Rasterman Summarizes his Red Hat Leave 205
sRparish writes
"Rasterman has made it to California, and has posted a
very interesting article entitled: Post Mortem and Deliverance "
He expands somewhat on things you've already read here, and
compares his experience at RH to jwz's at Netscape.
Re:Redhat showing it's growing pains? (Score:1)
I really suggest changing your distro. Personally I just bought SuSE 6.1, and have been very pleased. Most of the system configuration is contained in one file, not in cryptic psuedo-userfriendly program. Not that redhat or any of the other distros suck, it's just that I like to have everything in one place.
I'm thick, I still can't see.. (Score:1)
To think that nowadays people carry out civil disobediance in the name of an OS.
Re:Spelling?!!!!! (Score:1)
That's what we call a false dichotomy. You may look that up. I am certain Yahoo! will return a pointer to a page of rhetorical fallacies.
Oh, what the hell:
I did it for you. [lincoln.ac.nz]
I'd also suggest you consider that Buddhism has moments of exquisite attention to detail. You may also want to consider the humility and self-effacement of some of its practitioners, who wouldn't be arrogant enough to expect others to wade through the distraction of their carelessness.
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mphall@cstone.nospam.net
Outgrowing the C language (Score:1)
It's certainly possible to write 60k+ line non-OO C programs that are changeable and extensible. But the fact is that even the best C code is probably not going to come anywhere close to a well-designed program that takes advantage of a language with polymorphism and dynamic binding in terms of changability. Countless studies have shown that although you may be able to crank more code out the window initially, it will catch up in the end if your project is going to continue to grow and change. E itself is an example of this -- how many times has it been rewritten from scratch now?
Re:Signs of tension. (Score:2)
Corporate applications moving really quickly to web interfaces from green screen or platform-specific VisualBasic (etc.) front ends. That means time is money as far as your web browser is concerned. While Netscape/Linux is certainly usable, it's not as fast or stable as Netscape/Win32 or IE. (Stop to pray to the Mozilla gods.)
Think about a corporate call center moving from 5250s to a web/java interface. Your choices are: (1) A "NC" from IBM, (2) A tighly controlled Windows PC, or (3) A tighly controled Linux PC. Unfortuantely, number (2) is winning in many cases.
I looked at the XFMail screen shots, and you're right, it does need a facelift bad. Same goes for Netscape Messenger, which has all the features, it's just kinda clunky. I've looked at KMail and a few others, and it's too bad that everyone is in the progress of trying to reinvent the wheel here.
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Re:score:3!, whats wrong here? (Score:1)
You could always write some informative, insightful, or otherwise useful comments yourself so that you get some moderator points and can score comments yourself...
Re:Hero Worship (Score:1)
Ugh. people like that irritate the *uck outta me.
Blessed Be! --"LEVIATHAN"
Re:registry? (Score:2)
Lots of people of course have bad taste in their mouth from the poorly designed Windows registry. (Someone should build another database as a front end to the WinRegistry, just so you can find user adjustable settings!)
I think the problem comes in when you are trying to build a slick configuration front end. There's just too many different file formats in
Apparently Apple/Next's NetInfo database allows manual exporting/importing to and from
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Signs of tension. (Score:2)
Why do I say that? It's a psychology thing really. People have taken Linux, and elevated it from what it was really good at (a server), and promoted it into a Microsoft Killer. When they did that, they assumed that Linux has to have a single user interface. Linux still has a long ways to go to beat Microsoft at it's game in that respect.
But, here is the clincher. Linux doesn't have to beat Microsoft at it's game. As I write this, the rules are changing. The world isn't just about PC's anymore. A PC is nothing if it can't connect with something. (we all know that, right?) Microsoft Operating systems have always been developed from a standalone PC view, and when they network, they're not particularly good at it.
However, in the new world order, the network will reign supreme. The strength of your OS is judged by what you can connect with and how stable you are. This is where Linux reigns supreme. It connects to just about everything under the Sun out of the box. Linux has already won that round.
Yet, why should we play by MS's rules with one interface for everyone? Does everyone want to drive the same car? Who says we can't win on the desktop with more then one interface? If you get in a Ferrari F50, it's not going to be the same experience/same interface as a Dodge Neon, but... you know what? I'm pretty damn sure that almost everybody could figure out how to drive that Ferrari.
I applaud Red Hat on it's efforts to bring Linux to the business world, yet.... I want the choice to run *my* Linux, the way I want to run it. It's about the users. The users reign supreme in Linux, and I think that's the vision that Red Hat gave up when it started courting the business world.
Anarchy - Used to describe the tension between moral autonomy and political authority
Some thoughts (Score:3)
My anonymously cowardly thoughts:
Firstly I would like to comment on the cite:
"Given the type of crowd that festers around Raster, I think it in our best interest to just go on with business as usual. It has been clear for awhile that he and his posse were not GNOME supporters, and nothing we"I surely can understand why Raster get's pissed off by this kind of thing. I think it was unfair by the guy who said it to go behind Raster's back like that. And with posse. Wtf? Is it the people on people on #e he is refering to? I can hardly imagine anobody of those to be anti-GNOME, but rather pro GNOME.
While it was unethical by Raster to go public with this kinda thing, hell, who cares about ethics. Wouldn't you be pissed off by a guy who has been talking shit behind your back for about 1 and a 1/2 years. Talking shit behind someones back is unethical in the first place.
Personally I think that GNOME would be better off with a default light gtk based window manager, but not be totally dependent on that wm, so the user still can choose what wm to use. Basically turning E into GNOMEwm is not in the best interest for both E or GNOME. GNOME is better of with a very simple wm if it is to compete with Windows[TM] and KDE. I really think GNOME is better of with a default wm, so we don't need to make simplified E themes and "degrade" E to fit in with GNOME. Also I think that FVWM and the likes are to messy & butt ugly to be used as a default wm. I think RedHat did something wrong, when they included E as the default GNOMEwm in RH 6.0, they basically raped E. And also because E is still under development, I think that gave the user a wrong impression about both E and GNOME, not only one app under devel but two, that is bound to make a disaster. I think that in the starting phase of the Linux Desktop reveloution, we should not flame each other to death over mistakes like this. Surely RedHat will learn something about this and *hopefully* doing it right the second time. Maybe now we will have a gtk based GNOMEwm instead...
This is becuase E is something of it's own. It's so much more. It shouldn't be unseperately tied to GNOME, but that doesn't mean it is *anti* GNOME. For me E represents a kind of graphical user interface that I would very much like to see finished. Yes I like the Eyecandy, yes I like it's configurability and innovation. And while people may say it is bloatware, then don't use it, use something else. And I wouldn't want E to change into GNOMEwm I want E. I like both E, the GTK widget set and GNOME, and i will happily use both GNOME with this simple GTK based GNOMEwm. And When I am in the mood for E, I will just switch to E. Who said you gotta just use one environment.
And while the latest events are sad. In the end RedHat will also benefit by this, Now RedHat will probably use something else for a default GNOMEwm and the Windows[Tm] users migrating to Linux will be happy. But RedHat will also benefit from the development of E, This revelutionary user interface (yes i say revelutionary, please tell me about something else with the coolness factor E currently has, without mentioning Window Maker off course) will also draw new users to Linux. I know this, It was screenshots of E that made me try Linux for the first time! And through the beatiful exterior of E, I also found out (after poking a lot around) that hey I like the interior as well, I like the kernel, I like the GPL & GNU philosophy, I like the stabiliy, I like the command line interface (and this coming from an old Amiga user, MCSE who don't like MS products and therefore have no job :P ) Now I find myself using, GNOME, E, Window Maker, hell I can't decide. I Like them all, and I am even if i don't use it, I am still impressed with KDE.
I Support Raster & Mandrake... And I also support RedHat I don't like all the negative press they are getting lately, I think people are getting paranoid, but only time will show.
Sorry about the english, I am *.no
Anonymous CowardRe:INS (Score:1)
its made in jest, funny as hell, takes like 4 lines on the page.
Rob Malda, CmdrTaco, when you grep the pages, kick this moderators ass.
Re:Moderation (Score:1)
Re:Ouch... (Score:1)
Can't remember the actors name though.
Rob has a problem with RH (Score:1)
Bitter (Score:1)
No need for a resume, just a URL [enlightenment.org] !
Hero Worship (Score:1)
Is it really that interesting as to why this guy quit his job?
It seems like we're really obsessing over what is largely a personal matter. I have no idea why these people set up rant pages when they leave their jobs. How tacky.
This is getting old (Score:2)
JWZ was one thing -- his complaints at least were about the project. He was expecting to "ship product" in a year, and was entitled to gripe about how slow things were going when it didn't (although personally I can't imagine how Mozilla could have turned around that fast given how broken the original code was).
JWZ's gripes were over the lack of progress in a public effort. Raster's bitching about how he couldn't get along with someone else at the office is something else entirely.
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Whatever. (Score:1)
Seriously, my co-workers are nothing short of the smartest, hardest working people I know, I'm proud to work here. You are, to put it simply, wrong.
Chris DiBona
VA Linux Systems
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
VP, SVLUG
Moderation (Score:3)
Reality Check -- EVERYONE here has probably quit their job at one point in time or another because they didn't like someone they worked with. I know I have. Sure I may have had a web page up about it at one point in time, but I certainly didn't go telling the world about it, putting it in Slashdot, because frankly its not that important. If someone knew me, came to my web page, they saw it and understood why I moved from one city to another.
Yes, I can understand Raster's complaint.
No, I don't want to hear any more about it.
Even if I do dislike Red Hat as a company, which I do, this type of ranting (and
Which leads back to moderation.... how about stories themselves start out with points that moderators can reduce if the story just completely shouldn't be on
My thoughts (Score:2)
Now enlightenment has undergone a rewrite, supposedly to remove a lot of cruft and make it more extensible. When I first used E, it was more of a desktop than simply a window manager; making it a window manager again, albeit a very advanced and complex one, seemed like a good idea to me.
E's pagers, the minisnapshots, are neat. The fact that it is completely configurable is neat. But, it's not a window manager any longer. I first got concerned when Raster talked of implementing his own widgets in E for configuration; after all, there's a perfectly good GTK+ app that could be extended or rewritten to do the same thing! When Raster went on to say he might want a file dialogue or something along those lines, I knew that E was getting a bit too big.
E is now, or will soon be, a desktop environment unto itself. It's running up in the 60k lines of code area, with 0.15 at least, which if it's done well isn't a problem. Regardless of this, small machines will have a lot of trouble running E if it continues to expand. The only hope of keeping it as a window manager is that Mandrake is able to make modules of one form or another work, so that if I want to use the GTK+ app instead of the built-in E widget configuration dialogues, I can, and if I don't want the up-and-coming desktop environment bits of it, I can leave them and use GNOME and gmc instead.
There's nothing inherently wrong in making E a desktop environment on its own. But, with it being GNOME's default window manager, the GNOME developers now have a choice: Use the old versions of E, which aren't duplicating code and effort, use the new versions and hope that the user doesn't get confused with the two file selectors and various other things, develop their own window manager, or make sure that E follows its true roots: complete configurability, modularity, and choice.
Redhat showing it's growing pains? (Score:2)
articles that have appeared over the last few
days here and elsewhere, both positive and
and negative, seem to point that RedHat is
pushing the limits of what it can do under it's
current model, and must make major changes to
the way it does things if they wish to continue,
either as a packager of a quality distribution,
or as a supplier of Linux to businesses. (IMO,
with the convoluted process of Linux install,
you can't provide both in the same package).
In this case, RH is definitely heading down the
road of business attraction (IPO, anyone) and
moving away from general Linux support, even
though they are continuing to push their RHAD
stuff. This is making the distribution less
interesting to those that prefer to hack
someone on the system or do more non-standard
setups.
Mind you, RH aiming to provide a strong linux
distrubtion to businesses is a *GOOD* thing
to break the NT juggernaut, but they need to
decide to truly go down this road, rather than
trying to supply a tool that inadequetely does
both the business and the hacker support.
Myself, I'm strongly considering going to
debian when I next need to upgrade, only because
it has more of a hackers-to-hackers feel to
it.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Rasterman Should deliver (Score:1)
Re:Moderation (Score:1)
The same type of person that can tell you to chill out, that's who.
His *point*, in case you overlooked it in your personal histeria over "oh my god, someone made a suggestion about what we should do", is that this is a story that has already been covered. This is not a new story; the best characterization of this "news" is an expansion.
Is this going to happen on Slashdot for everything? It would be ridiculous. Take the ebay story today. We got the story, knew about it, if we cared, we followed it more closely. We didn't get a point by point update on slashdot every 2 hours. It would have irritated many a reader if such updates occurred. This Raster stuff is bordering such action. Slashdot gave the original story, there was no "major" development, and if you had cared to follow this, you could on your own.
Yes, Rob et al. can post whatever they want. Yes, we can all choose what stories to follow up on. Yes, there are things to emphasize and de-emphasize, and some people are going or not going to like it. And it's the latter point that his complaint proposes a mechanism to deal with (you did notice that in your flame, right?).
About the issue, this is a person who moved on because he didn't like or incorporate into the environment. I don't care what side you take, but I can tell you this is turning and pushing anti-RH sentiment. Slashdot is a media channel just like anything else, and what it posts as opinion, it gives feature and credibility to, simply by the "loudness" aka emphasis of a story, however insignificant.
There are many good intentioned people that do NOT WORK WELL TOGETHER.
And anybody with eyes and two neurons will see that Raster's comments are those of a person who cannot just move on. He pulls private email which he knows he should not be privy to and instead of solving the error, he puts it on the web. [Man, that speaks really poorly of him. You want to buy into "he did it for the greater good" fine, but you just bought into the means justify the ends argument.] Incosiderate and a total lack of etiquette.
He whines almost 3 weeks after his resignation and needs to call on an email less than a week after, and is 2 weeks past in addressing it. He *still* is fed up and is *still* trying to hurt the company.
Open Source is great. I like the idea, I love the code, and I like what it does for my projects and work. But if the community can't grow up or handle it's growing pains aka adolescence, screw it. You can either deal with it and mature, or be like a lot of 20 and older year olds are, whining about their past or what they could have done--aka has beens.
Leaving for a good reason... (Score:1)
From what I have ascertained, Raster was, in fact, being walked on by someone else. This someone else held a more concrete position in the company than him. Also, given the evidence, I would have to say that this employee was genuinely hostile toward Raster and Enlightenment. It could be a fabrication, but what real reason would Raster have to lie?
I'll be honest here... I'm using RedHat 6.0. I disabled GNOME (with an almost silly amount of effort to do so) and am using Enlightenment DR15 like it was designed by Raster, without GNOME, and it hasn't crashed once. I pieced my computer together myself and I have not crashed with this setup yet without it being something _I_ did (we all do silly things sometimes). What I'm getting at is, Raster left for a very honest and honorable reason - he did not like the environment he was in. I say that he made a mature and wise decision. Granted, I am not impartial on this - I use Enlightenment, after all, and have since DR13. But I still think that Raster made the right decision, if it makes him happy.
Now all I'm worried about is RedHat. I seriously think they may have lost some direction. I don't worry about them dominating the market - we (the Linux community) would squash them if they tried. However, I do think that they are acting somewhat suspicious. I just wish SUSE6.1 had newer libraries *sigh*
Is it a real loss for Red Hat?? (Score:1)
Didn't Raster work on Enlightenment at Red Hat? I mean, it is all free software anyway, only Red Hat isn't paying for it. So Raster will end up doing what he would be doing at Red Hat anyway.
Of course Red Hat could direct what Raster was doing but...
Of course all my arguments are wrong if in fact Raster was hired for doing something else.
But lets say Alan Cox left, same work, no pay.
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Reality bites hard. (Score:1)
Hey Rasterdude:
You've got total empathy from me, when it comes to bad management, and what they do to creative minds. However, that's a part of reality. It's good that you left RH, because their corporate culture, and your personality are a titanic clash. The guy who bore down hard on you has the unfortunate fate of not working with someone as talented as you.
You've got to understand one thing though. The "corporate" managers, who are nothing more than a pack of loud-mouth,annonying sales types, don't comprehend what Linux is all about. And the reality is that they never will. Their goal in life is to get a job, and get by through pretense, and managerial appeasement.
You are above that, and every decision you make, is always in your benefit. Best of luck in your endeavors, and thanks for the great work you've done.
phat5n00p3r@hushmail.com
Re:this looks a bit deeper than dirty laundry (Score:1)
Get some perspective. (Score:1)
Puh-leaze!
It showed, if anything, that Red Hat has one dick manager Raster couldn't get along with. Have you worked a single day in the real world? Or are you sealed in some hermetic chamber that keeps all the bad people out?
People need to get some perspective.
Raster might be a fine programmer. Don't know, myself. Haven't looked at his code, wouldn't know much of what I was looking at. But he's one person who had a problem with one other person in a company.
To read the posts under this story, you'd think Raster had been staked to an anthill while Bob Young waved fists of money in his face and sodomized a blow up Linus doll to the cheers of blood-crazed GNOME partisans.
God almighty.
Re:Q: RH IPO option$, the future of E, unemployabl (Score:1)
Why yes, as a matter of fact, it does. It's horrible. Here's what happens:
You install Red Hat. You configure X. You use X, grumbling that you are forced to use only GNOME or (courtesy of another moron on Slashdot recently) a deliberately broken KDE.
As time goes by, you begin to notice something strange:
Windows you used to use a lot start getting the word 'My' appended to them... the solitaire that shipped with GNOME grows a 'Vegas Style' option... vi is replaced by edit... insipid screens tell you when it's ok to shut off the computer... any pixmaps of Tux on your system start morphing into a strangely familiar middle-aged looking guy with round glasses. When you test the sound configuration, instead of "Hello, this is Linus Torvalds, and I pronounce Linux ... Linux" you get "Hello, this is Bill, Linus sucks dicks in hell."
One night, you go to sleep, troubled that your computer isn't working so well. As you sleep, a sleeper cron job fires up and dials Redmond. Linux is silently expunged from your hard drive, and the next morning you wake up to the Microsoft window banner on your screen.
In the distance, you think you hear Bob Young cackling as he orders a hit squad to find Raster, sleeping in his car somewhere on the Cali/Nevada line, and do him in before he can EXPOSE RED HAT AS A TOOL OF MICROSOFT!
Probably sounds plausible to you, doesn't it, you little nit?
Re:A bit of recent history, and a differing viewpo (Score:1)
[takes long bong hit]
No way man... don't you get it? Don't you see!? Red Hat already has enslaved us, dude!
[coughs, pounds chest]
See... in conjunction with the Bilderbergers and a dodecalateral cabal of moneyed interests working both in and outside of the Bretton Woods Compound (Antarctica... I've got photos), Red Hat built stuff into their install program. It doesn't use X because they can't get the same speed to hide the messages. And the messages are where it's at. KDE was deliberately broken to hide the messages.
[Second bong hit... more coughing...]
See, the message is the circle. And the circle is around the hat. We make the circle and the hat. Red? Stalin, dude. Hat? Circle... enclosed... imprisoned... enslaved.
See?
Raster just realized what was going on and got out. Too late, though. Red Hat's built incompatibilities that will cause Enlightenment to crash whenever you open an xterm so we'll be forced to use the GUI. Get it, man?
Once we're all GUI slaves, Red Hat turns us over to Microsoft. And we get enslaved by Sasquatch slavers from beyond the stars, taking their marching orders from Ramtha.
Totally.
[falls asleep face down in beanbag chair]
registry? (Score:1)
RTP, NC (Score:1)
And after living in the Bay Area for awhile I can tell you: I'd much rather be in Durham than in Silicon Valley. That place is BO RING. No wonder so much coding gets done, there's *nothing* else to do.
YMMV
you want pain? (Score:1)
Re:luser Worship (Score:1)
What makes you think the CEOs of Exxon, AT&T, Intel, or IBM are any more caring about their customers? No business (except for a REALLY small one) cares about anything except its bottom line. If being nice to customers gets you more money, fine. Otherwise, forget it.
RE: Rasterman Summerizes His RedHat Leave (Score:1)
Re:Rob has a problem with RH (Score:1)
No. He recently moved to Debian on the server, so now he doesn't feel like a hypocrite.
Re:Conflicted... (Score:1)
its not the programmers or the people who help them or the people who like their work, its the people who are ingrateful, whether they be programmer or user/marketer, they be ingrateful.
I'm not saying people should be grateful for those who have given so much time and energy to free software, but there is a fine line between giving thanks and giving worship. And, often that line gets crossed.
I'm particularly thankful for the work of Richard Stallman for his vision, and Linus for starting the project that alerted the masses to the philosophy of free software. But, even these two examples are still just people, and (probably) even aren't perfect, making bad decisions and all.
But, all the various free software "wars" (you know what I'm talking about) seem to indicate egos clashing. There are far too many pissing contests in this culture to believe in pure altrusim.
Besides, it's just software. None of us are curing cancer or feeding babies in Calcutta.
Re:Conflicted... (darnit, should have previewed!) (Score:1)
its not the programmers or the people who help them or the people who like their work, its the people who are ingrateful, whether they be programmer or user/marketer, they be ingrateful.
I'm not saying people should not be grateful for those who have given so much time and energy to free software, but there is a fine line between giving thanks and giving worship. And, often that line gets crossed.
I'm particularly thankful for the work of Richard Stallman for his vision, and Linus for starting the project that alerted the masses to the philosophy of free software. But, even these two examples are still just people, and (probably) even aren't perfect, making bad decisions and all.
But, all the various free software "wars" (you know what I'm talking about) seem to indicate egos clashing. There are far too many pissing contests in this culture to believe in pure altrusim.
Besides, it's just software. None of us are curing cancer or feeding babies in Calcutta.
Re:E is actually tiny! (Score:1)
But half the fun of E is all those pixmaps, effects and modules!
Re:Signs of tension. (Score:2)
Right! However, Linux currently has a substandard web browser and fragmented Java support. That makes it a non-contender to Windows on the desktop even if you factor the Office Suite out.
(A top shelf web browser + JVM + 3270/5250 emulator + sexy mail client like Eudora or MSOE could replace *millions* of Windows desktops, even without the office suite. And, no, pine/lynx is no an acceptable general solution - the radiation from your VT420 has driven you insane.)
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quit bitching (Score:1)
Re:RTP, NC (Score:2)
That's why those freaks are driving the rent up in San Francisco (where the 101 commute is now worse outbound than inbound.)
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Re:quit bitching (Score:1)
Re:Some thoughts (Score:1)
one file, one dir... what´s the difference? (Score:1)
The cracks in the community (Score:1)
Before, Linux users were a club. They were predominantly hackers with similar goals and philosophies.
But new users arrived from all cultures. They have different goals and different philosophies. The don't all think that Richard is the high priest or that Linus is the master pragmatician. Most will never learn the intricacies of vi or emacs. This is the way real communities are.
We don't get to choose our neighbors. Our candidate for mayor rarely gets elected. We go to different churches. Someone always complains about the potholes, and someone else complains about the cost to clean them up.
If my community were perfect, I'd move to someplace where there were cracks!
This is ironic... (Score:1)
Kurt Cobain, if you recall, is the late lead singer/songwriter/guitarist of the revolutionary early 90's band Nirvana. He pushed his genre of music into new directions. He wasn't Mozart, but he wasn't bad either.
Raster is somewhat similar to this. He takes his genre, the window manager, and pushes it to new extremes. He makes up new rules (e.g., Imlib) along the way. He's not doing anything radically new, but what he does is still cool.
Finally, if you want to impress a Windows user, you don't show them TWM, you show them Enlightenment.
Crypt.X
Re:Rumors (Score:1)
And they DO actively seek you out. They grab peopl e from the streets and make them do tests that invariably show that expensive courses are required. Once you have entered such a course it's not easy to get out.
Damn... is Bob Young really one of those?
Re:RTP, NC (Score:1)
Sorry to see Raster go, but hopefully things will be better for him in a different environment.
Re:Moderation (Score:1)
They're called references.
score:3!, whats wrong here? (Score:1)
If everyone just wrote code and made it work at least GNOME would evolve faster...
Re:My apologies for the previous post... (Score:1)
The vast majority of KDE users respect GNOME. Many use KDE on top of E. A lot use both KDE and GNOME together. Please do not get the impression that this is the typical behavior of KDE types.
Raster parting Gnome? (Score:1)
whatever happened to? (Score:1)
If you were really unreplaceable, and only a few of us are, the people above your manager will need explanations. When you write a letter like this, the easy explanation, that the guy was smart but couldn't get along with people, is easily believable.
It is obvious his coworkers didn't care much for his feelings, so why would they care now? Doesn't he have the emotional intelligence to figure that out?
I'm going to move to RTP, love that pulled pork barbecue. Let Rasterman go to SanFran, maybe the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are more his style.
Re:Leaving for a good reason... (Score:1)
What for? After installing redhat 6 I got a core dump while doing an innocent 'finger root'. Come on. The glibc developers themselves call glibc2.1 beta, and it was pre-beta when redhat made the master CD. RedHat always goes ahead with new stuff that's highly beta (glibc2.0 was never meant to be used for a distro by the developers, read the glibc mail archives!), thereby forcing other distros to follow, making Linux more unstable than it has to be (other distros have to follow because of poeple like you: no idea about the background story but only looking at and comparing stupid version numbers). All current Linux distros are significantly more unstable than teh previous generation! Ok, lots of new features, but we pay a high price for that! New beta kernel (2.0 needed 36 sub-releases to become stable and 2.2 is much more comlex, and caldera/suse/redhat all came out with 2.2._5_), new beta glibc, and new beta compiler (egcs). All three major core components in beta state! I never had to turn off power because of a system freeze until I used the latest 2.2.x distros. NEVER happend to me with 2.0! This is the other side of all this Redhat early-release stuff (was the case with glibc2 and now with 2.1). Yeah, I can (and do) use the old stuff, but what about all the new people who check out Linux for the first time because they heard it's so damn stable? I already had quite some bad feedback about this from newbies! Linux stable, ha!
--
Michael Hasenstein
http://www.csn.tu-chemnitz.de/~mha/ [tu-chemnitz.de]
Re:Moderation (Score:1)
| want... and I am free to say your opinion is
| lame...
You are. And posting as an anonymous coward gives you all that much more respect!
| You[']r[e] looking at it the wrong way, some might ask
| if you are looking at all..... He did not do it
| because of fashion.... he actually has a user
| base,
Well, actually he said that he didn't like North Carolina and he didn't like his manager. These are perfectly valid reasons to look for a job elsewhere - and nobody's begrudging him for that.
Would his little rant have been "news" at all if not for JWZ's (or would it have even been posted in the first place)? The difference between the rants is that JWZ's is a little more constructive and less whiny.
| When he saw that email, it made him mad
He'd already left the company and presumably gotten a "better" job - so what difference does it make?
| what better then slash dot.
Somebody else posted it, though I'm sure he knew that anything controversial involving Red Hat (no matter what it is) would be posted on Slashdot.
| tacky? Yeah I suppose it is tacky for an jail
| mate to scream as he is being raped by big
| bubba.
No, but it's certainly in poor taste to equate being raped with not liking your boss.
Re:Signs of tension. (Score:1)
We need a full-featured, high quality GUI mail client. Perhaps KMail [kde.org] will get there eventually, but right now, it's too immature, and doesn't support IMAP (heck, it doesn't even support POP correctly yet).
Actually, if the XFMail [netvision.net.il] guy would port his excellent mail program from XForms (yuk) to Qt/KDE and/or Gtk+/GNOME, it could be the answer. It is open source, so depending on the specific license (I don't recall how its licensed), someone else (maybe a group of people) could do it for him.
Although XFMail is butt-ugly (due to the afore-mentioned use of XForms), it is quite stable/full-featured, and does IMAP, POP, and local spool mail, multiple accounts, lots of filtering options, etc., etc. It's really a good program, and the author is one hell of a good programmer, as far as I can tell.
--
Get your fresh, hot kernels right here [kernel.org]!
Yeah. Exactly who I'd want to hire. (Score:3)
Look at it from the company's point of view. Foremost, it's bad press right before their IPO. Second, it hurts their recruiting efforts by saying that living in NC sucks...
I dunno, maybe even a vague loyalty isn't something that HR people look for anymore, but it's something I still value in people who work for me.
----
Why do we care? (Score:1)
He's just another developer leaving another company. So he has public visibility purely because its RedHat. So what? These things happen every day. Get used to it and get on with your life.
If you hadn't worked out by now, the longer and bitter the slanging match, the uglier it gets. The more you bitch and swap public responses, the lower you go in my esteem. Its a sad cliche, but let your code do the talking.
Re:Moderation (Score:1)
I happen to be interested in this story, since it not only concerns E (which I enjoy using), it also describes the internal attitude change at RedHat. I used to like RedHat, but lately more and more stories keep surfacing about how the tide is changing in North Carolina, and Raster's comments (have you even read them, BTW) are indicative of a company that is on the verge of losing sight of where they came from.
I also happen to be one of the people who stumbled on this sight long before it became Slashdot, and I almost always find the articles here to be interesting. Noticing your print jargon ("column-inches"), I assume that you think this site is supposed to be some sort of news portal. Well it isn't. The articles are on here because someone thought that this was interesting enough to post and Rob and crew agreed. End of story. If you don't like the article, then skip it. If you don't like a lot of the articles, then either submit ones about things you're interested in or go the hell away!
Hot air (Score:2)
In our attempts to find a "moral to the story," we can basically try to answer two questions: What does this say about Rasterman? and What does this say about Red Hat? If you don't like my longwindedness, I'll answer both for you right here: nothing.
The only change to Rasterman that arises from this is a different locale and different employer. That's it. He always has cared about his users; he's not leaving because he's been magically enlightened to the needs of them. Same ol' lovable Rasterman.
Likewise, there's nothing new about Red Hat here. They aren't out to hurt Rasterman's users or work, with the exception of one person. I doubt one person should categorize Red Hat's official stance. Especially one which has thus far gone unnamed, and is more than likely not anyone high on the food chain. Rasterman himself even says that most of the folks and RH and RHAD are good people: there's just that one person who has offended him.
So why am I chatting so much about something that I consider a nothing-new event? Simply because I don't want to hear any weirdness emerge from it. Rasterman is not suddenly a saint (unless he already was ;) ); Red Hat is not suddenly a non-believer in the Free way.
Flames burn. Hurt. Don't touch; don't start.
Nicks (Score:1)
What's wrong with it is that he has one. Seems very childish. None of the really big free software developers have one. All of the script kiddies have one.
Re:My thoughts (Score:1)
1. E runs great on a P90 laptop w/ 16 megs RAM
(of course, I can only run 2 or 3 apps no matter what WM I use, its too slow!! But E runs nicely)
2.E is _not_ the default WM for GNOME. It was what redhat put as GNOME's WM for RH-6, and it is one of the few WM's that is GNOME-compliant.
I'm getting tired of the whole GNOME/KDE thing. I really don't use any of the apps from either environment (and I do have both installed). I don't really care about a file manager either, since I have gotten so used to a command line that it is really harder to use the limited capabilities of a file manager.
Loyalty? It's earned, and can be taken away. (Score:2)
Loyalty is earned. If that loyalty is betrayed, it deserves to be taken away.
If you get paid to write software, you want a productive environment to work in, to do good work, to deliver your product, and the management should support those who are working for them. The better you treat your workers, espicially with this type of product development, the better work they do. Plain logic. Red Hat's management gave raster trouble, made the environment bad (besides, NC SUCKS!
Human beings are incredible assets. Human resources fit under operating expenses.
Re:Like JWZ: more than you know (Score:1)
I use E, and I admire both these guys' work.
I'd respect them even more if they stopped acting like rock stars and kept their professional difficulties to themselves, like mature professionals do.
I do hope that "professionalism", if that word applies to Open Source and Free Software, and discipline will come to grace the Linux community at some time. Show a little class and deal with your problems in private.
"Stunt Programmer" - I love that expression.
Re:Moderation (Score:1)
Raster has valid reasons for being upset (if only because he believes so) Who are we to judge what is professional or not professional for HIM to do or say. Stop worrying about how a member of the community reacts to something.. he is but one of many..
p.s. in my OPINION it is raster's manager that has a problem acting professional.
Conflicted... (Score:1)
You don't know what tomorrow brings, and not only burning bridges, but stomping on the smoulering ashes probably isn't the best tactic when leaving a company.
Perhaps it's one of the dangers of instant communication, this ability to instantly blow off steam without anything forcing you to cool down and rethink. Or maybe the infamous programmer temperment combined with this "cult of personality" surrounding the Linux celebrities is pumping egos out of control.
Maybe what's driving the whole free software movement isn't a noble belief in freedom for users, but is instead the chance to have your sense of self-worth blown completely out of porportion with reality.
Re:Leaving for a good reason... (Score:1)
Or to young to have run into this yet. Remember, some of us are just getting started in the free software development, and the job market in general, and aren't jaded yet. But we will, of course.
Re:Yeah. Exactly who I'd want to hire. (Score:1)
Re:Redhat showing it's growing pains? (Score:1)
-- Does Rain Man use the Autistic License for his software?
Re:registry? (Score:1)
What's wrong with centralizing all configuration stuff into one file? I've always been a little annoyed about the chaos in
Re:This is ironic... (Score:1)
fester fester fester (Score:1)
Re:registry? (Score:1)
quit bitching AC (Score:1)
Re:Yeah. Exactly who I'd want to hire. (Score:1)
I've worked for people like he describes. It's very demoralizing, plus there is little you can do about except to quit. One employer I worked for was so bad, I made sure my programming friends new about it (discreetly of course).
He may be unwise to post what he did, but I admire his convictions. If more people did this, employers would be less likely to take advantage of their employees for fear of scaring away potential talent.
Just my
The Truth! :) (Score:1)
Re:Moderation (Score:1)
| or not professional for HIM to do or say.
Since he posted it for public consumption, I'd say he's offering that right to anyone who might come across his pages.
I'd have to agree with those who see this as unprofessional. Or is it fashionable for disgruntled developers these days to put up bitch pages about their former employers?
So he had a bad manager
As for "moderating the article", well they already do that, as not all submissions get posted.
Now we get Raster sitings... (Score:1)
Heh heh just like Elvis...
"I saw him on the Angel Island Ferry!!!"
Where _will_ he pop up next...?
Re:Now we get Raster sitings... (Score:1)
Like JWZ: more than you know (Score:5)
JWZ is also a Stunt Programmer. On the Mozilla project, he was given marching orders to be a project leader, not a Stunt Programmer. The Mozilla project faltered. He left, frustrated. Since then, the Mozilla project has become much more goal-focused, its frequent milestone releases coming with clear goals. The difference is like night and day, reflected in everything from the crisp, punctual status reports and the daily inventories of showstoppers.
The successor to NS Communicator is still a long way from release, but the new discipline evident across the board on the Mozilla project shows how much dithering there was in the absence of strong project leadership.
This Raster guy and that Zawinski fella have done damn fine stuff, and have plenty of damn fine stuff ahead of them. But both were ill-suited to the jobs they were in, and should stop bellyaching.
Re:This is ironic... (Score:1)
Re:What does this mean exactly? (Score:1)
Linux community downhill fast? Socially speaking it was a matter of time once Boot magazine stuck a distro on one of their discs saying Linux was for 'rebels.'
What I was implying?
Not that use of something other than Debian is hypocricy. It's cool among all the little trendoids to dis Red Hat for everything from deliberately breaking KDE to make GNOME look good to 'trying to make Linux like Windows', and after a while, no matter how much you know better, you get sick of hearing about it from the little nits.
Where's that put our erstwhile Commander? About where he might as well be. Now that he's free of the taint of Red Hat, he'll have no compulsion against running every moronic screed that comes across his screen, provided it's written by either a.) a Linux rock star or b.) another clown who thinks his writing style is scholarly and insightful when it's really just half-assed conjecture that could just as easily support the claim that Linus is a Venusian sent to usher in the new millenium with alien crash-proofing technology.
I'm sure Mr. Malda is a nice guy, but I suspect his capacity for critical reading is minimal, and if I had to accuse him of anything, it would be 'being impressionable.' To get back to what I was implying, I suppose I should have said something like:
I'm sure he's been getting crap like this for a long time now. I'm also sure that since he's human, and since among Linux geeks an attack on one's distro is a smudge upon one's very escutcheon, he's been unwilling to post stories about how the distribution he relies on to work sucks and is evil and doesn't care about the users and is just like Microsoft and blah blah god-damn blah. Now, continuing on with my flashback to what I should have said he doesn't run Red Hat. He runs Debian. The crap about Red Hat continues to pump from the keyboards of the distro poseurs and pseudo-scholars with their paranoid and delusional tongue gnawings, and it continues to show up in the submission bin. But Mr. Malda doesn't need to worry about that anymore. He is a Debian man now. And he owes it to the community to let us all know what people are saying out there.
High user number to the contrary, I remember an earlier time as well. It doesn't matter and there's no going back. Demented people are afoot, clutching their tattered self-images to their breasts, hoping a fucking operating system, of all things, will serve to define them in the face of a world of people who (revelation time for someone out there) don't give a damn about their preferences in computer tools. In the 'good old days,' all you had to say was 'I run Linux.'
Lots of people would squirm and think of other things they had to do, but by God, a Linux man was a Linux man.
Sadly, that time has passed. It just isn't good enough to be a Linux man because there are too damned many of them. How to differentiate ourselves? Well... the next logical step is the distro. And after that... the desktop environment. And on, and on, and on.
-Insinkerator
The sig is sarcasm, by the way, in case you missed that the first time.
Re:Moderation (Score:1)
Red Hat's internal attitude is extremely relevant to alot of us, and it would appear that the internal memo that was (accidentally) emailed to Raster was a screw up on Red Hat's part for keeping him on the list, but now that the cat is out of the bag
It appears that he cares more about the Linux community than he does about Red Hat, and the contempt and condecendence that RH is showing for a large group of Linux users, appearantly hurts him, and he feels a certain obligation to share the truth about this situation to those users who this attitude may affect. The internal memo showed that it was more than just a "personality conflict", I mean, come on - their position against a large number of users (not just Raster) is there in black and white.
Employment is a two-way street, and loyalty goes two ways. Don't belittle someone company-wide, and expect loyalty from said person. That is ludicrous. When you treat people like shit, it eventually catches up with you, as well it should.
For those of you whining about how you would not hire someone with such a lack of loyalty, perhaps you should consider not belittling your employees, and perhaps you won't have to worry about it.
If this is unacceptable, you will get the employees that you deserve, and you will not receive a talent the likes of Rasterman.
I am more sick of seeing employers treating their employees improperly, than employees blowing the whistle on it - and now the net has leveled the playing field a little.
Personally, I am glad.
Poor fits (Score:1)
I know Linux supporters can rattle off high-profile Linux stories (Titanic rendering, a number of research clustering projects, possibly Corel's NetWinder, etc), as if somehow that imbues Linux in general with something approaching professionalism, but they lack the depth and breadth of the kind of stories that Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, and others can lay before prospective PHBs.
If anything, Rasterman comes off looking like some spoiled script kiddie who got lucky at RedHat and then threw a fit and quit when things didn't go his way. If Rasterman really wanted to help, he'd think beyond his own wounded ego to the rest of the community. And perhaps the Linux community, if they really want to be looked on as professional-like, should be more selective on whom they bestow fame and cachet.
Re:Moderation (Score:1)
Not me, the moderators. In allowing the moderators the ability to moderate articles themselves, it sends a message to Rob and crew "what works" and "what doesn't".
I assume that you think this site is supposed to be some sort of news portal.
"News For Nerds. Stuff That Matters."
'Nuff said.
As for Raster's comments, yes, I read them. I came out of it with an overwhelming feeling of "So? He had a dick manager. So has everyone else."
If I decide my manager is a dick 6 months from now and quit my job at my company (a rather largish double-digit-billion dollar web firm) do I get to have my rant published as well?
The point was not that Raster can't say whatever he wants, but that he comes off as whining about having quit a bad job. Whoopie-doo, that's not news. Allowing moderators to moderate news stories would allow people to set their account such that, just as they can ignore "comments the moderators think are inappropriate", they could also choose to ignore "articles the moderators think are inappropriate".
Re:Moderation (Score:1)
What we're talking about is more on an individual basis. I may want to know about Enlightenment, but this has very precious little to do with Enlightenment and much more to do with "pissing and moaning about an ex-employer".
Why this might be important (Score:1)
I know that people with this kind of genius can be very shy when not around their kind, and I think this explains a lot of what happened. Then things just fester until they suddenly appear as they have here.
I do wonder if some of this is out of a desire to move to the Bay Area, however. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he could have easily fixed up his differences at Red Hat. He didn't like North Carolina, so it was time to go.
Can't say I blame him, although he's likely to find housing prices up there a rude shock
D
----
If it sucks but doesn't break the rules don't read (Score:1)
Personally I'd like to know the character of the people I support with my money.
Re:Hero Worship (Score:1)
As for NC, it may not be the most exciting place, but it is beautiful with many facets one can choose to explore. Your life and experiences are shaped by your choices. You reap what you sow.
Keep'n it real as usual,
Malachi
Re:Loyalty? It's earned, and can be taken away. (Score:1)
I'm damn glad to work for a small company where my ideas are listened to and we all work together. I have vowed to never work for a company where I don't talk to (or even _see_) all of the employees every day.
I am a human being, and whether I am an employee or a customer, a company _owes_ me as much respect and loyalty as they expect in return. If they offer no respect, then I deliver none, and will give my patronage as a customer or my talents as an employee elsewhere.
College economics parrotry... (Score:1)
Wait, so then capitalism IS decentralized... and they said open source wouldn't work.
Re:This is getting old (Score:1)
While I might have some constructive issues that could help a company. If I were to leave say my current job, which like everything in the world, has its own disfucntionalities, it is absolutly disrespectful for me to make myself go public. I almost want to say that one is liable for expressing too openly their opinions of a said company.
Like I said in a previous reply, if you have a problem, and have tried explaining it or fighting for your view, then leave and find a home where you can be happy, but dammit, shuttup already. I care more about the UN settlement than this garbage.
Malachi