Leaving Red Hat (and go back to mobile)
Time flies. It has been 3 years since I joined JBoss in August 2004. In those 3 years, we went from the “bad boy of open source” to one of the most successful software companies since the dotcom era. We went through a 350-million-dollar acquisition by Red Hat and made a few millionaire open source developers in the process. We fought and won battles against industry mammoth like IBM, Oracle, and BEA with style and vengeance. It is a great pleasure to work with such a talented and passionate team of professionals. Yet, the time has came for me to move on. I will be leaving Red Hat by the end of this month to join an Austin-based startup, eZee Inc., to work on mobile payment applications.
As someone who wrote 3 books on mobile technologies, I always had a great passion for mobile. eZee has a very experienced management / business development team, leading technologists (pat on the back for myself!), strong connection with University of Texas, and adequate funding to push a consumer product. It is too good an opportunity for me to pass up … Read more about the company here. My role in the new company will be “mobile strategist.” What the hell is that, you ask? Well, as typical in a startup, I will do everything from product design, project management, writing code, to taking out the trash. 
We have around 10 employees now and look to grow aggressively. If you are interested in joining us, let me know. I cannot promise the future but I can guarantee that you will be working on some of the most exciting technologies (server side and mobile client side) today. As technologists, we set out to change the world (i.e., to change the way how people use money). If we happen to make some money in the process, that would be very nice too. 
While the software we write in eZee will not be open source (financial and payment stuff are highly sensitive), we will certainly use a lot of open source products and contribute back to the community. So, I will continue to be an active committer on several JBoss / Red Hat open source projects, in particular JBoss Seam and JBoss Tools. I will continue my writing on JBoss Seam in this blog and plan to publish a second edition of my JBoss Seam book early next year.
August 28th, 2007 at 2:15 am
Congrats, Michael! I wish you every success, and I hope you’ll still have time for the Jolt awards.
August 28th, 2007 at 2:35 am
Phheeeewww. Good to read that. I was just visiting your website to find contact to you, to ask you when the second edition will be published.
I have read a lot about Seam and I want my next project to use Seam, so I was gonna buy your book but was unsure about it since on the german amazon website, somebody mentions something about a second edition in his review. I hasisstated buying the book, but now that I know that it will take a few months to get the new edition I will buy the current version.
How much of the current edition is deprecated by Seam 2 or Seam v3 (some day)?
I am wishing you the best of luck with your new job and I am looking forward to more Seam related entries in your blog.
August 28th, 2007 at 2:38 am
I am sorry for the double post, but I just looked at the list of chapters at amazon and I would like to propose a chapter for the second edition:
“Seam Application Architecture - Best Practices”
- Best Practices on stateful applications, etc
August 28th, 2007 at 5:54 am
To leave a small(Medium) company for a Big is easy, but the opposite is a difficult choice.
“Boa Sorte” == Good luck
August 28th, 2007 at 6:01 am
Hi Michael!
Much luck at your new job. I wish you a very nice work place, good workmates and…be happy!
Cheers,
Francisco Antônio
“Although nobody can come back and make a new start, anyone can start now and make a new end.” (Chico Xavier, Brazil’s most famous medium)
August 28th, 2007 at 8:23 am
Good luck, Michael! It was honor working with someone of your talent during my time at JBoss, as well. I’m sure you’ll be successful is anything you do.
August 28th, 2007 at 8:46 am
Hi, Michael, welcome back to the mobile world. I believe it will be great to work with ceo
August 28th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Hi Guys,
Thank you very much for your kind words!
Andrew: Yes, I will be around in Jolts. It has been great fun!
sakuraba: Expanding the book to cover some best practices is indeed one of the focuses for the 2nd edition — Seam has matured enough in real world projects that we can have this discussion in a book now!
Leonardo and Francisco: Thanks!
Roy: The feeling is mutual!
Wendong: Are you by any chance interested in working with us?
cheers
Michael
August 28th, 2007 at 9:53 am
Congratulations on your new venture, Michael. We’ll miss you here, you’ve been one of the most talented and productive guys around, and your contributions to Seam and JBoss have been enormous.
Good luck!
August 28th, 2007 at 11:46 am
Welcome back to the mobile world! The new venture sounds like a blast.
August 28th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Good luck!
August 28th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
It is awesome to have Michael join eZee inc…
ceo
August 28th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
Thanks, Michael. I read your post about software developer life in Texas. I am pretty convinced. If I would pick up a place to relocate to, that will be Texas.
Among those 10 people, eZee has 2 mobile gurus (that I know). That is very talent intensive.
Expecting your world-changing product.
August 28th, 2007 at 11:34 pm
Michael,
congratulations! So, does this mean that, eventually, we can look forward to a new mobile Java book? Fingers crossed… plus more mobile tidbits in the blog too. Should be good fun watching your progress.
Good luck!
August 29th, 2007 at 3:07 am
Good luck! Nice to hear that you’ll keep writing about Seam
August 29th, 2007 at 10:43 am
Good luck Michael, we will be missing your help.
August 31st, 2007 at 3:22 pm
We hope to be writing a lot more in the future about eZee, so please keep us in mind as you guys grow the company!
October 2nd, 2007 at 5:23 am
Hi Michael,
All the best for your future.
Stay in touch with JBoss Seam team.
Thanks
January 13th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Hi Michael,
It’s great to see you back to mobile. Your J2ME book is such a great one and has taught so many developers in this area(Every J2ME developer I met in the past four yrs has your book!), and we missed you in the past three years!
Now I got a good reason to subscribe you blog via SMS!
-Jun