Open Source comes from your heart, not your pocketbook!
I was reading Jonathan Schwartz' blog today and it made me realize of the various occasions when I worked at Sun Microsystems that management was content to keep me quiet.
From the start, Sun hired me as I lobbied for the Solaris community to keep Solaris on x86, which they had planned to indefinitely delay on Jan. 8th, 2002. On May 19th, 2003 Sun hired me as an evangelist and engineer within Solaris x86 Engineering. Later I would find out that Anil Gadre was pretty much the responsible person that tried to kill the product, but he would never admit it in the time I was there.
During my almost 6 years at Sun, there were many times I wanted to say what management wouldn't let me, even once they made me apologize to Roy Felding, for an honest comment I made to him...Roy Felding had said that Sun used him as free labor, a real shot at Sun. I never agreed that they should get people like Roy on the OpenSolaris Governing Board anyway, he knew nothing about Solaris. So, I made a comment to Roy, and I said, "While you may feel as if Sun used you as free labor, it wasn't without cost". My Director made me publicly apologize to Roy for that comment...why, I still am not sure of today...having a person like Roy on the board hurt more than it helped. Sure, Roy knows a lot about the Apache project, heck, some of the structure that needed to be changed only seemed like a copy of the Apache project anyway...a lot of help he was...most anyone can copy, it take talent to innovate. Maybe Roy innovated on the Apache project, but he sure didn't innovate for Sun.
But for some reason I never did mention the things Sun didn't want me to, and in fact, you could say that Sun management won out over me. They were successful in keeping me quiet so they were free to run the company in the toilet, and I think that in itself made them happy. It did keep me quiet while I was there though.
My evangelist side for Sun was to grow the open source community for OpenSolaris, but I never aligned with the people that ran those efforts, I was always like a black sheep inside Sun. The people that ran the OpenSolaris Community group were more fond of buying SWAG for community members so they could be marketing pawns...but people like me knew that people involved in open source were not so naive. Yet Sun's OpenSolaris Community group would go to all types of efforts to buy and give away SWAG. What a bunch of losers...a couple months ago I was at the SVOSUG user group meeting and they were giving out canvas bags that looked like a loin cloth with straps on it. When I mentioned that, some folks looked at me and said, "how can you look a gift horse in the mouth". We'll I'll tell you exactly how...I don't need to wear some loin cloth around advertising for Sun. I use OpenSolaris because I want to, not because they gave me some piece of SWAG. Clearly those folks don't get it.
Open source comes from your heart, not your pocketbook. The people who ran/run Sun's OpenSolaris Community group never could grok the fact that people of like interest like to get together and discuss said like interest with each other. They rarely, if at all, showed up to an OpenSolaris user group, they were absent in that regard. Most of the people who still run the OpenSolaris Community group today know nothing about a user community. Most of them only know about sitting in their office, hoping that they will still have a job tomorrow. Those people punch the clock in and sit at their desk, only to go home in the evening. In between they look for the next snazzy loin cloth to have Sun's logo printed on in hopes that community members will be the next marketing lemmings for them. More importantly they can show management what they have done for the OpenSolaris Community, which really amounts to very little if anything.
Open source comes from your heart, not your pocketbook, don't forget that...is it any wonder the OpenSolaris Community is failing? I think not...it still remains to be seen how serious Oracle will be to grow the user community. I don't see much effort yet and don't expect much...if anything the users will be lucky to get a new loin cloth with the Oracle logo on it...that way those people that work in the OpenSolaris Community group will feel like they've done something to grow the community.
Posted at 06:27PM Mar 09, 2010 by aland in General | Comments[0]
Great Mother's Day party and 16th Bday!
It was a great Mother's Day, we had friends over and did a great BBQ for all to enjoy.
My daughter (13 years old) cooked 5 dishes, including 3 pasta dishes (one orzo, one with small shell paster, and one with rigatoni), roasted potatoes, fried raviolis, and more. I don't think there was one disappointed Mother at our house (or Fathers).
In additional Celina Nanbara who's birthday is 05/11, and Jun baked this wonderful cream strawberry cake:
I also BBQ'd a couple racks of spareribs cut St. Louis style, with miso sauce on them, and a load of flap steak, one pack I had got and one the neighbors brought over. We had a bunch of Japanese dishes brought over by company also, it was a great time for all. Thanks so much to all who come over to celebrate Mother's Day and Celina's Bday!
Posted at 11:22PM May 11, 2009 by aland in General | Comments[302]
Congratulations Ai-Chan, Certificate of Merit level 5 on piano!
Congrats to my daughter, Ai, for passing her level 5 of Certificate of Merit on piano.
My wife made this lemon custard tart for her!
(click on picture for high resolution)
Posted at 10:43PM Apr 04, 2009 by aland in Music | Comments[8]
Those without dreams never have dreams come true...proud parents!
Yesterday my son received notice that he was accepted into UCLA to major in Design / Media Art, and all I can say is that both me and my wife are 2 very proud parents. To get accepted into UCLA is very difficult, and has become one of the more difficult schools to get accepted to. This year is rumored to have only accepted 8% of the 55,000 applicants.
My son was 1 of 30 students to be accepted to the Design Art Program, and he is very excited that his hard work has paid off. For a high school student, this is like hitting the lotto.
I am so proud of you Son, and I know that Mom is also. Congratulations! :-)
The Omoris brought these baloons over for my son, thanks so much Keiko, Keith, Masashi, and Nao!
Here's a picture of a tart my wife made for my son!
Here's a picture of Jason as he finished up the CMEA performance which Lynbrook got SUPERIOR marks straight across the board! Now that's what we're talking about Doc Felder! Yeah!
Posted at 10:47PM Mar 19, 2009 by aland in General | Comments[0]
libhttp updated to 1.2 in Downloads
I received a patch for libhttp, a small http library I wrote about 7 or 8 years ago, my how time flies by.
Jesper Nielsen from Denmark sent a patch and the latest version, 1.2, it's available on the main website in the Downloads directory, or directly from this link.
This is what makes open source software work.
Thanks Jesper!
Posted at 12:35AM Mar 12, 2009 by aland in General | Comments[485]
AMD gets a new Chairman!
I was reading that Bruce Claflin is the new Chairman of AMD.
It was Bruce Claflin that took over the helm at 3Com just prior to the Kerbango project being shelved...somehow this doesn't seem good for AMD, but who am I to say...I'm not working and he's the Charman of AMD...I guess he's got a leg up on me...:-/Posted at 12:03AM Mar 06, 2009 by aland in General | Comments[0]
Times change, and people do too!
I worked at Sun Microsystems for the past (close to) 6 years, and it was a great place to work. I went to Sun in response to a bad choice they made to try and end of life Solaris on x86. During the time I was there, I saw Sun make a massive shift to support the Solaris operating system on x86/AMD64 architectures. Enough that I would say it would appear to be one of their long term strategies.
Now it is time to move on, time to find something new to do, and I have my eyes focused on Embedded Linux as the target for future work. Prior to joining Sun Microsystems it was quite a tough time in Silicon Valley, and I certainly shared some of those hardships. I also felt very fortunate that Sun gave me a position working for them at one of the worst times in Silicon Valley, the dot-bomb really took a toll on all of us, as many of you know that are here and experienced it first hand. OTOH, the rise of the bubble was one of the most incredible rides and a milestone in history for the high tech. Alas, my position was alleviated with the 6000 employee reduction in force at Sun on January 22, 2009. I enjoyed my time there, and have many great experiences at Sun.
At the tail end of the dot-bomb, I was working on one of the first Embedded Linux projects, the Kerbango Internet Radio. I wrote all the communications for the radio, handled the authentication of the radio to connect to the tuning service, and worked on some of the system, along with some device driver work. This project was without a doubt one of the greatest projects I had worked on, and Embedded Linux has grown quite a bit since.
Here's a picture of the Kerbango Internet Radio.
Some things we can't explain, and how we get to where we are going is for each of us to figure out. Who knows what the future will bring. I want to stay in Silicon Valley, I can't imagine leaving, certainly not before I can get my daughter through high school which she will start next year. Embedded Linux is without a doubt one of the healthiest sectors of the high tech industry. In fact, I would venture to say that Linux is tossing the embedded space on it's head, and more and more companies continue to gyrate towards using it in their products.
Having been in the high tech industry for more than 25 years, one thing I have learned is that you can never know what to expect. I am not clear what I will do, but I am glad I have some experience in developing on Embedded Linux. I gave a presentation last August for the Peninsula Linux User Group and you can get the presentation here in PDF format, if you have interest. The presentation was about Embedded Linux and the Kerbango Internet Radio.
If you know of an interesting project using Embedded Linux, feel free to pass my name along!
Posted at 08:30PM Mar 03, 2009 by aland in General | Comments[467]