I just wrote about Linus Torvalds, and how his personality feeds into the success of Linux. I then encountered Mark Hinkle’s “Five Reasons Why JBoss Founder Marc Fleury is My Hero,” and thought Mark was spot-on in his assessment of Monsieur Fleury.
I didn’t know Marc well when he was at JBoss. My familiarity with him came after. He’d dinner at my home earlier this year and joined the open-source crew for the inaugural Open Source Goat Rodeo.
I particularly appreciate two things about Marc, which Mark Hinkle calls out. First, his legacy didn’t end with JBoss. He hired people that have since gone on to start or heavily contribute to a range of other startups: Ringside Networks, Loopfuse, Alfresco, Pentaho, Appcelerator, etc. Much as I respect Red Hat, you’d be hard-pressed to find much in the way of open-source off-shoots that it has fostered. Ditto for Novell.
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