Seeping Matter

Yesterday was my last day at Mozy.

I left Novell and came to Mozy just over a year ago.  For a variety of reasons, I chose to leave Novell even though in my case I had to take a cut in pay to do it.  I don’t regret this decision at all.  I’ve learned tremendously from Mozy, met a lot of really great people, and really loved working at Mozy.  It’s a great company with a great product, but the best part about Mozy is the people – there are some really great people there, many of which I didn’t really get to work with as much as I would have liked, and I’ll definitely miss the opportunity to work with them.

At my one year mark last May, I took a step back to look objectively at my job at Mozy.  This happened to coincide quite closely with EMC’s recently announced employee 5% pay cut, which of course also affected then-current Mozy employees.  (By the way, you have to love how EMC told the press that they were “asking” employees to take the cut – it was more like “we’d like to ask you to take this cut in pay, or leave.”)  I looked at the tradeoff I’d made a year earlier, now with greater insight, along with the adjusted compensation, and realized that I wouldn’t have made the decision to come to Mozy last year after all.

It’s an odd conclusion because I still would have made the decision last year, knowing everything I’d learn and the relationships I’d build.

It was at this point that a great colleague from a former team at Novell, one of the two best teams I’ve ever worked on (the other also from Novell), told me that the company he is now with was hiring, and asked if I would be interested.

Truth is, he and I had discussed this exact position about a few months before, and I’d told him at the time that I was happy where I was.  But then EMC changed the dynamics of our employer/employee relationship, and when he approached me again, by this time I was willing to consider a change.  And as my new employer and I considered it, we both came to the conclusion that it would be a good thing.

I’m really looking forward to this new opportunity.  I’ll learn a lot, I hope to contribute a lot, and know for a fact that the team I’ll be on there is outstanding.  At the same time I’ll miss the cool of Mozy.  It’s still a great place with great people.  Especially if you are considering working there now – the 5% cut does not apply to new hires, and I know they are still looking for great engineers among other things.

Some time ago I had a Linux server set up at home and it was working pretty well, other than the wireless NIC. It had a Belkin 54g Wireless Network Card F5D7000 in it with the RT2500 chipset. I had been able to get it working on my wireless network, sort of, sometimes. But it was flaky enough that it wasn’t good enough to consider my server usable, so I abandoned it.

So this past week I decided it was time to get that thing running. It’s good timing because I just built a new PC not too long ago and I kept a lot of the old parts from the old PC that were still potentially salvageable, like the memory and hard drives and case. So I cobbled together a new, better server with the best parts from both old PCs. And now that openSUSE 11 is out, I decided to give it a try.

Well, all I can say is, if only it were as easy to configure wireless on Windows. openSUSE 11 detected the card type and chipset of my wireless card and preinstalled it as a network interface. All I had to do was enter in the access credential and it worked like a charm.

Bottom line: SUSE Linux really is awesome. Remember, I don’t work for Novell anymore. I don’t own any Novell stock (seriously, what kind of an investor do you think I am???) I have nothing to gain from promoting SUSE Linux really, other than to tell you that it really is a great all-around distribution. Great server. Great desktop. Really.

This is really interesting to me because some guys at work just the other day asked me, almost casually, what Linux desktop I would recommend. I told them it would depend; that for a new user I might recommend Ubuntu, but for me without question it would be openSUSE. The immediate response was, “Well, that’s just because you used to work for Novell.”

Actually, I’ve been using Linux for a pretty long time. My first Linux install was dual-booting on a Pentium 100 with Windows 95. I managed to squeeze a Caldera installation onto a portion of that 1 GB hard drive, which was pretty big back almost 13 years ago when I was doing this. I remember many hours spent configuring that video card so X would work.
Since then I’ve used a lot of Linux in various times. I was a pretty loyal Red Hat guy until Novell bought SUSE back in, ah, whenever that was. I changed from Red Hat to SUSE at that point, and suddenly realized what I was missing.

Novell’s problem is leadership, plain and simple. That, and they refuse to admit that their problem is leadership – which is a circular problem. That’s not just me talking – Peter Drucker also wrote that if a business is not performing, the management – the leadership – of that business should be held responsible.
Technology has NEVER been Novell’s problem. Never in my life have I worked on more talented teams than at Novell. They have excellent technologists and generally excellent products, if management gets out of the way long enough to let the engineers create a quality product (for example, eDirectory, iFolder, or iChain). Of course, SUSE was already a quality software distribution before Novell even showed up, and openSUSE continues to be quality.

It is unfortunate, then, that I find that my career, my experience, is suddenly tarnished because of the fact that I worked at Novell. Novell consistently underperforms, but that isn’t because of me or the other individual contributors there. And it doesn’t mean that Novell’s products are not any good – especially openSUSE, which has primarily just a financial relationship with Novell.

Don’t be like that. Don’t discount ex-Novell-employees, their experience or capability, or Novell products just because Novell’s management isn’t being held responsible for better performance standards. Not only is it not the fault of the individual contributors, it simply is not accurate.

Tomorrow is my last day of employment at Novell as a software engineer. I’ve never before mentioned in this blog who I work for.

I’m sitting in my office thinking about my last day tomorrow. It’s an incredibly nostalgic and bittersweet emotion. I’m looking northward out my office window on the 7th floor. I have a magnificent view of the mountains and Utah Valley – at seven floors up in Provo, Utah, you are pretty much at the top of the city. I am sure going to miss this view.

I dated a girl in college named Stefani. She was a great girl, and we enjoyed our time together. In spite of this, after time I came to believe that our relationship was not ever going to work out. With mixed emotions I broke off the relationship, not because I didn’t like her, but because in spite of the liking it just wasn’t working out.

Choosing to leave Novell has been like that. After eight years (give or take) at a place, you can’t help but harbor fond memories and feelings. I don’t know how else to describe the feeling, unless you too have ended a relationship that was not fruitful, even in spite of all the enjoyment you had gotten from the relationship.

Funny thing is, I don’t regret my decision to leave at all. I don’t have any second thoughts or feel like I’m making a mistake. I guess it is a feeling of sorrow, regret, and disappointment – oh, if only it could have worked out. Alas, it didn’t. I guess it wasn’t meant to be.

The upside: After I broke off the relationship with Stefani, I met another girl that was even more wonderful. She is still my girlfriend (and wife) after 14 years. Maybe that’s a good omen.

Sorry to write a technical article on the Half Bad Boy Blog. I hope you can bear with me. Its just that the general reaction to this whole Microsoft/Novell agreement is so baffling that I really need to talk about it.

I’m assuming you are familiar with Open Source and Linux, the freely-available and freely-created operating system which is one of the flagship open source offerings. The community of developers and users behind open source are a particular and idealistic group, not necessarily all of the same mindset, but with some generally common goals. Among them: The idea that the rights of a person to use and even modify software should be unrestricted; the passion to create high-quality, great, useful software products; and the belief that the movement is ultimately unstoppable.

And when you think about it, it is unstoppable. Linux is truly a great operating system – secure, stable, powerful, fast, versatile, and actually quite easy to use. It is a strong competitor to Microsoft Windows – better at Windows at some things, not better at others. Yet. But there are only really two main ways for a company like Microsoft to compete with Linux – on price and on features. Since Linux is free, Microsoft cannot beat Linux on price – unless they start paying people to use Windows. And with thousands of developers around the world working on Linux for free, there is ultimately no way that Microsoft can compete on the basis of features.

The effect of open source is the commoditization of software. Interesting projects will draw more developers, leading to better software, making the project more interesting, etc. The process snowballs, and once it gets to a certain size, it is pretty much unstoppable. The licensing and intellectual property laws protecting it ensure that this is the case.

Linux is beyond this point. It is not better than Windows, yet. But there is no stopping it. Eventually the computer operating system will become a commodity, and we can thank Linux for it. Microsoft won’t be able to make money there anymore.

Those of us involved in the open source movement know this. We have foreseen this for years. We understand the effect of the movement. For years people involved in open source have viewed Microsoft as the enemy, because they are the antithesis of everything the open source community stands for (with the possible exception of quality software – and some would even disclaim that exception). Those involved in open source have for years said that the movement would ultimately mean the demise of Microsoft’s business models, and the death of Windows as we know it today.

Surely these people don’t think they knew something that Microsoft didn’t. Right? Right???

Come on, people. You had to know that Microsoft would know this. Whatever you may think of Microsoft as a company – ruthless, shady, cutthroat, etc. – you surely don’t think they are stupid. They realized the same things you did, long ago. They must have figured out, long ago, that eventually they will have to adjust their business plan to align themselves with this movement. They would have to do that or die.

You would think that any step that Microsoft would take in such a direction would be a sign of a clear victory. It should be viewed as a sign that the day finally came – the day when Microsoft realized they had to figure out how to play nicely with open source in order to survive. This should be viewed as the day open source won – the day when technology works on open source’s terms, not the other way around.

That is what I find baffling about the reaction to this deal. The most logical explanation for this decision, on Microsoft’s part, is that they realized that they needed to do this to remain relevant. Why else would they be willing to pay Novell $348M to enter into this deal? Many so-called open source experts have said that Microsoft is doing this in order to take over Linux. Hello, people! They can’t do that, because of the licensing of Linux. For so-called open source experts, you sure don’t understand open source very well.

Some people were initially upset about this arrangement because they were sure it violated the GPL. They were sure of this despite the fact that both Novell and Microsoft have many experienced, paid intellectual property lawyers on staff to make very sure that no such violation existed in the agreement. Now, they are upset because they think the arrangement should be a violation, even though it apparently isn’t (IANAL).
I find this pretty interesting because of prior experience I’ve had with people regarding the GPL. I can’t recount how many times arguments I’ve had with people over the GPL have included them saying some variant of the phrase, “Well, that is not what the GPL is intended to mean.”
If you want to play in the realm of law and intellectual property, you have to play by the rules of the game, and one of the rules of the game is that a copyright license covers exactly what it states that it covers. Intent is of no significance.

I could go on and on here, but I won’t. To summarize, my point here is simply twofold:

• This agreement should be viewed as a win for the open source movement. Novell’s stated objectives are to promote and protect open source. Microsoft’s stated objectives are harmony and interoperability. The most logical explanation for this is that Microsoft needed to make this move to remain competitive.
• Any parts of this agreement that you think violate the GPL are more likely a) your incorrect assumptions based on information you don’t have, or b) your misunderstanding of copyright law such that the GPL should mean what it is meant to mean, and not necessarily what it says. Frankly, you pretty much need to just shut up and deal with it. You are being pretty presumptuous to assume that you know more about law than paid corporate IP lawyers.

I’m still waiting to see an argument against this that actually holds any water. Until then, I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt. The principle of Occam’s Razor implies that the most logical explanation is likely the right one – and the most logical explanation is nothing but positive for the open source movement. Take a pill and relax.