Open source executive moves: JBoss executive Ben Sabrin lands at Appcelerator
Ben Sabrin, former VP of Sales at JBoss, introduced himself to me in 2006 by yelling at me. I have that effect on people. I didn't take it personally as for once I wasn't guilty of that which I was being accused.
Ben has long since repented in sackcloth and ashes and is on his way to a cool startup called Appcelerator, where he'll be vice president of Strategy and Business Development. Word on the street is that he won't be the last of the JBoss elite to find their way to the company, which offers a "comprehensive, language-agnostic platform for quickly developing rich Internet applications."
It's a crowded space but Ben is a strong performer. I'm sure they'll do well.
As for Red Hat, I'm a little concerned that it may mean further leakage in Red Hat's JBoss ranks. Red Hat is getting kicked around a bit for not having a broad enough product portfolio, which means that JBoss must prove itself successful for the company. It can't weather an exodus of JBoss talent.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
I agree that it is important to avoid an exodus of JBoss talent. And I absolutely agree Ben was a key player in JBoss' success. He was sales guy #1 and I admire the guts it took for him to bet on the JBoss opportunity back then.
It is also important to note, however, that Ben left Red Hat about 15 months ago...which was a few months after the acquisition. Unfortunately, there were a group of sales reps and sales management that left around that same time. Ben Sabrin, Rob Bearden, Tom Leonard, etc., etc.
I'm picking nits on your main point, of course, but it's still worth noting that your implied timeline is a bit misleading since Ben is not a recent departure.
- Shaun Connolly
As for Appcelerator, the technology doesn't excite me because I hate HTML and don't want to write any of it. However, the people make the company, the technology can always be exchanged. It looks like it might be just the next edition of JBoss. If I weren't busy with http://buni.org and the next generation of open source groupware, I'd be begging Ben to let me join even though I hate HTML.
- by Steve_Raby December 21, 2007 6:37 AM PST
- Interesting to come across this discussion. As an ex-JBosser having left RedHat 6 months ago, it?s been very apparent to me all along that RedHat had a plan for JBoss and are executing on it. It wasn?t necessarily the way that JBoss sales were doing things, but word on the street is that the JBoss stuff is moving nicely. (Note ? I have an interest here ? my company Nuxeo has JBoss AS, JBoss jBPM and JBoss Rules as part of our stack for our open source ECM platform).
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(5 Comments)RedHat are doing things their way, the exodus of JBoss sales people happened some 12-18 months ago, but this is not the case with the parts that RedHat really wanted ? namely the JBoss core developers (evidenced by their presence at JBoss World Orland in Feb) and support people. In fact my guess is that the developers are pretty happy for the most part, as many products now have a greater impetus behind them and added investment.
As RedHat are a major focal point for the open source industry, we have to hope that they really are making a success of the JBoss acquisition.
BTW ? good luck to Ben.