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Miguel de Icaza Quits Day Job
Foaf writes "According to his activity log, Miguel of Gnome and Gnumeric fame is quitting his university job and moving to the US to provide 'kick-ass applications for users all around the globe.' " And, yes, now I can rest easy knowing that Miguel will be unfettered in his attempts to consume all of the world's coffee *grin*. Seriously, this is the continuation of a wonderful trend - more time developing Linux applications is good for everyone.
More proof that Open Source isn't necessarily taking paying jobs away from programmers. It seems more opportunities are opening up to make a living working with our favorite software.
"Bugs are harder to cope with than features, because they are less well defined and less well designed."
"It may be remarked in passing that success is an ugly thing. Men are deceived by its false resemblences to merit."
I wonder who the
is?Theory 1: Transmeta is actually not building a chip at all, but has a new, increadible Linux distribution which the need Miguel to work on the GUI for.
Theory 2: Microsoft has seen the light and are going to open source Windows, and need Miguel to fix the bugs - after all, he has some experience with GNOME. *S*.
That was a JOKE!
But seriously, I do wonder who it is - I doubt Red Hat, because they tend to announce things like that. I suppose it is a company and not VC funding, though. Intel or Oracle, maybe?
Also, what it Migel's company called?
Just let me know if you need bus fare or anything, alright, Miguel? I don't want you walking home in the rain because you can't afford to take the bus. We all know how nobody can make money from writing free software, so you just do this until you're completely broke and then get a real job with a real company. We don't want you to end up watching Baywatch like all the other open source guys.
</sarcasm>
"Seriously, this is the continuation of a wonderful trend - more time developing Linux applications is good for everyone.
"
Gnome isn't a Linux app anymore than Netscape is, or MySql is or Apache is. It is an application that may or may not run on a number of platforms. Likewise KDE, or 98% of the other things you find on you linux box.
You may argue that this is just semantics, and that any app that runs on Linux is 'a linux app', but that's misleading.
However, as we see this more and more "Gnome, the linux desktop system" or "KDevelop, and IDE for Linux" it starts to look like people are thinking only in terms of Linux and its applications. This brings back the bad old days when OS's were judged on what apps were available, and apps were judged by what OS they ran on, or what OS they were native to (if they were later ported).
Linux isn't the de-facto host system for all OS apps, whatever you may think.
-----
I find it very disturbing when people feel they need to be in the US to write real code, or to get a real job in IT. This trend just pisses me off. Particularly Europeans tend to be starry-eyed about the US, and of these, particularly Germans--who can count the legions of programmers who left for the supposed "greener pastures." Yes, there may be shitloads of VC in the US, but then, I'm no fan of VC either.
While it is said that countries don't matter anymore and that we live in a global economy, whom are they kidding? The US is sure to get the glory for any nugget of code they hatch, which certainly cannot be said for other places. Each "prominent" coder leaving his or her country for the US makes a little bit more cetain that IT in that country becomes that much less glamorous for the next generation.
Ok, just some venting here.
So many things have happened since the last time I wrote stuff:
So, I am quitting my current job and moving to the US to pursue this new venture with my friend Nat. Exciting times.
--
Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.
****Gfx Scrollbar Special case hit!!*****
just my 01. ready to be moderated down.
Internation Gnome Support
http://www.gnomesupport.com/
The Company information says :
International GNOME Support is a new company devoted to writing,extending and improving the GNOME software project. We are focusing on creating the next-generation productivity applications which will drive business in the future and the software infrastructure which is used to write these applications. We are committed to free software, and all our work is released to the world under the GPL or LGPL license.
Read the above comment, or better yet, follow the link to his diary on gnome.org ... children, always always follow the link before replying to a story :)
:)
Now then, I have to say I disagree with you about duplicated efforts. In some sense, I feel there has to be a level of duplication. Not that there should be acrimony between competing projects -- interoperability and user choice at a fine-grained level should be the goal, which requires fairly close coordination in things like desktop environments (and is something I commend and encourage for the GNOME and KDE teams).
As an example where duplication is good: GMC is a nice fairly traditional file manager. Doesn't break any new ground, but provides a familiar starting point to the user.
But several developers wanted something more advanced. They wanted to seamlessly integrate networked and local filesystems at the conceptual level via a virtual file system, extending the way the Windows Explorer lets you browse samba shares on your network to include FTP and other file sharing methods. The result is the (still experimental) GNOME Explorer (for lack of a better name). It's an interesting project, but it would have been inappropriate to abandon earlier efforts half-complete in favor of the new one. If developers constantly did that, nothing would ever get finished
In addition, different projects have quite different cultures and backgrounds. Calls for the GNOME and KDE teams to merge are just silly -- they don't reflect that the projects have different approaches to the same problem. I think that's disrespectful to the developers, especially coming from non-programmers (I find programmers experienced in large projects, or better directly involved in the projects in question, have clearer perspectives on the whole thing).
While that's what he's been doing most of recently, in my book, he'll always be one of the gods that helped bring Linux to my beloved Sparc. He also worked on the MIPS port. Oh, and he did Midnight Commander, too, but I forgive him for that :-)
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
But yes, GNOME uses the FSF autoconf stuff, which, if used right, creates code that will run on any Unix-like system.
And whyever they want to?
:) ! but it seems to resonate with programmers. The assertion in this paragraph's first sentence is broad beyond all reasonability, but I'm sticking with it, ok? There is plenty of pressure for social conformity, plenty of factors that im Endeffekt* offically stratify American society -- but the State is a slightly smaller actor than in European countries. Too large nonetheless, but smaller.
...
The general financial climate of the US is more robust and vibrant than that of any European country (correction invited!) -- VC is more accepted and more available.
The personal financial climate is also better in the U.S. Sure, there are odious Federal taxes, but they are lower (and therefore somewhat less odious than those in European countries Again, if any EuroCountries have lower taxes than the U.S. does, please correct me! Monaco, maybe?
The overall cultural climate in America is also still more individualist than that of any European country I'm familiar with; I'm not trying to make a case for or against individualism here
So, I say WELCOME! ALOHA! WILKOMMEN!(Babelfish is not Finnish-friendly, and it seems to be giving me the wrong word for Spanish
Cheers,
timothy
*(Ja?)
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I think he should have been moderated down simply because he left his opening tag out...