Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda Resigns From Slashdot

After 14 years and over 15,000 stories posted, it's finally time for me to say Good-Bye to Slashdot. I created this place with my best friends in a run down house while still in college. Since then it has grown to be read by more than a million people, and has served Billions and Billions of Pages (yes, in my head I hear the voice). During my tenure I have done my best to keep Slashdot firmly grounded in its origins, but now it's time for someone else to come aboard and find the *future*. Personally I don't have any plans, but if you need to get ahold of me for any reason, you can find me as @cmdrtaco on twitter or Rob Malda on Google+. You could also update my mail address to be malda at cmdrtaco dot net. Hit the link below if you want to read some nostalgic saccharine crap that I need to get out of my system before I sign off for the last time.

It was the summer of '97 and I was a college kid working part time as a programmer at an ad agency. I wrote a simple CMS: practically my first perl program (I was so happy to not have to write in anything Microsoft!). I got an old DEC Alpha Multia in exchange for some freelance Java work. I stuffed it under my desk at work and registered the domain name in October. Jeff "Hemos" Bates chipped in on the registration fee. Within months we were serving thousands of people per day on a system that looked remarkably similar to the Slashdot you see today. It was simple: I just was sharing stories that I stumbled on with a small group of friends.

When I wrote the essay "Simple Solutions" a few months later, we doubled in traffic almost overnight. New hardware had to be purchased. Soon we exceeded the bandwidth capacity of our ISP and had to start co-locating. This meant banner ads. I barely made it through the end of college, working night and day on a site that was growing so fast, it was all I could do to keep up. We started making a little money and I eventually was able to quit my job and dedicate myself full-time to Slashdot. I barely graduated. Soon my friends followed me, eventually forming our company Blockstackers.

As my little hobby became a full blown business, it became clear that we needed help. The burden of running Sales and Marketing and HR it was to much for us. Slashdot was sold to Andover in '99. Since Slashdot was founded, my business card has read Blockstackers, Andover, Andover.net, VA Linux Systems, VA Software, OSDN, OSTG, SourceForge, and finally Geeknet. My title has changed several times: from my first card which read "Lies and Misinformation", until today when my title read "Editor-in-Chief of Slashdot.org". During that entire time, my job has been some version of the same thing: Make Slashdot Great. I always did my best, and I'd like to think that I got it right more often than not.

In the last 14 years, Slashdot has covered so many amazing events: The explosion of Linux. The rise of Google. The return of Apple. The Dot Com Bubble. The DMCA. 9/11. Wars. Elections. Numerous successful Shuttle Launches and one Disaster. Scientific Breakthroughs galore. Cool toys. Web2.0! Social Networking. Blogging! Podcasting! Micro-Blogging! The Lord of the Rings being filmed and an entire trilogy of new Star Wars. OMG Ponies!! So many moments that I could run this paragraph for hours with moments where we shared something important, meaningful, or just stupid. But the most important to me was my marriage proposal to Kathleen. Slashdot has posted Over 114,000 stories so far. And there will be many more to come. I just won't be the one picking them.

Slashdot has been read by kernel engineers and billionaires. By sys-admins and CEOs. By high school kids and government bureaucrats. But what brings so many of them together is that we are nerds. It never ceases to amaze me the similarities that I find between us all when I climb out of my dungeon and go meet readers. From the inside of some of the most wonderful places on earth, to conference halls with useless wireless connections, to cube farms, you guys always reminded me of why I started this thing in the first place. We share something important and unquantifiable.

The internet has changed dramatically since I started here, and that's part of my reason for leaving. For me, the Slashdot of today is fused to the Slashdot of the past. This makes it really hard to objectively consider the future of the site. While my corporate overlords and I haven't seen eye to eye on every decision in the last decade, I am certain that Jeff Drobick and the other executives at Geeknet will do their best. I am unquestionably confident in the abilities of the Slashdot editors and engineers- some of whom have been here just short of forever. They have proven themselves in the best and worst of conditions to be capable and dedicated.

As part of my resignation, after this story appears I will lose the ability to post. For me, this is the most bitter pill to swallow. Posting stories has always been my favorite part of the job. I created Slashdot to share these stories with my friends from IRC and school. It was never 'work'. Now I will have to go cold turkey. I'm walking away from the soapbox I built. I wish I could continue to post stories forever, but those closest to me know that if I maintained the ability to post, I'd never move on. I'll continue to read Slashdot and hopefully my occasional story submissions will make the cut. My old mantra: News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters still holds true here today. Nobody does it better.

As for what's next, I really don't know. I don't have a job lined up. I have no plans. I'm gonna spend some time with my boys and my wife. Read some books that have been on my shelf forever. Maybe it's time to write a book of my own.

If you want to get ahold of me, my email is now malda at cmdrtaco dot net. Geeknet has graciously agreed to continue to forward malda at slashdot dot org forever, but you should still update your address books if you care. I'm available on twitter as @cmdrtaco and Google+. My homepage hasn't been updated in a decade, but it's still CmdrTaco.net. And since I'm going to have to find a job in a few months, I'm on LinkedIn as well.

Thanks to everyone who helped build Slashdot over the years: the list is far to long to fit in this textfield but you know who you are, and you all know that I've got your back in a knife fight. Lastly, thanks to every Slashdot reader for giving me your time all these years. I hope I've wasted it efficiently and enjoyably.

Pants are optional.

Thanks for all the Fish Wrapper

[chrisd]

In 1997, right after Chips n' Dips had faded away, to be replaced by the enigmatically named http:///..org [..org], all of us free software nerds hung on its every story, comment and poll like it was carved on tablet and flung from a burning bush. A year later I had started at hardware maker VA Research and /. was falling down for lack of machinery, so we rummaged through our returns piles and sent Rob and Jeff some 2u servers to help out. That was for me the beginning of some of the most important friendships in my adult life.

Its hard to explain how important Slashdot was to all of us 10 years ago. Indeed, without it it would be hard to imagine HN, Reddit, Digg, Fark or any of a thousand lesser sites. The editorial perspective of Rob and the other editors of /. is what kept people coming back and for a long time that perspective was Rob's, then Rob and Jeff and a bunch of us (some, like Timothy and samzenpus, still around!), but then Jeff left, now Rob. In some way I see this as a passing of an era in free software.

Throughout, while some have left for those greener shores, slashdot abided even while buffeted by the markets and the de/evolving internet news world, and it has remained a default tab in my and many others' browsers.

I didn't mean this post to be about Slashdot though, but about my friend Rob. I'll only say that while the site will be the lessor for you leaving, I firmly believe that computer science will gain my. While this note reads like an epitaph or the last pages of a book, it is really no more than a thank you note from me and many I know to your for your decade+ of work on the site. So...

Thanks.

Hemos Says: "So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish"

[Hemos]

I left Geeknet aka all the other names Rob has typed already nearly exactly a year ago now, and had stopped really posting on Slashdot prior to that but the work, creation and launching of Slashdot remains one of the best things that has ever happened to me. Rob and I went to the same middle school, high school, college and had the joy of working together for well over a decade; I've been very lucky to have worked with him and the other friends we started with.

Rob and I became friends not actually because of being in the same school, though we knew each other that way. We because friends when we both had modems and got on the BBSes, and that desire to have a place to share news and stuff with friends was what I think Slashdot has done well with. Bringing together the people who have the love of technology in their blood. Rob is really really good at that, and working with him and the rest of the folks has been on honor and privilege.

We've had some good wedding times [slashdot.org] and some burnination times [slashdot.org] (Chris, I forgot about the cell phone. That makes me giggle.) And while I could go on and on, then I'll turn maudlin and no one wants that.

I started at Google just over a week ago now, and love what I'm doing -- and I think that's the most important lesson I learned from Slashdot. You won't always like what you are doing but if you working on something you love and with good people around you, that's worth a lot.

If you care to see me poke fun of Rob, you can find me on Twitter as (the imaginatively named) @hemos [twitter.com], or find me on Google Plus as Jeffrey Bates [google.com]

Thanks for the fun, Rob. We done good.

So long...

[rsidd]

I've been around for a while, reading though not posting often. For some of us your resignation ranks up there with Jobs' (but more unexpected and, one hopes, not for similar reasons). All the best in whatever you do. You must be in your mid-late thirties, and have an entire life ahead of you!

Re:Thanks for all the Fish Wrapper

[Seumas]

I still remember in the beginning of my career, when a colleague came over and showed me this website that he went to every day. A site that a short while later became Slashdot. A site that I read often and, eventually (though far too late to have a cool UID, damn it!) created an account on. It's strange that Slashdot has pretty much been part of my life for my entire career and that it has maintained its ready place in my regular "hangouts" after all this time. Even despite the complaints and failures, it has still had a pull that none of these other linkbaits from Digg after could manage.

Sometimes, I like to go back and read random headlines on Slashdot from years ago. Back when we even paid attention to the byline of a post. Back when people knew why Roblimo was Roblimo. So much has changed around us and this same group of strange geeks has been along for the ride. In this same time, I also ran my own project that started shortly after Slashdot and that I just finally shut off this past year. Experienced the same surprising scaling issues when this thing I did for kicks took off, like Slashdot did. It was a huge experience that consumed most of my life and I, too, experienced the delayed closure. The feeling that it was time to move on, but this nagging hesitance to do so. This feeling that it had been such a part of my life (as Slashdot has been Rob's) that I was almost obligated to continue it and maintain it. And yet, cutting the cord and stepping away has been such a breath of fresh air. Such a release. I can only imagine this must feel much the same way.

Best wishes ahead and all, but I have to say that in light of yesterday's news, maybe this could have been postponed another week to have come across a little less "whacky".

Re:Simple

[wwphx]

Not that I'm leaving, but like most others here, Slashdot has been amazingly valuable to me. I was working at a police department when I Love You broke loose: I read about it here at 7am, went to our security/network guy, showed him the story, we went to our router and just pulled the incoming line. Saved our bacon, very minimal problems. Upstream, at the City, they got hammered. So definitely thanks! And it's always a good idea to know where your towel is, especially in our field: DHMO and expensive electronics usually don't mix very well.

My standing offer to take you to Apache Point Observatory stands if you ever get the hankering to see a 3.5 meter telescope up close and personal. Best of luck in your next job life!

Re:Thanks for all the Fish Wrapper

[mosch]

Rob-

Thanks for Chips n' Dips, and Slashdot.  I hope you enjoy a little bit of respite while you discover what you want for the next step in your career.  You started out with a big, highly influential bang, and I'm glad you're getting a bit of rest now.

All the best,
- some asshole on the internet who you don't actually know, but who is glad you did what you did.

What's up with the timing?

[suso]

Steve Jobs came back to Apple officially in September 1997.
Slashdot was founded in Septemer 1997.
Steve Jobs quits in August 2011.
Rob Malda quits in August 2011.