Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Greener pastures

As some of you already know, I am leaving Tadpole Computer to pursue new opportunities with Sun Microsystems.

I want to state up front that my decision to move is based on the belief that Sun can offer more for my career, and it should not reflect in any way upon my feelings about Tadpole or General Dynamics. I would continue to recommend Tadpole products to people looking for SPARC or Sun Ray mobile solutions, and I still believe Tadpole has some outstanding products. I also am pleased to have had the opportunity to work with some outstanding individuals while at Tadpole. I hold the team members in the highest regard, and I hope I might have the opportunity to continue to work with Tadpole on projects in the future.

I am bringing this up here and now, primarily because I feel that with the OGB elections coming up, I need to disclose this significant change in affiliation.

To ease the minds of potential voters, I can offer my personal reassurances that I will do my utmost to prevent my affiliation from affecting my actions as an OGB member... I believe strongly that I can vote and act in a manner that best supports my desire to do what is best for the operating system and the community without letting my employer have undue sway over my vote.

That said, I think I've already expressed my view that OpenSolaris needs to continue to be a world class operating system, and that it needs to continue to be able to fill certain commercial niches, such as those serviced by hardware OEMs like Tadpole. Voters looking for an FSF/GPLv3 shill on the board are well advised to look elsewhere than me. :-)

For the curious, I'll be working initially within the Solaris networking group, specifically targetting certain IP performance areas.