Geir's Blog - Not Joost Another Job

Not Joost Another Job

[ geir ] 06:59, Sunday, 1 April 2007

I'm happy to announce I have a new job, as a VP of Engineering at Joost, an amazing new startup that is working to change what we now quaintly refer to as "television" through the secure delivery of mainstream, legitimately-licensed content over the internet. Founded by the same two entrepreneurs that created Skype and Kazaa, and staffed by an amazing amount of stunningly smart people I've known for years in the pragmatic open source community ;), I'm lucky to be able to be involved in such an interesting and disruptive transformation of what has become such a fundamental human activity.

At Intel (for those just tuning in, that was where I was working), I learned an incredible amount about how things work on the mega-scale - it's an amazing organization, and I'm glad I was able to spend some time there. But this new opportunity was just too good, too exciting, too terrifying :) to pass up - I'm an entrepreneur and builder at heart. There are so many people I ought to thank at Intel, but I'd like to give special mention to a person assigned to me as my "Intel buddy" when I first arrived, a friend named Tony Baker that I had known from the JCP EC. We worked together as peers in first the Managed Runtime Division, and then (after The Small Reorg) the Middleware Products Division, and then (after The Big Reorg) stayed connected (almost daily) when he went off to bigger and better things in the Systems Software Division. His guidance and advice (learned after 25 years (!) at Intel) was always valuable and insightful, and I really am grateful for it.

This change in employment has no bearing on my dedication and passion for Apache Harmony - in fact, I think it becomes something more special for me, as there's no part of my job description now that has the word "Harmony" in it, and after some introspection, I like that. While the downside is that the time I can devote to Harmony is reduced, I think that in itself will make my contributions that much more focused, and hopefully as or even more effective. The upside, of course, is a fresh perspective on the community and ecosystem. I'm a big fan of true "open community" open source. It's clear that the old school "community OSS model" is giving way to the new school "supported contributor OSS model", but I still think these are aspects orthogonal to the basic control scheme of a project, and Apache is fundamentally about individuals working together as peers, no matter what their motivation or employer. When we started Harmony, it was a passion and a labor of love for me, not a part of my job, and I honestly never really imagined that I'd find it part of my job - and here I am, back full circle. Of course, being "back full circle" with Harmony at 96% percent completion in the class library with a capable and performant virtual machine is a great place to be.

Anyway, a new chapter with new challenges, opportunities, and growth. Wish me well :)