| We haven't heard the last of Marc Fleury |
Feb. 09, 2007
Marc Fleury, founder of JBoss and often controversial open source, leader has left Red Hat. The move came as no surprise to many in the industry.
In a statement, Fleury wrote, "I have done what I can to help Red Hat succeed. People need to understand that Open Source is a tsunami that is transforming the software industry in its wake and its inevitability is now well beyond challenge or the force of individual personality."
During his career at JBoss, though, Fleury was a one-man tsunami. Never afraid to take a stand, or to be flamboyant, Marc Fleury appeared during a dinner at the 2004 TheServerSide Java Symposium dressed as Batman's nemesis The Joker and shouted "This industry needs an enema!"
Fleury was also accused of posting messages to popular Java developer sites, such as TheServerSide and JavaLobby, under fake names, which boosted JBoss and its business model while blasting competitors.
Behind the flamboyance, though, was an executive who took his concept of "professional open source" to the bank as his middleware Java company became the hottest middleware company in the business for several years. In early 2006, Fleury coyly flirted with other companies, notably Oracle, about a potential buyout for prices ranging from $300 million to $480 million.
In the end, while Oracle was perhaps JBoss's most ardent buyout suitor, Red Hat ended up sweeping JBoss away in April 2006. So it was that in a deal worth at least $350 million, Red Hat acquired JBoss, and earned Oracle's enmity.
While most observers liked the combination of the leading Linux distributor with the leading open-source middleware vendors, there were many questions about how Fleury would fit into Red Hat's far calmer corporate culture. The real problem, several analysts agreed at the time, was whether the always on the go Fleury could handle reporting to buttoned-down Red Hat CEO Matt Szulik.
Michael Goulde, a senior application development analyst for Forrester Research, said at the time, "We also see cultural clashes between JBoss and Red Hat, especially between Marc Fleury and Matt Szulik." Scott Donahue, a VP for technology analyst firm The 451 Group, agreed: "There may be differences of opinion on where the company should go. I can see Fleury wanting to have a big say in Red Hat's direction."
As time went on, it became clear that Fleury was unhappy about some aspects of the deal, even though the rumor was that Fleury personally had cashed in for approximately $150 million. In November, in an eWEEK interview at the JBoss World Europe conference in Berlin, Fleury expressed disappointment at the level of investment Red Hat had placed in the JBoss core development team. He also privately expressed exasperation with what he saw as Red Hat management's lack of support for himself and his team of top developers.
So, when Fleury left on paternity leave in December and announced that he'd be coming back in March, ...well, few people were surprised that he wasn't coming back.
Red Hat public relations said that he decided to leave Red Hat to "pursue other personal interests, such as teaching, research in biology, music, and his family." I'm sure there's some truth to that. I'm also sure that he'll be launching a new company sometime later this year. I also strongly suspect that he'll be poaching some of his former developers from Red Hat come that day.
Fleury is exceptionally smart, loves to be in the spotlight, but more than anything else he's a born entrepreneur. If I were a betting man, I'd put my money not only on that he'll be back later this year, but I think he'll be back with another professional open-source software company. This one won't be a JBoss clone, though; its focus will be on Ruby on Rails.
Maybe I'm wrong about the details and the timing, but one way or the other, we're going to be hearing a lot more about Marc Fleury in the software development business.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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