I know I am pretty late for todays time standards in the blogosphere, but I think it's worth sometimes to make a full stop and excute a recollection and retrospection of things that happened in the past.
First of all I think that I had a similar experiences like Matt about communication (or should I say rather lack thereof) with SUN. Maybe it's an old story, but when Jonathan said:
"[...]We are out recruiting again. We are looking for talents. [...]"
I remembered that I filed my CV with SUN about 4 to 5 years ago. I think it was Sun Mexico, but anyway. Same story as Matt tells, but probably even worse: I never ever received any reply. Not even an automatic one.
Another good example is my FOSS project telnetd.
Arieh's blog entry on telnetd in StorEdge, a follow up and the fact that my copyrights show up in the StorEdge Configuration Service Administrator’s Guide are all traces that tell me that Sun is vending part of my codebase in their products. However, I haven't ever received any mail from Arieh or Sun about telnetd or updates they made to it:
Further, the accessibility of the code allowed me to perform extensions of the classes in the telnet project, reorganizing those subclasses into packages in a manner that there is a cleaner separation between the telnet protocol handling and the Java pseudo-tty code.
Open source and "the community" is important to Sun? Looks like, given that
a search for Open Source on Jonathan's blog yields about 146 hits as of today.
But then, is it just about their own commmunities?
Thanks for respecting the license and giving credits, but probably contributing back would have improved telnetd for the rest of the world, not just helped Sun to sell more StorEdge boxes. Which now gives a different viewpoint on Jonathan's phrase from this blog entry:
"And free software doesn't mean no revenue, it means no barriers to revenue."
I don't know how much StorEdge devices Sun sold, but probably I could call it hell of a revenue if they would give me just some cents for each one of these devices that shipped with telnetd (modified) code on it.
"If there's anything I can do to win a second chance, I'd like to know."
If you really ask (even if it was not directed to me in the first place), well, then:
Probably work on all the communication of SUN with the community. Your blog might be a good start, but there is quite some room for improvement.
Startups are one thing, but some other things are also happening around non Sun initiated open source communities. Support them. Even if they don't host on your java.net collaboration site.
I happen to lead a mid size project called Coalevo. Our testbed is running on a Dual Pentium II 266 Mhz with 512 MB memory. You can bet I would love to try this on one of these Sun Boxes with Solaris multi-core multi-threads......but then, I am a student (yes I fully agree with you "The R is where things get really interesting."). Even 600 USD is a big deal at the moment.
Or how about offering me a Job?
I think my view point on Open Source shifted with the fact that it started to permeate. I don't really care as much about the fact that it's not monetary, although it would indeed help to keep me working on Open Source.
I'm rather marvelled at the fact that whenever you login to your StorEdge device via Telnet, or use your Cisco Products EDI to configure it, or you control some parts of the Gemini Observatories in Hawaii and Chile, there is some of my work involved that makes it happen for you.
Because this is what counts for me at the end of the day, when I need the courage to keep working on FOSS. That's why courage is essential, not just relative: it makes things happen.
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