Linux Guru Alan Cox Takes A Year Off 403
An anonymous reader writes "Linux guru Alan Cox is taking a year off from RedHat and kernel development to get his MBA. For years, Alan Cox has maintained the extremely stable 2.2 Linux kernel, and more or less been Linux creator Linus Torvalds' right hand man. Now it sounds like the 2.2 kernel is up for grabs to someone who is 'good at refusing patches and being ignored'..."
Re:Naww!!! (Score:4, Informative)
The 2.2 kernel, which he maintains, is the one that SCO claims is free of supposed IP infringements. It is the 2.4 and later kernels which SCO claims were written mostly by SCO. (Millions of lines vs. a total of 4.4 million lines.)
Re:Explain to me.. (Score:2, Informative)
Patches can land on the current stable branch too (2.4.x) but normally only to fix bugs or add things that are very low risk.
As you surmised most new development happens in the latest version 2.5.x which is currently in the process of becoming the next stable branch: 2.6.x
Sorry if I'm spelling it out too much :)
Re:Naww!!! (Score:3, Informative)
Stable versions have even final digits. Odd final digits (2.1, 2.3, 2.5...) indicate 'development' versions.
Re:a year to get an MBA? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:stupid question (Score:4, Informative)
Europe, on the other hand, offers a bucketload of one-year Master's programmes; it's not limited to just MBA programmes. (I did an MSc in London that was like this.) Generally 'taught' Masters are shorter than the 'research' Masters, the latter of which are considered the priming ground for PhD programmes (in both the UK and the US). Unlike the US, though, nonMBA Masters are considered pretty good in their own right.
Good luck to Cox, though. I'm looking into an MBA myself and it does not look nice. Pointy heads, here I come...
Alan Who? (Score:3, Informative)
Dear Alan,
Thanks for the good work. We owe you one.
Sincerely,
Geeks of the World
Re:a year to get an MBA? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Taking Over (Score:5, Informative)
It's more tricky to say who will take over. Probably a kernel developer who uses 2.2 at work. Quite a few companies still use 2.2 but most kernel developers prefer to use 2.6 or 2.4. Maintaining an older kernel is boring...
Re:Taking Over (Score:3, Informative)
As far as the process getting involved? Start hacking away, submit patches, maybe eventually you'll get bitkeeper access and Linus will start trusting you and your judgement. You'll fall into you're own little role hacking away on the kernel, adding cool stuff, fixing bugs, etc.. Those are the people that are chosen for stable kernel maintenance.
Re:MBA?? AMERICA CENTRIC AGAIN!!! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:MBA? (Score:5, Informative)
A good MBA programme won't take you without experience. Typical students have worked for 3 to 8 years before applying to B-school.
Re:The $699 question... (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, and we do get quite a few geeks applying here already for a chance to meet Alan. Most of them have seen the credit to the Swansea University Computer Society [sucs.org] in the Linux kernel boot messages.
Re:MBA?? AMERICA CENTRIC AGAIN!!! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Welsh!!! (Score:2, Informative)
The BBC [bbc.co.uk] come to my recue and put it more eloquently than I did.
Tom.
Re:MBA? (Score:4, Informative)
No, it's more like "H1B holders do more work for the same money", i.e. 80 hour weeks with no complaints, on salary. And that salary will be at the bottom of the relevant scale, every time.
Further, the use of H1B holders is stupid for two unrelated reasons: you're shipping money to overseas economies, and you're training a workforce to compete against you once it returns home (which most do).
Again, using H1B workers and/or outsourcing is moronic in the long run, and is against the best interests of the United States and it's citizens.
Those are the facts, Jack.
Re:I know this is supposed to be funny (Score:3, Informative)
When crafting a large textbook, for example, LaTeX really does blow the pants off of Word. It allows a very clear structure to be employed through includes and a structured tagging scheme. It allows EPS graphics from charting applications to be imported. There is long-standing support for indexing and bibliographies. LaTeX can also be managed by version control software, such as CVS, and can be controlled by Makefiles for well-defined and repeatable configuration management. LaTeX's open nature also guarantees that work poured into the textbook won't get lost as the proprietary Word file formats mutate or when Microsoft drops off the face of the planet.
MS Word is just a bad bet for large documents.
Daily memos are better as plain text. Data-entry forms are done better in HTML. For everything else...well, there is StarOffice or OpenOffice.org or AbiWord, etc. Quite honestly, there is little reason, anymore, to give Microsoft any money for Word any longer.