This page printed from: https://www.linuxmonth.com/issue3/articles/linuxtalk/linuxtalk.html?print=1
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Linux Talk by: Baiju Thakkar |
Regular Edition |
This interview was done a few months ago.
Please Welcome Elizabeth and Jonathan
BT: Give us a little background about yourselves?
Jon: I'm a Wyoming boy who somehow stumbled into the high-tech world. I have a Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering and a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Colorado. I worked for eighteen years in the Atmospheric Technology Division of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, doing software development, systems administration, and group management. I'm married to an Italian woman, which means that I have to go over there and let the in-laws feed me every year - a rough job, but somebody's got to do it.
Liz: My background is primarily in computer and network systems administration. I worked at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, first as a student assistant while pursuing a Mathematics degree at the University of Colorado, then as a programmer, then as a systems administrator. When I left in 1997, I was Network and Computing Manager for the Climate and Global Dynamics Division. I'm married and have a beautiful two-year-old daughter, an old black cat and a long-haired Akita.
BT: How did you get involved with computers ?
Jon: I started with a TI-58 programmable calculator in high school, back in 1979. But my eyes were really opened when I got to college, and got to program in Pascal using punch cards - it seemed like a step up at the time... As I went on, my initial interest in electronics shifted over to computers, and has been there ever since.
Liz: It started, amazingly enough, just in college. My only exposure before that involved programming in Basic over a teletype and never interested me much. Once I got into college, all roads led to computers, both in my classes and in the part-time work I did in the summers. That is how Jon and I first met, programming together as a team in Assembly Language class. Rebecca Sobol, who has been working with us for the last year, was the third member of that team. Ever since then, Jon and I have been looking for the right opportunity to work together again.
BT: How did you get involved with Linux ?
Jon: I first got into playing with Unix source back in the very early '80's, when Evi Nemeth let me hack on the memory management algorithms in an early BSD release on a VAX 11/780. I'm sure I hacked it up pretty badly... but I've wanted to work with Unix ever since.
At work I spent much time in the late 80's and early 90's doing things like installing gcc and X10 (then X11) on SunOS and other proprietary Unix systems. None of us ever really questioned why we were doing that - it wasn't a smooth process in those days, and we put a lot of effort into it. Free software was obviously very appealing even back then, when building X11 with gcc was a risky affair at best.
Meanwhile, at home, I suffered with a thing called ""Microport Unix"" on a 286 system for years...so when free Unix systems for the 386 started coming out, I was naturally interested. Initially, I looked mostly at the BSD release, but I noticed that there seemed to be a lot more activity around Linux.
I got my first Linux system (a 486 laptop) at the end of 1993, and had a really great time putting development kernels on it and transitioning from a.out to ELF manually. Some things haven't changed much since...
Liz: Jon was the one that got me involved. Ever since he heard about it and started poking around with the earlier versions, he told me this was the future and bugged me to get involved. My hands were pretty full at that point. It took quitting my job to have a baby and then having an opportunity to figure out what I'd like to do with the rest of my life to give me a chance to really get involved with Linux.
BT: How long has LWN been around for ?
Liz: The first issue of LWN was published the last week of January, 1998. Of course, work on the idea and the site started before that, in December of 1997.
BT: How did LWN start ? Why did you decide to start ?
Liz: The idea for LWN was formulated in November/December of 1997, when Jon and I put together our initial business plans. I started work full-time, without pay, to get Eklektix off the ground as a Red Hat support partner. Since income from that source was expected to be sporadic, we discussed a variety of ideas for Linux-related web sites that could be used to provide a service to the community, introduce people to our work and eventually, we hoped, to bring in a small income to supplement our support and consulting work.
BT: Whose idea was it, Elizabeth's or Jonathan's ?
Liz: It was Jon's :-). I remember him putting together a list of about seven ideas for possible web sites (the other six of which have since been implemented by other people ...). We went through the list and agreed upon LWN. The primary idea was to provide a timely information source to other busy professionals who didn't have time to keep up with information that was mostly made available in mailing lists - frequently very active mailing lists, with thousands of posts a month. We chose it based on the idea that we wanted to be reading those mailing lists anyway, so it wasn't really additional work. We were wrong :-). The number of mailing lists, newsgroups and web sites we currently monitor is phenomenal.
BT: Do you guys work on LWN full time / part time ?
Liz: We worked on LWN part-time initially, in addition to building a business that included Linux support, consulting and training. Now LWN is all we focus on, though it is an important part of that work that we get to do more than just write. Jon is now full-time, but my goal was always to create a part-time professional job, for health and family reasons. I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 1995 and a reduced hourly schedule is an important part of how I manage that illness.
BT: How does it feel to have so many readers and even more compliments on how well you guys are doing ?
Liz: The first month we published, we got ten, twenty letters a day from people thanking us for the work and complimenting us on what we were doing. That absolutely established this as the most enjoyable job I've ever had. Now we still get a nice thank-you note every once in a while, maybe every other week. On the other hand, now we know our readers number in the hundreds of thousands, from countries all over the world. It is a fantastic motivator; when you know your words are going to be read, you want them to be well-worth the effort.
BT: What are your thoughts on Linux itself.
Liz: My thoughts are on Linux and all applications of free software. It is the underlying ethics of Linux that I believe inspire the community and pull us together. We really are a part of something that is changing our world and, I believe, changing it for the better. I can't imagine wanting to be any place else right now, working on anything else besides this.
Jon: Linux is still fun, even though the events of the last couple years have changed things a lot. I've been a believer in free software for a while, but I increasingly see free software as a freedom issue in general. The whole DVD fiasco shows what can happen when this sort of freedom is threatened.
BT: Where do you think its headed ?
Jon: I think that free software will be around forever - though I expect some serious bumps on the road when various interests see how badly it threatens them.
BT: What is the most important thing that needs to be improved for a wider acceptance ?
Jon: It has to do what more people want it to do. I think that the maturing of programs like Gnucash is a great step in that direction.
BT: Do you think fragmentation is a real issue ?
Liz: No, I do not. Linux distributions create functional tools. They allow us a freedom of choice. Specialists like special tools and will be happy to be able to customize their own or find one that is perfectly suited to them.
Jon: I'm not worried about it. I expect there will continue to be lots of distributions - more and more companies and industries are likely to roll their own. Why not? You can make it do exactly what you need. But anybody who goes too far afield will get to where they can't easily integrate all the cool new stuff that people are developing, and that will tend to rein them in.
BT: Do you think Linux on desktops on a large scale will be a possibility ?
Liz: Yes, I do. I don't know how long it will take, but remember, in historical times, even the ""Microsoft era"" is of fairly short duration, only maybe ten years. People think they can't re-learn the tools they are so dependent on, but historically, they have re-learned and will continue to do so.
Jon: Absolutely. Once the applications are there, people will start using them. I think it will happen sooner than a lot of people think.
BT: How old are you ?
Liz: 39. That makes me older than Jon ... until July when he catches up with me. :-)
Jon: 38, for a little while yet.
BT: What do you do for fun ? Hobbies ?
Liz: Well, my latest hobby has been my women's track team. That's a side effect of the training I'm doing to support my health, but it is a kick and makes me laugh. I've never been an athlete or at all athletic ... and now I run races! Other hobbies and interests include my women's investment club, yoga, meditation, reading and historical research. I got my first management experience running medieval feasts. One thing is for sure, although I love computers, I've never been able to limit myself to one hobby and I doubt I ever will.
Jon: Brewing beer, reading, hiking and backpacking, travel, raising kids.
BT: What is your favorite Desktop ? GNOME ? KDE ?
Liz: I don't have a favorite ... I know that sounds like a nice, politic answer, but it also happens to be true. I'm still digging into both of them.
Jon: I use GNOME currently, though certain aspects of it drive me nuts.
BT: Favorite text editor ? vi ? Emacs ?
Liz: Emacs. I've been using it ever since I installed a beta version of the VMS port of Emacs years ago. Besides, I always liked LISP, even before emacs :-).
Jon: I use emacs for almost everything I do as me (i.e. most of my work) and vi for almost everything done as root. I can function well in both, and it's mostly a matter of whether I want an editor quickly for a little job, or whether I need heavier power for a longer time.
BT: You guys were acquired by Tucows.com ? What does that exactly mean ?
Liz: Pedantic-ally, it was a merger in exchange for cash and stock. In reality, of course, it was a sale that left the existing Eklektix work force in place. We understood clearly that this meant giving up full control of what we had created - not a comfortable decision. However, we took our time to make that decision and still feel that it was the best option for us personally and for LWN.net.
Jon: It means that LWN gets to continue to grow and get better, and to be part of a larger structure.
BT: How was the whole process ?
Liz: Brutal :-). Seriously, the memory of the pain is fading fast and I'm sure we'll look back on it as a wonderful and exciting process, but at the time we were under a great deal of pressure, talking to prospect after prospect, flying from place to place. We had a lot of opportunities, which was great, but they were so different from each other that it was hard to compare them and be sure that you were choosing the right one. Still, it was worth all the time and effort we put into it. At this point, we have every reason to feel that we made the best choice available to us.
Jon: Certainly one of the weirdest experiences of my entire life. I learned a lot. It came out well, though, and I'm happy with it.
BT: Can you tell us about the deal ? How much money was involved Other incentives ? etc. etc.
Liz: No, that information is not currently public. However, should Tucows.com go public, as I hope they will someday, all that information will be released at that time.
BT: Was there another buyer ?
Liz: Yes, several, but we are generally bound by non-disclosures, so we can't comment on who they were.
BT: If yes, why did you chose Tucows.
Liz: We enumerated most of those reasons in our announcement:
https://lwn.net/2000/features/Acquisition.phtml
Overall, I think LWN.net has a reputation as a well-rounded news source. Tucows.com was a good fit as a well-rounded company. It is relatively new, yet has been around for a few years. It has multiple revenue streams, a competent management team and, when we met with them personally, the interaction worked well. As we commented before, ""They have a sense of humor"". Believe it or not, that is a critical component. Of course, many of the other offers we had met some or all of those criteria as well. In the end, we had to choose and hope that our instincts led us to choose wisely.
BT: Will LWN.net stay where it is or will it move to lwn.tucows.com or such ?
Liz: Well, it is currently available as LWN.net and as lwn.tucows.com. I expect that you'll always be able to find it via either URL. Nonetheless, we are becoming part of Tucows' network, so do expect to see some changes that integrate our site more closely with their network.
BT: Anything else you like to add to the community ?
Liz: I believe the most critical element of our success has been the readers who both liked what they found on LWN.net and therefore keep coming back, but also freely share with us both their compliments and their criticisms. We count on them to keep us accurate and unbiased. With the sale, we also count on them to tell us if we change in any way that is not for the better. In return, our record shows that we listen and act upon what they say to us. We promise to continue doing so. Our goal will remain to provide a valuable, high-quality service to the Linux community.