FPL steps down: what's the real story?
Marcel Rieux
m.z.rieux at gmail.com
Thu Apr 8 23:47:37 UTC 2010
On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 5:21 PM, Rahul Sundaram <metherid at gmail.com> wrote:
On 04/08/2010 02:29 AM, Marcel Rieux wrote:
> > On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 5:10 PM, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> >
> > On 04/06/2010 02:39 AM, Marcel Rieux wrote:
> >
> > > Meanwhile, back on the farm, Mark Shuttleworth pays his
> > developers and
> > > doesn't get a cent back... for now.
> >
> > Far from true. You need to check your facts.
> >
> >
> > Oops! I missed this one. I received this message from Rahul and his
> > email address appeared for reply. So, I thought it hadn't been posted
> > to the group. So, here is what we came up to. I hope he will agree.
>
> I strongly disagree with you emailing me offlist and then taking parts
> of the conversation and posting in a public list. That is hardly good
> etiquette. Setting that aside,
>
You usual post headers on this list look like this:
from Rahul Sundaram <metherid => gmail.com>
reply-to Community support for Fedora users <users =>
lists.fedoraproject.org>
to users => lists.fedoraproject.org
date Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 7:10 PM
subject Re: FPL steps down: what's the real story?
mailing list users.lists.fedoraproject.org Filter messages from this
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mailed-by lists.fedoraproject.org
The headers of the message I answered had these headers:
from Rahul Sundaram <metherid => gmail.com>
to Community support for Fedora users <users => lists.fedoraproject.org>
cc Marcel Rieux <m.z.rieux => gmail.com>,
psmith => fedoraproject.org
date Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 5:10 PM
subject Re: FPL steps down: what's the real story?
mailed-by gmail.com
signed-by gmail.com
This message appeared on the group but, when I clicked it to answer, the
reply was to you. I didn't check the forum list at:
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/users/2010-April/thread.html
and wasn't aware that your origianl post had been made public. I thought our
discussion was private all along. I don't believe you should mind if I
answer publicly your pretention that I don't checking facts.
In my recent test, I tried to reproduce this behavior with a cc. Here are
the headers:
from Marcel Rieux <m.z.rieux => gmail.com>
to Community support for Fedora users <users => lists.fedoraproject.org>
cc psmith => fedoraproject.org
date Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 1:26 PM
subject Test, ignore
mailed-by gmail.com
The only difference seems to be that you have two people in cc and your
message is signed. I can't understand the change in behavior, but I suggest
you check this closer. It seems, somehow, you need a reply-to header. All
answers to my posts go the the list, unless the recipient is changed
manually.
> Rahul observed that Shuttleworth was getting some money back from
> > Ubuntu's contrats with companies. I, of course, knew this. Ubuntu's
> > contract with la Gendarmerie française has, amongst others, been
> > widely publicised.
>
> I made no such observation. This is your own claim. I merely disagreed
> with your factually incorrect claim and you have conceded that you were
> wrong. End of the point.
>
When I observed that what I meant is that he wasn't breaking even, hence,
not making a cent, you replied:
"This is a very different statement from earlier and you have absolutely
no way to verify this either. Stick to facts and we can have a better
conversation. "
If you find that I'm in any way distorting what you said, I don't mind
posting our whole correspondence.
So, now, let's stick to facts. Everybody knows Canonical, if we want to be
more "to the facts", has income from different sources. As I already said,
the contrat with la Gendarmerie française has been widely publicised. We
know that Canonical is strong in cloud computing. Etc. But...
There are two sides to a balance sheet: income and expenses. If your income
doesn't cover your expenses, there is no way you can pretend that you make a
cent: you're plainly losing money. This is the kind of economics that is
taught in high schools. If you can't grasp this, I suggest you get some
basic education.
> My point was that he wasn't breaking even. Rahul said that since
> > Ubuntu is not a public company, it's impossible to know this for sure.
> > And we don't.
> >
> > But I read an interview with Shuttleworth less than 3 months ago and
> > he certainly said so and though he's certainly a very shrewd
> > businessman, I didn't hear anybody contesting this claim.
> >
> > Certainly he isn't making the kind of money the people here seem to
> > get from RHF:
>
> Again, you have no way to publicly verify the kind of money anybody
> makes in a private company.
>
No, we said that in our discussion but here's the first quote I found on the
matter:
"Being privately held, Canonical is pretty secretive about the size of its
business. Shuttleworth said when Silber was appointed last December that the
company was not yet profitable but heading in the right direction with
growth in its three key product lines. (He added that he expected to spend
seven years building an open source platform and that the company still has
nearly two more years to make it under the wire). But judging by its
employee headcount, Canonical is growing like crazy.
"In an interview with El Reg, Silber said that the current workforce at
Canonical was about 320 people and added that the company was growing
rapidly and would continue to do so. She said that Canonical added about 100
employees in both 2008 and 2009.
'We're pretty sizable now, and we have stuck to our original tradition of
hiring the best people, no matter where they are in the world,' Silber
explained. "
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2010/03/14/canonical_ceo_silber/
I suppose you can figure out that a company can grow like crazy and, on fine
morning, if there's not enough money backing it up and it doesn't make
profits, it blows up in smoke.
Apparently, Shuttleworth still has $250 millions to his name. It's less than
I thought, but it's a sizable amout, He can back up Canonical for quite some
time and that's why companies do not mind making business with Canonical.
But rest assured that the day Canonical begins making profits, Shuttleworth
will be glad to boast about it because, whatever companies shy away from
Canonical because they're afraid it may be a flash in the pan, will then
say: "It's OK, they're making profit!"
Once again, this is not rocket science.
> Red Hat is more profitable as a
> business than Canonical? Sure.
No doubt about this. The question is will it remain as profitable as it is
today.
> http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=RHT
>
> In his last email Rahul wrote:
>
> "I have seen all that data before but I don't see the point you are
> trying to make. You might as well as state it directly."
>
> Given the discussion we had here on some developers "contributing
> their work" for free... and others receiving a paltry pay in India,
> does anybody here have a problem understanding what I mean?
Yes, I am from India and although I can see your insinuations (paltry to
> you might not be paltry to the rest of the world), your message is
> still not direct and I would like to hear it from you rather others
> engaging in guess work,
Guesswork is all RHF, which is a public company, obliges investors to deal
with, I believe it's a problem. Let's see how this could work out. What
would be a better management?
For now, you message has only brought a reply from the usual brawlers
suggesting that I'm a troll and that you shouldn't answer my posts. If
that's the kind of discussion that RHF wants to keep certain facts hidden,
then you're doing a nice job and RHF should pay you more.
You are right in observing that the cost of living is not the same in
America and India. But, if RHF is satisfied with your work, you should be
able to afford a 64 bit computer, which according to Wikipedia were first
made popular by AMD in 2003, 7 years ago.
Now, if RHF wants to have lists where people can speak openly about not only
development but where RHF is headed, maybe they shouldn't think you're doing
a good job. In such a case, I would fire you and hire somebody that can do
the job.
Of course, from all I wrote until now, you will understand that I believe
that sweeping the facts under the carpet is not, in the long run, a solution
for any company. Competition from Canonical, Google and Intel/Nokia will
soon get fierce and waiting for them to get really well organized before
acting is watching the ball go by instead of hitting.
Now, of course, we heard that Fedora 13 will have KDE as its default
desktop. Does this mean a move? I certainly don't know.
What I'm personaly sure of is that if RHF doesn't come more transparent,
there will always be unrest. Some people will continue pretending that
Fedora is a community project, which, in no way, can be. (I already
discussed this and won't come back on the matter.) This doesn't make for a
productive environment.
> Elaborate on the point you are trying to make.
> Why if some people make more money than others? What's the problem?
> How is this all connected to FPL stepping down.?
>
Well, maybe we digress a little bit. Maybe Paul Frields might want to say
once again that, despite all that has been written on the matter at LWN,
everything is fine at RHF. Or maybe you might want to change the title to:
RHF: is the administration transparent enough on who gets the money?
Though this is a thread I started, feel free to change the title.
A little advice, if I may, before I finish. If I were you, I would worry
about seening only the typical brawlers answer my post with their typical
nonsense: i'd check my facts more closely. I'm not getting paid to run RHF
and save it from doom :) If all the answers I get are replies from brawlers
throwing their non-facts nonsense at me, I can find another occupation.
I'm just giving my 2¢ opinion on the distribution I have adopted because I
thought and still think that it has a lot to offer. But, if everything goes
berserk in a few years from now, there will be other Linux solutions around
and I won't lose a cent.
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