Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 17:14:51 -0700
From: Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com>
To: Stephan von Krawczynski <skraw@ithnet.com>
Cc: Robert White <rwhite@casabyte.com>, david.lang@digitalinsight.com,
       lm@bitmover.com, wa@almesberger.net, miquels@cistron-office.nl,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]
Message-ID: <20030627001451.GD17623@work.bitmover.com>
Mail-Followup-To: Larry McVoy <lm@work.bitmover.com>,
	Stephan von Krawczynski <skraw@ithnet.com>,
	Robert White <rwhite@casabyte.com>, david.lang@digitalinsight.com,
	lm@bitmover.com, wa@almesberger.net, miquels@cistron-office.nl,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
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On Fri, Jun 27, 2003 at 01:45:40AM +0200, Stephan von Krawczynski wrote:
> _the_ ultimate difference between someone participating and someone _running_
> the business is (in my eyes) that the one "running" it is playing with his own
> money, his own existence (and maybe that of his family) and possibly feels a
> big responsibility for his employees, the money he was possibly given by
> investors or the like. 

Yup.  It's funny how your employees become part of your family, not
in the sense of the normal family stuff but in the sense of you feel
responsible for them.  

> If you never made that experience you don't know what Larry is talking about.
> If you don't believe that, take all your money and loan your house and start a
> business, then experience the feeling.
> You may have noticed I do not agree with Larry in many things, but anyway I
> fully respect him, because he took true responsibility for running a business,
> and I know what that means. There are easier things you could do in life.

Yeah.  If I were to do it all over again I would probably take some of
the investment money that was offered.  At the time I didn't because
I wanted control so I could make sure things didn't get screwed up,
things like helping Linus and the rest of the kernel team for example.
That was an expensive choice and probably not the wisest choice if the
goal was making lots of money.  But I got to do what I wanted which was
help out, and BK has helped out more than I ever could have directly.
So that's cool, it was a bad financial decision but the world isn't 
only about money.

If it weren't for the endless license flamewars and the constant worry
over money, the rest of it has been a blast.  Creating a business is like
someone prying open your brain and aiming a firehose of information at
you and you just have to absorb it.  I know all sorts of useless (and
maybe useful) stuff that I didn't know.  I know why I was such a pain
in the ass to manage, for example :)  Contract law, mentoring, company
morale, customer relations, sales, sales, sales, why coding standards
really mean something, why being conservative is absolutely the right
answer at least 90% of the time and the worst answer the rest of time,
why some people are worth a fortune and some aren't.  You learn a _lot_.
There is a ton of stuff that is just not even close to being obvious
to an engineer.  Some of it is kind of fun.  Building a team that works
well together is definitely fun.

I wouldn't suggest anyone try our licensing model, I'm not sure it was
worth it, but I'd encourage those of you with theories to try them out
and try and run a business.  It's a pretty cool ride.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm
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