place. I've worked for good and bad managers, the bad type is always more concerned with corporate "vision" than the creative talent in his team. Good managers realize that their best coders will always produce something amazing that will benefit the company. Give them everything they need and get out of the way...great things will follow.
NULL
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
I've worked for/with some complete losers as well. But rambling, misspelled, ungrammatical rants aren't the way to convince people.
It looked like E was pretty important to RH (new default WM and tightly integrated to GNOME). And Raster was the main E developer. So if he had a problem with a manager, why not go to a higher up and complain? Surely RH is smart enough not to lose the goose that lays the golden eggs.
No, I think it is much more likely that Raster acts in person a lot like his emails paint him out to be--and his manager wanted someone a little more mature to headup a crucial project like a Window Manager for "The People's Distro". The manager probably tried to get Raster to clean up his act (if not his code) and that just "broke the camel's back".
--
"Please remember that how you say something is often more important than what you say." - Rob Malda
not true. yesterday the aforementioned article was on the front page of redhats main site http://www.redhat.com it's possible you went there after /. scolled the story. full points to rh for this. ms would NEVER have let that happened (employee publicly abusing the company on it's front page).
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
There are a lot of people in the world who can accomplish amazing things on their own but have difficulty working in groups. Playing well with others requires sometimes setting aside what you want in order to do what's best for the project, and sometimes going along with choices you don't agree with.
If someone isn't a "team player", then they should stay away from group projects. It's not that they're a bad person or that they're a bad programmer, it's just that they are not well suited to working on large projects working with a number of peers.
People should work on what they're good at. Individual superstars should go do their own thing. People who can play well with others should do so.
But we shouldn't start a witch hunt against the person that points out that someone isn't good at playing with others. He's just the messenger.
-Lyle
Just seems that the cults of personality that crop up are the compensations for a job well done and mass distibution of your work. Not a bad replacement for cash IMHO (mainly b/c it allows easier access to larger sums of said exchange material and that whole ego thing)
Just to be redundant......spell cheque, please, it makes you seem more preffesionel.
+&x
I suspect the issue here is code quality: If RH wants to be successful in the long term, it should care deeply about code quality. Code quality is a key factor deciding the success of a Free Software "product". For example, the linux kernel is relatively solid and rather clean. So is Alan Cox's code.
Anyone who has taken a peek at the E source (and I last did so before AC started cleaning up behind RM), knows that E doesn't come close. In fact, after seeing the source, I am amazed that RM's grammar and spelling as as good as they are.
[Sorry for the seeming ad hominem -- unfortunately, this is how I feel.]
Neither of them can design an interface worth a damn, though. (There's a difference between something that looks cool and something that drives you nuts when you try to use it for more than 8 seconds.) Examples: Dr Mike is one of the guys behind Gnome Help Browser, which doesn't have a Find function! Raster wrote Electric Eyes and the Gnome Pager applet, both of which are extremely cumbersome to use.
Lots of other Gnome programs are about as bad. One thing that's really lacking is good programmers who are also good at designing interfaces. (Designing a good interface is probably just as hard as designing a good program.) The problem is that when somebody says "Hey, program Foo really needs an extra menu here and a button or two there," he'll too often hear "Ok, code it yourself," as a response.
That's a well-and-good attitude (I guess..) for traditional Unixesque programming projects, but for one that's intended to ultimately be used by the masses, it's a problem.
I bet one of the RHAD (or any other party seriously interested in improving Unix's usability) might do would be to hire some former UI guy from (say) Apple and put him in charge, or at least in a position where he would be taken very seriously.
It's a frustrating situation.
You're a suburbanite.
I've been reading a management book (don't laugh) by some folk at Gallup (my employer; forgive the plug) that has the basic premise that the immediate manager is the biggest determining factor in employee satisfaction. Red Hat should take the matter very seriously if they want to keep good talent around.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
What is with this "lets not name anyone?" RedHat's arrogance as a whole and the actions of individuals that show they care little for the ideals of the Linux community has been a LONG STANDING problem. In terms of the redhat domain address that showed me what RedHat truely stands for was Donnie Barnes, djb@redhat.com. He has been involved in writting and "maintaining" documentation that have been written to the same format as the Linux Documentation Project and sometimes distributed with RedHat in a method that makes it difficult initally distringish from being LDP works. In one of the documents written by him, he made it clear that RedHat had gotten several requests for Linux support for a certain piece of hardware and that the piece of hardware would probably never be supported (the company was keeping the specs closed). Since I had worked with someone to to get the company to release the specs and even written a patch to support the hardware, I notified Donnie Barnes that the documentation was no longer correct. He stated that he still considered it correct since the patch was unoffical and the offical Linux kernel still did not support the hardware but when it became offical he would correct the documentation (so the statement that Linux would probably never provide support remained.) A couple weeks later, I let him know that the patch was available in the latest stable kernel. His responce was that RedHat did not support the latest stable kernel and the documentation was RedHat's so the fact was he still considered the statement that linux did not support and probably would never support the hardware was the correct thing to state until the issue of offical support from RedHat changed. About two months later, RedHat came out with a new distribution with a RH offially supported kernel that worked with the hardware in question. So, I emailed him again. He stated that the documentation was written to cut down on technical support calls to RedHat and they wheren't getting calls about the specific piece of hardware anymore so the documentation should remain the way it was instead of him taking time from his busy schedule to remove the individual statement.
/w patches seprate and that they have provided their own code under GPL. But RedHat complettely ignores that open source projects remain fluid and changing and hence the documentation should also reflect that. Instead, they provide *closed* documentation for open source project. To *THIS DAY*, a large number of RedHat documents contain:
This really wouldn't be that big of an issue except for the *closed* license model for documentation. RedHat promotes that they honor GPL with pure-unpatched sources
his document is Copyright (C) XXXX by Red Hat Software. Redistribution of this document is permitted as long as the content
remains completely intact and unchanged. In other words, you may reformat and reprint or redistribute only.
Hence, RedHat can use people like Donnie Barnes to continue to create closed documentation that states what is "best" for RedHat instead of what is true. RedHat documenation can not be altered in parellel with the open source project it claims to provide documentation for unless RedHat feels it wants the true nature of future revisions to be included in it's close documentation. This is one reason why I never bothered to even look at GNOME. While Mr. Young was complaining about the modifiablity of Qt widget source, I slept soundly knowing that the Qt widgets worked fine for my purposes and what KDE programs I modified, I could modify the KDE documentation to correctly reflect how the change should be documented. If stating the truth (or at least removing the lies) is too hard to support for RH, why would it be any different for RHAD?
Donnie Barnes made it clear that RH does not desire my feedback. He won. I no longer give RH any. Go LDP!
The one thing I notice on these threads is the criticisms of Raster for being immature. This is like criticizing a just-born kitten for having its eyes closed. How old is Raster, anyway (I thought he was in his early twenties, but I could of course be wrong), and from where was he supposed to get all that wonderful maturity everyone thinks he should have? If someone possessing as much raw talent and in receipt of as much recognition as Raster can't be a little hot-headed at that age, then I think that we've adopted a set of expectations for human behavior that is entirely disconnected with reality.
If Raster's departure screws up anything in Red Hat's plans, then it is arguably true that Red Hat has some rather short-sighted managers; placing that great a dependence on someone as young and mercurial as Raster would a classic lapse of common business sense. I would expect that they hired Raster as someone with a deep understanding of X and an uncanny ability with graphical textures, not as someone who would carry the battle flag to victory. I'm sure that others working there have learned a great deal from him, that many of his contributions are greatly appreciated, and that the work will continue without him.
Raster is strong-willed and talented enough (even if he can't write to save his life) that he will probably go on to do great things, whether it is by himself or leading some others. I am also confident that, to the extent that his behavior in this case reflects immaturity, some of that immaturity will be worn off as he experiences the consequences thereof. I wish him well.
I might draw flame for saying this, but it needs to be said.
This is what happens when a person lets glitz and gloss get in the way of useful coding, and immaturity takes over.
Ok, the usual disclaimer before I get started. I dont use Gnome, I dont use KDE, I dont use E, and I rarely use X. I am not a CLI purist, just find that the CLI gives me most of what I want from a computer. Moreover, I'll say that I've tried E, and Gnome.
Raster's main objective in E is not to actually provide a useful window manager, but to provide inconsequential configurability for the sake of configurability. I'll admit that when I first saw E I was enamored, and said "wow, cool". But take a second look people. As a windowmanager, it provides a shithole of an experience. It's quite obvious that Raster, while putting a lot of work into the configurability and theme-ability, did not pay one bit of attention to the actual usability of E. In his previous statement, Raster accuses the Gnome developers of trying to create a windows clone. But I think that Raster copies microsoft philosophy much more than the Gnome crew. E emphasizes glitz and gimmicks rather than real usability. Gnome on the other hand is about usability. Even though they might lose track of that from time to time, that's the main purpose behind Gnome.
With all this E-bashing, one my ask what point I'm getting to. My point is that E and this occurence, is a reflection of Raster's personality. Maybe it was a mistake for the gnome crew to hire him in the first place, but It's pretty obvious that he does not jive with the goal behind Gnome.
But this is all just my take on the matter.
-Laxative
Let's not forget one of the little added benefits of 'open source'....the source is open. Before you hint that Raster's code is bad, take a jog over to his web site and look at it. Then make the call, this isn't Microso~1 people, we can actually LOOK at someone's code before attacking it.
The above comments DO reflect the views of my ISP...in fact the spelling errors are probably their fault also.
Maybe E was bloatware in the .14.x devel series, but if you had bothered to use it recently you would know better. I'm using the .15.5 snapshot on an AMD 266 overclocked to 300 with a 2mb vc and 32mb memory. It performs great for me, as it stands it's just as fast as icewm.
If you want to turn on all the graphical bells & whistles (sliding windows, opaque windows, etc.) then it will naturally take a speed hit. However, they key here is that you can turn all of it off, on, or just have some of it running. Thanks to the nifty graphical config these days, it's just a matter of clicking a few options.
Don't flame something which you haven't used for six months.
Right on. I challenge anyone to find another for-profit company which has done as much to advance open source software.
It seems that too many people cannot appreciate "good" without reference to a percieved "bad". This seems to happen at all levels of society. Complex issues are polarised and reduced to simple dichotomies so they can fit in small minds.
Maybe if his job description was "generic programmer" this would have worked. But it seems as if his job was more like "the enlightenment programmer", and that he was the "one". So the only solution (for him) to this management conflict was to have the manager change jobs. Try working that one out -- it probably won't be pretty. I think he made the best choice available.
What from yesterday was not resolved with this?
We've established that Raster is not a whining, immature employee, as some suggested. His response seems to be pretty level-headed, and his letter from yesterday is understandable. I'd be mad at first too.
We've established that Red Hat is not evil. Well, maybe not, but at least we've established that Red Hat was not evil in this case.
These were the big problems, right? (besides that mini-KDE/GNOME flame war, but hey, what else is new?) It just seems that Red Hat had a bad manager, and what company doesn't have a bad manager or two? The only problem I see is that maybe Red Hat should have put a little more distance between RHAD and themselves, at least assigning a more open-minded manager (or a more tactful one at least!) or, if he was from another department, keeping more distance between the two. A no-badmouthing-the-users-in-public policy is always a good thing!
Hmm.. this is getting a little out of hand..
First, its "They (Red Hat) don't believe users really count -- corporates and 'partners' count and what they percieve as the 'business world that wants an exact windows clone' counts" , and now (today) its "I think the rest of Red Hat have their heads screwed on right... just one does not."
Carsten, pick one and stick with it..Honestly. Rapidly changing your tune like this sounds just as bad in the press as it does in music.
I remember my first job..I got paid $5.25/hr to stack printouts on a reception desk at a community college. The work conditions sucked, and later on the management sucked too. Infact, there was alot of bad blood running between me and the guy who was appointed to be my supervisor. One evening, I saw him and a female coworker 20 years younger than him wander into a darkened classroom where they proceeded to "clear the desks" for a good half hour or so. A week later, she got a promotion, after only having worked there for about 8 weeks..Promoted past 5 or 6 other people (myself included) who had been there upwards of 2 years or more.
Certainly, this was something I could have easilly gotten him fired over..But, doing so wouldn't have changed anything. Complaining would'nt have changed the fact that this guy was an asshole, and complaining to HIS supervisor (or telling my coworkers) would accomplish nothing as well. So, I put in my two weeks notice, got another job across campus, and used this loser as a job reference to get where I wanted to go.
The world is filled with people like that..People in management who really shouldnt be there. You will ALWAYS have these sorts of disputes within any company. You either learn to comprimise, bow down and take it, or leave. The choice is up to you.
I dont blame Carsten for leaving Red Hat. However, it was a tremendous mistake for him to take his grievances into a public forum in the manner that he chose. Keep in mind Red Hat runs Slashdot headlines front and center on its homepage.."Rasterman Leaves Red Hat" is not the kind of thing that I would want splashed across my company's webpage. It makes Carsten look bad, AND Red Hat look bad.
And in doing so, it makes Linux as a whole look bad as well.
Bowie
PROPAGANDA
Bowie J. Poag
Linus and Rasterman, however, are both well-known individuals with their own user communities. They're happy to work for you on their own terms. You can deal with this, and reap the benefits of being associated with them, or you can let them move on. They won't let you push them too far, especially where their user communities are concerned, because if your decisions are poor they will be the ones who lose face. They won't tolerate that for long.
Linus wisely works for a company that doesn't have Linux as its business, yet is willing to give him time to work on Linux, so that he doesn't get involved in this sort of conflict. Raster didn't really have that choice... maybe he'll find a position like that this time. Otherwise, he'll have to keep walking the tightrope, which means being ready to leave when he loses confidence in his management.
If you want to employ "superstars", keep this in mind. They are not a commidity! You can't pay for their labor units and ignore them when it comes to policy decisions, they won't put up with that.
Thanks
Bruce Perens
Bruce Perens.