As many folks know, I’ve spent the last three years banging around in the open source hardware world. It’s got a lot in common, right now, with the early days of open source software: lots of interesting projects, folks trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t and lots and lots of collaboration going on at every level of design.
The reasoning is simple.
When you are working on hardware, you are hyper focused on *THAT* hardware, particularly as complex a board as I’ve been dealing with for the past three years. It makes it hard to see the forest for the trees, and when you’ve got a hammer, all problems tend to become nails. By getting to take a step back, I get back to working on code that doesn’t only support one little board and let open hardware shift back to being a hobby. I can go back to seeing the forest and get back to working on code.
I’m actually pretty stoked to join VMware. As a result, I get the opportunity to focus on upstream work and the breadth to work on everything from Mailman and SyncDiff to working with Steven Rostedt on ktest. I joined because there’s opportunity here to work with some amazing people on a new and growing team that has a lot of internal support, focused on working on upstream. It’s an opportunity that was genuinely hard to say no to.
