What is your opinion on the Open Source community as it is? Do you think that Linux businesses are focussing too much on business? What is the problem with this?

I don't really hold much of an opinion on the 'open source community'. I keep out of politics.

What were your reasons for leaving RedHat in 1999, and where did you go from there?

I left for several reasons. One was location of the company; another was the attitude of people I worked with towards the 'community' who ultimately ended up becoming their bread and butter.

After Red Hat I went to what was at the time VA Research, and then became VA Linux Systems then VA Software. I worked for that 'VA' for about 2.5 years until they basically decided to cease being in the Linux business; they became a Web properties business and SourceForge.

I worked at a small embedded software maker in Sydney (FST) for about 2.5 years then worked for a separate company that was the result of a partnership of VA Linux Systems in the USA and investors in Japan - VA Japan. VA Japan happened to continue doing some of what VA in the USA did, but are essentially an entirely different company simply inheriting the name from the initial partnership, that is divorced of the business of VA USA, beyond being a reseller of SourceForge and OSDN in Japan. I was there for about 2.5 years and have since moved on to another unrelated firm in Japan.

VA in the USA were offering a much more friendly view towards open source and its user base than Red Hat had [and] in a much better location with a salary that was better. Do not confuse me leaving Red Hat with some major political move. It ended up much more political and personal with the way they treated me on my departure, which was to say, not very nice.

What are you currently working on?

E17 [Enlightenment version 0.17] mostly - and of course on the libraries under that. That's enough for me. I don't have time to do any more than that as it's just a part-time hobby and not something anyone pays me to do.

Can you tell us a little about Enlightenment?

Oh dear. I'll keep it short and the details can all be gotten from Enlightenment.org. It's a window manager for X. It runs on Linux, BSD and Solaris, and the next release (when it comes out) will be heading towards the domain of XFCE - i.e. a very light-weight desktop environment (desktop shell) where it provides all the basics you need to run your apps, find and manage your files, and otherwise manage your system.

It is focused on efficiency, speed, beauty, extensibility and delivers in all departments with extremely modest CPU requirements. Under that hood is a set of libraries that can be used to create multimedia applications such as media centres and more, with ease and speed.