Re: Nomination question: Redhat
Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org> writes:
> As for Alan being more than a kernel hacker, what more is he? What makes
> him so special that the distribution that hired him is so much better
> than everyone else? He can code? A lot of people can code.
>From what I gather, Alan Cox is his own independent company (Building
#3), who's primary client is Red Hat. Effectively, he works for Red
Hat. He works out of Wales, whereas Red Hat is based in North
Carolina. I get the impression that he has free reign to do pretty
well anything he wants that is Linux-related. It's very good work if
you can get it.
If you look at what he does ( http://www.linux.org.uk/diary.html ),
you'll see he actually spends very little of his time doing Red Hat
stuff. Mostly it's generic Linux stuff (ie. stable kernel releases).
He's working for us as much as he is for Red Hat. I think you'll find
that he's always been very open and responsive to Debian's concerns.
Nobody can question his almost supernatural kernel hacking abilities -
he's essentially the #2 Linux guy behind Linus. Not a bad guy to have
in your arsenal if you are a Linux distribution and have a
multi-million dollar business. If we were in the proprietary software
business, I'd be concerned if the other team had him on their side.
Luckily, we aren't. Perhaps that's why Microsoft tried to hire him?
Cheers,
- Jim
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