Comments on: Open source executive moves: JBoss executive Ben Sabrin lands at Appcelerator

Will the JBoss exodus out of Red Hat continue?

[ShaunRConnolly]

Hi Matt,

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

[Matt Asay]

No, he's not. But I wasn't referring to him in the exodus. You can't "exit" if you were never there, as you say. I'm worried about others that could join him....

[acoliver]

I think you're spot on with this. Ben Sabrin was ESSENTIAL in the early stages of JBoss and moreover was a huge part of recruitment (that being part of his background) at JBoss. It was a colossal mistake for Red Hat to not utilize him. Internal loyalties in an organization are the most important part of retention. Key departures have happened in every area of Red Hat and the executive management seems to be "okay" with that. Whether it is Marc, Ben, Rob Bearden, JBoss sales, Tom Elrod, Roy Russo (http://www.loopfuse.com/), and some folks on the services side who don't have public names (and might not appreciate the publicity). It IS time for Red Hat to wake up and smell the JBoss and realize that the typical JBoss guy was a different animal than the typical Red Hat guy and that retention ought to be a stronger goal first, and that what is good for Red Hat isn't necessarily good for JBoss. Good book from Harvard press on this about mergers (reprints from their magazine) regarding "assimilation" vs "acquisition", email me offline if you're interested and I'll send you the isbn. I'm confident that there is still time for this realization so long as Sacha Labourey is still there. If/when that ship sails, I'd really start to worry.

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.

[acoliver]

In the above, I meant key departure in every area of JBoss not Red Hat. Maybe one day I'll start proofreading.

[Steve_Raby]

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).

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.