I am Ed Lecuyer, the guy who got Kurt Gray hired at Andover. I was Andover employee #2.
We were in fact, college roomates, and we remain good friends (although I am no longer employed by Andover - I left during the transition from a regular software publisher to the Internet model, because I was not interested in doing Internet stuff, NOT because I was disatisfied there in any way.)
Kurt is correct in his recollections of the early days of Andover. We had boxes of sh*t everywhere and we used most of it for office dividers. Bruce Twickler (CEO) had this silly software buyback promotion and most of this junk ended up forming walls between Kurt, myself, and my wife (who was also working for Andover at the time).
I can say, without resevation, that this could not have happened to better people. I lived with one of them and worked for another for 3+ years.
Kurt's point was simply to contrast the then and now. He is quirky sometimes, as his post indicates, but he is also ANIMATE about open source and LINUX. He won't let/. go to the dogs.
FWIW I only met Rob briefly at a party Andover was having. Instead of hanging out with the 'suits', he was sitting with all the techies, including Kurt and myself. He seemed to be a good match for the Andover corporate mentality - a fun, hard working individulal, and a GENUINE GOOD GUY.
Unless people's morals have changed radically since my departure, these are all real, good people who care deeply about open source and the company they keep.
Some will argue that money changes everything. But Bruce has had money before, and he risked it all to start a small software publishing company. Thanks to Kurt, he saw the LINUX revolution in advance, and was able to change Andover Advanced Technologies, a company worth less than the boxes of used software/office dividers, into something that will benifit software developers and geeks everywhere for years to come.
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We were in fact, college roomates, and we remain good friends (although I am no longer employed by Andover - I left during the transition from a regular software publisher to the Internet model, because I was not interested in doing Internet stuff, NOT because I was disatisfied there in any way.)
Kurt is correct in his recollections of the early days of Andover. We had boxes of sh*t everywhere and we used most of it for office dividers. Bruce Twickler (CEO) had this silly software buyback promotion and most of this junk ended up forming walls between Kurt, myself, and my wife (who was also working for Andover at the time).
I can say, without resevation, that this could not have happened to better people. I lived with one of them and worked for another for 3+ years.
Kurt's point was simply to contrast the then and now. He is quirky sometimes, as his post indicates, but he is also ANIMATE about open source and LINUX. He won't let /. go to the dogs.
FWIW I only met Rob briefly at a party Andover was having. Instead of hanging out with the 'suits', he was sitting with all the techies, including Kurt and myself. He seemed to be a good match for the Andover corporate mentality - a fun, hard working individulal, and a GENUINE GOOD GUY.
Unless people's morals have changed radically since my departure, these are all real, good people who care deeply about open source and the company they keep.
Some will argue that money changes everything. But Bruce has had money before, and he risked it all to start a small software publishing company. Thanks to Kurt, he saw the LINUX revolution in advance, and was able to change Andover Advanced Technologies, a company worth less than the boxes of used software/office dividers, into something that will benifit software developers and geeks everywhere for years to come.
Yes Kurt, what a long strange trip it has been.