Jan'uary

Robbins @ Microsoft

Jan 发表于 2005-06-14 11:26:16

这是一则发生在5.23日的事情... Gentoo的创造者Robbins决定加入Microsoft以“帮助他们更好的理解开源”。 Gentoo是一个完全由志愿者支撑的发行版，他的开发者没有任何回报。对于有着妻子和子女的Robbins来说，这样的生活也许再也无法继续下去了... 但是除了Microsoft也有许多其他的公司可以选择啊，凭他的能力我想是不会被据的。他的举动让我有些失望，也许他真的是想帮助M$更好的理解开源吧... 无论如何，今后Gentoo的用户在为自己心爱的发行版辩论的时候，底气总是会不足的了。

下面是官方网站上的声明及两条相关评论。

http://www.gentoo.org/news/20050613-drobbins.xml
Gentoo founder and former Gentoo Chief Architect Daniel Robbins began a new position at Microsoft on 23 May 2005. According to drobbins: "I'm helping Microsoft to understand Open Source and community-based projects." While in the midst of hastily packing to move to Redmond, drobbins nonetheless managed to find the time to finalize the transfer of Gentoo's intellectual property (essentially copyrights on ebuilds and other software as well as soon-to-be trademarked Gentoo logos) to the not-for-profit Gentoo Foundation, Inc.

drobbins -> microsoft
So everyone knows now that Daniel Robbins took a job with Microsoft. I want to state my opinion, mostly in response to the trolls out there (and slashdotters, if there is a difference).

He has a wife and kids.. With a wife and kids comes the responsibility to care for them. He is being responsibile and doing just that. It’s as simple as that.. Gentoo does not pay anybody, and even if we did we definately could not afford the full gamut of benefits that are a necessity these days (retirement package, HEALTH INSURANCE for his family, etc).

I’ve encouraged Daniel to find a salary job for a long time now, as taking care of his wife and kids should take priority over Gentoo. He is doing just that.

For those who are crying foul, there is no foul. I say that both as a Trustee of the Gentoo Foundation and as a friend of Daniel.

For those who think he should not be working at Microsoft because it is Microsoft, give me a break.. You know, if we want to be on the “open source” side of the game, according to RMS every single bit of code should be free and no money (wages) paid for it. His opinion is that programmers should bag groceries to afford their food and then do their programming in their free time. I don’t mind someone who wants to practice this belief, but on the other hand I hope you can see how silly it is in the grand scheme of things.

Drobbins working for MS
I recently posted a news item announcing that Daniel Robbins is now working for Microsoft, and that he has also finished turning all of the Gentoo IP over to the Gentoo Foundation. That combination of events is likely to cause some consternation. Microsoft is evil, isn't it? Yet why would somebody who chooses to work for an evil company voluntarily turn over a substantial number of copyrights and logos, getting very, very little in return. (To be specific, drobbins has been promised by the foundation that drobbins@gentoo.org will be aliased to whatever his current e-mail address happens to be.)

Of course, Microsoft is not evil. I disagree with many of their business practices, and in many cases I find that open source packages actually work better than do their close-source counterparts, but I'm not blinded to the fact that the Windows operating system is "good enough" for a whole lot of people. Moreover, Microsoft does hire a lot of smart people. In the long run C# may be as much a boon to the open source community as to Microsoft, and MS should get substantial credit for assembling a rather nice language.

In reading through the forums, somebody asked why drobbins couldn't just keep working on making Gentoo better, instead of working for microsoft. I hope that the vast majority of our users understand that, except for extremely rare exceptions, our developers aren't _paid_ to work on Gentoo.

阅读176次评论个人主页扔小纸条文件夹: Linux