LWN: Surviving the downside, Linuxcare remains focused – An interview with Linuxcare Co-Founder and CTO David L. Sifry

“It’s very gratifying to know that regardless of all the hype,
at the core Linuxcare is founded on pretty sound beliefs.”

“The CTO and VP of Engineering of Linuxcare has little time
these days for the code hacking that got him into Linux. “My
hacking level since working at Linuxcare has dropped considerably.
That and we had a baby a little over a year ago. No more 20 hour
hacking days,” he says with a laugh that must make him a favorite
target of Santa-suit-wearer seekers.”

“I’m a typical geek that found his way to Linux.” Like most
Linux users, his first move into Linux came as a matter of money.
“I didn’t have the money to spend $5000 or $10000 on some
workstation. I looked around for a while, finally settling on
FreeBSD and Linux. Linux was more freewheeling and that was
something that I liked. Once I had it running on a box, I just kept
it, plus the release cycles were slower with FreeBSD, so I ended up
working with Linux.”

“Sifry is well aware of the developer culture from which the
Linux world was born. “When you get into hacking you get into this
zone. What tends to happen is that by 9 or 10 in the morning you
have the first two cups of coffee and then you get into this zone,
where your right brain takes over, and you look up and it’s 5PM.
You’re stomach starts rumbling and you think ‘I’m hungry’.” His
feelings about coding are not uncommon among developers, but things
have changed recently. “After having a baby it’s much harder to get
back into that zone.”

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