Daniel Robbins hired by M$

[marius]

On 6/14/05, Robert Brockway <rbrockway-wgAaPJgzrDxH4x6Dk/4f9A at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Jun 2005, bob wrote:
> 
> > This new "hire and silence" strategy on the part of Microsoft actually
> > stands a good chance of slowing the open source movement.  In reality it
> 
> I don't think so.  OSS is developed by tens of thousands of dedicated
> developers and the number is growing rapidly.  MS is only picking up a few
> of the more famous people (and even then only a small minority).  I don't
> see their hiring efforts having any effect on the growth of OSS.

Judging by the number of orphans on SourceForge, losing one or two key
developers is enough to slow or shut down an OSS project.

It's true that most large projects have dozens of developers with
potential replacements eagerly waiting in the wings, however most OSS
projects are run by a handful of people.

Even some of the high-profile projects are identified with and driven
by only a couple of programmers. Would Samba survive if Tridge left?
Sure. Would the project be set back for a considerable amount of time?
Definitely.


> > Microsoft certainly has the $ to "hire and silence" a great deal of the key
> > people in the open source movement if it truely wanted to.      The fact is
> > that they wouldn't have to hire very many to make the strategy effective ...
> > they would just have to poach some key people.
> 
> I disagree.  Everytime someone becomes less active in OSS (and it happens)
> they are replaced.  The OSS movement can survive the loss of any of its
> key members, or a many of them.

Has anyone stepped up to maintain any of JWZ's projects since he very
publicly ditched Linux for OS X and announced "not to hold your breath
for new releases" of the software he wrote/maintained?

//mts
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