Hi,
I have received several email messages about my becoming an SGI employee.
As some of you know, Linux International has never paid me a salary. I have
always been a "volunteer", whether it be as an employee of Digital,
Compaq, VA Linux Systems or through other funding resources. I believe
that I have maintained a neutral balance through all of these vendors'
funding.
For the past ten months I have received no salary at all. I was hoping that
the economy would turn around and we could get more funding through LI, but
the reality is that my bank account has run out. I had recently made a
decision to do some consulting, and put out a feeler to some of the LI
companies. SGI was one of the few to come back and hire my time.
Consulting, however, means that you expend some of your time looking for
contracts. And there are "good months" and "bad months". Quite frankly
I have put about 250,000 USD of my own money into LI, and I was a little
tired of the "bad months". I also was tired of the benefit battle, being
passed from benefit group to benefit group, not knowing if I was covered.
When you get to be "my age", you think about such things. Therefore I was
really interested in being an "employee" once more, not just a contractor
or consultant.
Paul McNamara, VP of Marketing at SGI and formerly a marketing person at
Red Hat Software heard of my plight and offered to fund me as Executive
Director of LI. In return he also asked that I spend some time doing three
things:
o help create some excitement around using Linux with supercomputers
o help grow the Linux supercomputer marketplace
o help SGI better understand and meet the Linux and Open Source market
Now SGI is a member of LI, and I have often helped member companies do exactly
these type of things "for free". In fact I have an appointment to speak
at two other company's events in the near future. As always, I will
be speaking as "Jon 'maddog' Hall" of LI, not SGI. Paul understands
that, I understand that, and I hope the rest of you understand that.
SGI and I have hand-crafted a contract that states (effectively) that
builds a legal firewall between what I do for SGI and what I do for LI and
the rest of its member companies.
One of the reasons why I accepted this particular job is that I have
always been an advocate of Linux on Beowulf systems and supercomputers,
always believed that the world needs more computing and I want to spread the
use of both Beowulf, NUMA machines and the GRID.
Recently I addressed the Board of Directors of LI on this issue, and they
indicated that they would feel comfortable with whatever I did. I feel
that the company and the agreement will allow me to meet the needs of LI,
and with a steady income (rather than being in "scramble mode", I will
be able to concentrate on moving LI forward.
Thanks for your time,
md
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