JBoss boss quits Red Hat

WHEN MARC FLEURY sold JBoss to Red Hat 10 months ago, it seemed an odd sort of marriage so it's no great surprise that the loquacious Frenchman and the 800-pound gorilla of business Linux are going their separate ways.

The idea of adding middleware to OS distribution made sense but the cultural clash could be seen coming from outer space. Fleury is known as a brilliant eccentric capable of coming up with space-cadet guff such as this:

"Today is the beginning of 'Red'; we are going to wonderland and the rabbit hole keeps on going. Just like the Matrix protagonist wakes up to find 'the real battle', JBoss, Inc. today is stepping up to a bigger challenge by merging with RedHat."

The former paratrooper's mouth was never likely to be gagged and it was hard to see him as anything less than a CEO. Matters seem to have come to a head recently with an internal email published by News.com that included the following line: "I am increasingly experiencing diminishing returns on my emotional and professional investments at Red Hat.”

As we said last April, Red Hat could have sold subscriptions to tune into the board meetings.

One thing's for sure, Fleury will be back in the spotlight one day. We're betting sooner rather than later. µ

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