Open Source Diva named CTO Options

[anthony]

So who is this Danese Cooper? I see that David Gerard created her BLP in 2005. On that point alone I'm skeptical.

[thekohser]

I wonder if the fact that Brion Vibber is being re-hired is any indication of:

1. Danese doesn't know enough about computers to do Brion's job
2. Once you're a Wikimediot, you can't last long in the "outside" work world

Maybe a little bit of both?

[Alison]

I wonder if the fact that Brion Vibber is being re-hired is any indication of:

1. Danese doesn't know enough about computers to do Brion's job
2. Once you're a Wikimediot, you can't last long in the "outside" work world

Maybe a little bit of both?

... or a little bit of neither? Let's be fair ...

[Somey]

Maybe a little bit of both?

... or a little bit of neither? Let's be fair ...

No, let's be unfair!

I actually agree with Ms. Martin about why Brion Vibber would be willing to return, given that he'll be reporting to Danese Cooper and not Erik Moeller... but Mr. Kohs has actually made an interesting point here, as he often does. Sometimes the WMF management reminds me of kids let loose in a candy store (when they're not reminding me of Lord of the Flies, at least). They have lots of money, no appreciable oversight, no definable performance metrics other than just their ability to keep the websites online... it sounds like loads of fun for an IT person, and a helluva lot better for a dev/DBA than the average corporate IT shop, consulting firm, or software VAR.

That's not to say there wouldn't be some downside - in particular, the guilty-conscience thing could cause lack of sleep, what with knowing you were participating in a corrupt, socially-irresponsible fake-charity operation. But as it turns out, some people aren't really affected by that silly "conscience" stuff at all, so maybe Brion is one of the lucky ones.