Jon Maddog Hall on Linux, His Life and More 42
inkslinger77 writes "In a recent interview Jon 'Maddog' Hall speaks with Computerworld Australia about his life, Linux, and the Linux world conference to be held this year in Sydney. He also talks about Linux International's new direction and the future of FOSS."
Re:My favourite Maddog quote... (Score:5, Informative)
I spent sixteen years of my life trying to push Unix inside of a company that (for the most part) only wanted to push VMS or NT. I had finally come to the conclusion that if the customer wanted VHS, you did not keep telling them that they should be using BETAMAX. I also knew that the hardware companies and the ISVs would only qualify on one operating system, and what that qualification meant to customers. I knew that a large amount of that was based on "marketing" and visibility in the marketplace.
It was Linux that was getting most of the press, and it was Linux which the customers asked about. It was Linux that the hardware companies embraced.
But the writer could not have known that in the same timeframe as I made my comment to him I was also trying to be inclusive of the *BSDs in the USENIX
tracks. As a board member of USENIX I supported the development of the BSD conferences sponsored by that organization. I am good friends with Kirk McKusick and he will vouch for my support of the funding and execution of the BSD conferences in the board meetings of USENIX.
I believe it was at a conference in Australia (also in the 1996-1998 time frame) that I ran into a rather despondent Theo de Raadt, who told me that for lack of $300. his ISP was going to turn off the project's servers. I took out my checkbook and immediately wrote him a personal check for $300., to keep the OpenBSD servers alive. My comment to Theo was that "your project is too valuable to let die over a measly $300." I never told people about this, simply because there was no need.
I believe that what the *BSD people are doing *IS* valuable, and I have said that repeatedly both before and after 1996. I also appreciate the efforts of the Plan 9 people, the FreeDOS people, the TinyOS people and other OS projects.
However, I also believe in market forces, and that when the customer says "Linux", I do not come back and say "BSD".
Regards,
maddog