LinuxPPC Co-Founder Resigns 47
acaben writes "Jason Haas, co-founder of LinuxPPC (and a semi-frequent topic of discussion on Slashdot) has announced he is resigning from the company to pursue a college degree and a life a little less hectic. Haas explained he was burned out, and that "Three or four years of trying to do as much as humanly possible will do that to you." There's more information available on his depature at MacSlash."
Re:Do Not Hire This Man (Score:1)
Re:Note to Apple: (Score:1)
And your last sentance absolutely proves update()'s point.
Um, Black Lab Linux != LinuxPPC (Score:2)
Re:Fore every one highly publicized departure... (Score:3)
Hell you might even want to take time out to have a family and maybe a hobby or two.
Nice to see some priorities (Score:4)
Re:Note to Apple: (Score:1)
(You spelled his name wrong.)
I worked with him and attended a few expos with him. He's simply not a coder. That's not to imply that people who don't code aren't worthy people, but let's get our facts straight please.
-Hollis
Re:Yes, Black Lab Linux == LinuxPPC. (Score:1)
Some points of clarification:
Originally, the kernel was simply called Linux for the PowerPC, or the Port of Linux for PowerPC. Gary Thomas and Cort Dougan were the two main players in developing the Linux for PowerPC kernel in the early days. Jason Haas had little to do with the actual kernel. The kernel wasn't actually developed in conjunction with any type of distribution.
Later on, Jason Haas and Jeff Carr started up a company called LinuxPPC, Inc. LinuxPPC, Inc. created the LinuxPPC distribution. This distribution used the Linux for PowerPC kernel. The other main distribution custom-designed for PowerPC is YellowDog/Black Lab Linux, by Terrasoft. In other words, there is no LinuxPPC or YellowDog distribution for non-PowerPC architectures. In addition to these, other Linux distributions have ported their packages over to Linux for PowerPC - SuSE and Debian to name a few. So you can get Debian or SuSE for PowerPC, and it will install and work nearly identically to Debian or SuSE for x86 or whatever architecture you care to install it on.
Current distributions supporting the Linux for PowerPC kernel include:
LinuxPPC, Inc.'s LinuxPPC 2000 Q4
Terrasoft Inc.'s Yellowdog Linux 1.2 (2.0 will be available RSN)
Debian's 2.2r3 (PowerPC port)
SuSE Linux 7.1 (PowerPC port)
These all generally use the same Linux for PowerPC kernel base, but some of the distributors make their own patches to the kernel (which are of course made available to anyone).
Much of this information can be obtained from this site [penguinppc.org].
Hope this helps...
The official press release... (Score:4)
Re:Not a suitable OS anyway (Score:1)
Actually, some RISC developers use "Restricted" because "Reduced" is a bit of a misnomer, what with things like the supposedly ReducedISC DEC Alpha having more instructions than the Pentium. Instead of continuing such incongruities, they've updated the term to be a better reflection on reality. Maybe your post deserves a "stuck in the past" rating? ;)
Cheers,
Yes, Black Lab Linux == LinuxPPC. (Score:3)
Something that almost NOBODY seems to have straight is the difference between LinuxPPC the kernel and LinuxPPC the distro. I'm still a bit confused m'self. From observing, i get the vague sense that the LinuxPPC distro is just kind of tossed together by kernel developers who are much too busy maintaining the kernel to actually put together a distro, and the LPPC distro is nothing more than redhat recompiled without any testing, a thousand disparate and mostly uncessecary parts thrown together on a CD, most of which are for various reaons broken. Personally, i have used (buying one of them) multiple versions of LinuxPPC and had a simply miserable time with them all. I then went and got me a copy of Debian/PPC, which uses the LinuxPPC kernel -- which was as easy as downloading a disk image and letting dpkg handle the rest-- and my experience with it has been absolutely blissful. (I have had serious problems with the X server, i will admit, but i suspect this could easily be fixed were it not for the fact i am purposefully choosing not to run X on this machine.) I have never used Yellow Dog Linux, but everyone i've talked to who used it was quite happy with it. I personally would rather use Debian/PPC, being as i love apt-get and dselect more than i can express, but YDL may be better for people who are not (as i would consider myself now) relatively experienced linux users. I am still wonderfully grateful to the LinuxPPC project, it just seems to me the quality of their distro is not very high on their list of priorities.
If i am mistaken as to the nature of the LinuxPPC distrbution, or if the LPPC distribution has improved in quality since the times i used it (it has been awhile, relatively speaking) i wish to apologize greatly to anyone i have slandered.
Re:Note to Apple: (Score:2)
Considering the state of the original Netscape source code, I wouldn't be too proud of that...
-jon
Re:Freeware (Score:2)
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Haas (Score:2)
Justin
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Re:Offtopic? (Score:2)
I emailed Taco man with a link to one of my two posts and asked him to take a look at it. Not that I'm asking for karma but because I wanted him to read my suggestions when he had time and to see the exact case of what's happened here. Sure he's probably seen it before but maybe he hasn't. So many threads happen so quickly, how can one or two people check and double check everyone else's work. That really the only bad thing about the moderating system. Good karma is awarded easily if you hit a on a good point with someone. If you don't please the first moderator though, they'll mark you down and most moderators will follow suit. No real checks and balances take place. Anyhow, that's my opinion. I could be wrong. Thanks again.
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Re:that's affect, asshole (Score:1)
no, you can "affect" repair of a device
LinuxPPC is a pretty good OS for the Mac (Score:2)
I wouldn't hesitate to recommend a Mac running LinuxPPC as a server or for running apps remotely.
LinuxPPC does a great job supplying PPC-compiled packages, and while i have had issues with installing and upgrading systems, overall my impression is good.
Once display drivers are available that work as well as the drivers on my x86 machines, it will make a pretty sweet little desktop workstation too.
Re:Not a suitable OS anyway (Score:1)
A college degree (Score:2)
Geez, we used to BUY MBA's for our executives. He needs to get a better package.
Re:Not a suitable OS anyway (Score:2)
Take a Pentium MMX, which has single instructions to add and crossproduct floating point vectors but have only 16 or 18 primary registers and 8-16 floating point / mmx registers. Even something basic like the 8086 had DJNZ, one instruction capable of implementing most loops singlehandledly. (DJNZ = Decrement CX, Jump to immediate address if Non-Zero)
In contrast, take the SPARC, which has 64 registers and a minimal instruction set (adds, multiplies, etc..)
I can almost guarantee you these numbers are incorrect, since I've been up all night studying dataflow analysis for a compiler design final this morning. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, I won't take it personally
On the other hand, one of the problems in RISC architectures is you got a lot of incredibly similar CPUs that vary just enough to be impossible to support with a single code base. A good example of this is the MIPS processor - everyone and their mom implements it differently. I remember attending a talk from the woman who implemented the memory management system for VxWorks and hearing they had some amazingly huge number of different implementations and feature set definitions for MIPS processors.
Re:Not a suitable OS anyway (Score:4)
I wouldn't want to moderate it as Overrated, either, because it would seem, to an uncareful meta-moderator, that I have some personal thing against the poster, which is really not the case.
As someone already noted, RISC means Restricted Instruction Set Computer, not restricted number of registers. Said that, I am not willing to get into the debate whether LinuxPPC is or is not a good idea, due tothe difference between CISC and RISC architectures. I'll leave that to the experts.
car accident (Score:3)
Good luck to him in all his future ventures.
Re:Not a suitable OS anyway (Score:2)
the only things that deal with register allocation are gcc and the asm macros in the kernel.
Re:Not a suitable OS anyway (Score:2)
the reason there are so many mips implimentations is cuz companies license soft cores that people redesign.
Even apple likes his work (Score:4)
Re:saddened (Score:5)
I often wonder how people manage to continously create some of the most useful open sourced products when they are not getting paid for it. Don't get me wrong I understand life isn't all about money, but you have to sometimes look at the realities of life, and you do need money to pay your bills.
Yes - but most open source developers have normal paying jobs providing their income. The development of a lot of the software you see on Sourceforge and elsewhere is being created in their spare time - if you are in the software business because you love coding, it shouldn't be a surprise when people go home and create something of their own to tackle a problem, create a game, provide them with a better debugging environment or whatever, without the pressures of commercial development.
Recently, there have been more companies providing salaries to fund development of particular open source projects - this speeds up the development process enormously, but it doesn't reduce the fact that people are still able to contribute their own skills to further these projects regardless of they are being paid by RedHat or Ximian or whoever. Don't think that Open Source development will disappear if all the commercial companies who contribute go out of business - it might grab less headlines, but it will go on.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Re:Appreciating life... (Score:1)
After almost dying after my appendix ruptured and went untreated for a couple of days, and spending a month in the hospital not really too coherent, I gained an appreciation for a lot of things.
Like waking up. And being able to walk and see the world around me as a whole human being. And enjoy seeing trees.. and generally everything I took for granted.
While I still love computers.. It is very hard to not put your life in retrospect and ask yourself if these are my last few days would I rather have geeked out on bits and bytes or enjoyed feeling the Sun beat down on me, or hold my girlfriend close to me. Sure some people actaully love computers, but I think if your honest with yourself the answer is evident.
Nothing will change your persepctive on life quicker than almost dying. I am usually smiling like a fool most of the time. It has helped me deal with a lot of pettiness in life. I dont mind just sitting in traffic listening to music anymore. I dunno, its a near religious experience for anyone involved with a near death accident. Its hard to really quantify what it is to each person but to me it is an appreciation for my brief glimmer of life I will have on Earth and trying to get as much enjoyment as I can.
Jeremy
Re:Appreciating life... (Score:1)
I did really really hurt when I threw up with a 4and a half inch cut on my stomach, owchie.
But I had to have tubes in my stomach near the incision to drain off fluids, skin kinda holds onto things like that, that was the most extreme pain as they slooowly pulled the tubes out of my stomach... Worse than snapping my leg and seeing it visibly broken.
Jeremy
Appreciating life... (Score:5)
Good luck Jason!
What's important (Score:5)
Sometimes people forget that the really important things in life are their family and get focused on things that will continue after they are gone.
For some of us, it took deployments and a war to figure that out. I'm glad he does have the time and chance to get to that conclusion.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page [cavalrypilot.com]
Perhaps a eulogy of sorts? (Score:2)
/Brian
Re:Offtopic? (Score:1)
It seems as though the trolls have gotten their rounds of moderation alot more than the rest lately. Although I am not a troll (I usually just come on and read articles/posts, I dont do much posting at all myself), I have gotten moderation points 3 seperate times within the past few days. So maybe the moderation system is messed up and giving the trolls too much power.
Re:Note to Apple: (Score:2)
No disrespect to Jason Haas, who is a nice guy and who has contributed enormously to Linux on the PowerPC, but this is a classic case of free software celebrity worship, similar to the notion that Jamie Zawinski singlehandedly wrote Navigator or that every icon and pixmap in a Gnome distribution is the work of tigert.
I agree that Jason Haas would be a great hire for Aple because of his strong connections in the Mac and Linux worlds. But he's hardly a leading PowerPC Linux hacker, by any stretch.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
Note to Apple: (Score:5)
With OS X just now getting off the ground, it needs as much application support as it can get. Haaz has the know-how to take these excellent open source *NIX apps/utilities and make them fly on X. Hell, he single-handedly ported how many of them to PPC?
Anyway, Jason- thanks so much for all your hard work over the years, and good luck to you in all your future endeavors.
Fore every one highly publicized departure... (Score:4)
It seems to me that this became a trend after the stabilization of the computer science coriculum at universities. Every industry seems to go through this cycle. An industry like the computer industry gets a tremendour boost by, say, the introduction of the PC, and a half a deckage goes by without there being an academic curiculum availagle to churn out reasonably qualified people, then as soon as that curiculum is in place, companies feel that they have a never ending supply of grist for the mill. The same is true for the rapid growth of the internet. With the advent of an easy interface to information (the web), growth is spurred, and qualified people are difficult to find. The academic community lags about half a decade behind, but as soon as a curiculim is developed - and I saw a TV ad for a trade school advertising "become a certified webmaster" yesterday - companies feel their is a never ending supply of talent out there.
This leads to the companies working people to the bone and relying on the academic world to keep churning them out., not only does this have a negitive impact on the people thrust into these jobs with little or no exxperience, but it affacts the highly qualified personel as well. They are now forced to compete with those less experienced, and less qualified, on equal footing - because of course management doesn't understand what it takes to manage these technologies anyway, so they don't make the distinction between tradeschool graduates and truly experienced personel.
Now lets see if I can reign this in and make it apply to Jason's situation. Well, there are those of us who truly enjoy our jobs and do the work for that reason alone. There are those whodo it because they have a large stake in the company, and there are those who do it to put food on the table. The problem is, the glut of truly unqualified people in the industry now, which are not recognized as un-qualified, allows companies to pressure everyone to do the 80 hour work week thing, just to compete.
Jason was trying to make a business work. Most of us who are doing the same, have seen it get infinately harder to move his company forward in the industry, due in most part to corporate inability to understand that this industry is just like any other. It is now stable. It will always be there, and truly qualified staff are just as hard to come by as in any other industry.
My best wishes to Jason in his new endevours, and congradulations on making a good choice!
--CTH
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A new support group needed (Score:2)
Maybe changing track is the real answer and that's what he seems to be doing. Good for him because some guys are so addicted to their work that once they leave it, they go through severe depression as they just don't seem to know what else to do, their previous addiction having left them good for nothing. They just drift around till they've had enough and go back to doing the same thing that is if they find their direction again, but many a times they just drift through life unable to go back or do anything else.
It's high time people started finding solutions to this because now we are seeing many young retirees especially in the internet field -- these guys have made their money through hard work and now know there is nothing more to gain as of now and so are in retirement.
Come back soon! (Score:5)
Good for you Jason. Before anyone say LinuxPPC is dieing; I say that by the time you finish your degree, LinuxPPC will still be alive and kicking. And when you are recharged, I am sure we can expect more good things from you. Come back soon.
On to some slighly OT comments about LinuxPPC in general...
I feel that the Macs are often overlooked as a platform for Linux. I recently got a chance to install LinuxPPC on an old 9600 for various benchmarking. It is easy to install (and co-exist well with MacOS) and extremely reliable as you'd expect from Linux. Macs are not just for artists, they are real number crunching machins, especially the G3 and G4. And they look good while doing it :-)
Forget OSX, "UNIX" is already on the Mac and it is called LinuxPPC.
====
Re:Note to Apple: (Score:1)
I don't think JWZ's involved (or programmed) with Netscape Browser 4.x.
I could be wrong.
Re:Note to Apple: (Score:2)
I have met this guy in real life. Jason Haaz is a real linux hacker, who are you to say otherwise?
And JWZ did basicly write netscape.
Are you on the Sfglj [sfgoth.com] (SF-Goth EMail Junkies List) ?
Too bad he didn't actuall say "LinuxPPC" (Score:1)
Re:Not a suitable OS anyway (Score:3)
Yes, but the "IS" in both acronyms stands for "instruction set". The PowerPC registers [apple.com] far outnumber the i386 registers [apple.com].
One would think, though, that someone would take these things into account when they do a port from one platform to another.
Why Apple? (Score:1)
saddened (Score:4)
Recently I was on IRC when this guy was beefing about paying for the CD of OpenBSD when he could just download it instead of having the ISO, not neccessarily related but hear me out. I argued with this guy for a few minutes pointing out the fact that developers often create these OS' on their own spare time, and $30.00 is relatively cheap considering most Open Sourced operating systems are heaven compared with others.
I often wonder how people manage to continously create some of the most useful open sourced products when they are not getting paid for it. Don't get me wrong I understand life isn't all about money, but you have to sometimes look at the realities of life, and you do need money to pay your bills.
To all the open source developers most of us appreciate your works extremely much, and for the majority of us who do understand life as it is, I know speaking for myself I would rather purchase a CD every here and there to support you as much as I can. Maybe its time many start looking into ways of recognizing the developers of the products they're using, and assist them with anything they can, even a dollar helps.
It keeps developers who are under tough times semi compensated when times can go rough for them, as well as provides incentive to create better work. Think about that for a quick second. If you were in the opposite person's shoes you would hope someone would do the same for you.
Sadly I hope these layoffs/out of business/quittings/etc don't affect the overall Open Source segment in the long run. Maybe its time most Open Source developers start using Pay Pal for tips on their sites. I know I would kick in between 5-10$ for products I use. Multiply that by about 2000 others and you have a nice little salary for a side job.
hellraiser [antioffline.com]
Re:Appreciating life... (Score:1)
I was recovering in the hospital recovering for about 2 more weeks, and was discharged on nov 23rd, right before Thanksgiving. It's amazing how it felt to get out of the hospital. 2nd maybe only to the fact that even though I now lack a large intestines, I do not have a colostomy bag(reworked internal plumbing). Anyways, after the whole experience, I did appriacate life more. heh, guess you can only truly appriacate life after nearly dying.
Oh, and the surgery didn't hurt....that is, until I woke up afterwards;)
-Henry
Hallmark Suggestion (Score:1)
How about:
Sorry to hear your job...
... was not all it was hacked up to be.
Enjoy "The Road Ahead."
Cool (Score:1)
Anyways, good luck to you and enjoy your course.
Surely be missed (Score:1)
+++
One pill makes you smaller,
One pill makes you tall,
Going for a CS Degree (Score:1)