From: www.itworld.com

Where is Emmett Plant?

by Joe Barr

March 20, 2001 —

 


Writers are funny. Some you like, some you don't. Some you seem to sense a bond with the first time you read them. I like Emmett Plant. Something in his article about Linux, "Welcome Wagon," touched me deeply. It eventually triggered a related column of my own. Evidently, Plant has the same effect on a lot of people. Since I wrote that column, we've chatted on IRC and run into each other at shows like the Annual Linux Showcase last fall in Atlanta, and I've been a guest on "The Linux Show," where he is a regular cast member.



Plant is a semi-celebrity in the world of Linux and open source, by virtue of his stints at Linux publications like Linux Today.com, Slashdot.org, and Linux.com. But in less than 2 years, he has joined and left each of those career-making sites. Plant recently put his own boat in the water with the launch of Binary Freedom.


I'm not exactly sure what Plant and I share: Do we connect because we both come from dysfunctional families and sometimes go a little further than merely questioning authority? Because we both had our own BBS systems, or grew up with a love of reading? Because we both love to make a living writing about Linux and open source? Who knows? But after speaking to Plant at length recently about his career and his new site, I'm convinced that on some deeper level, we speak the same language. One reason I find this bond remarkable is that I'm more than twice his age. Plant just turned 24; I'm on the far side of 55.

Plant's roots

Emmett Plant did not set out to become a famous -- or even highly popular -- journalist of the open source age. He was a terrible student in high school; he said, "If I passed an English class, it was because they had pity on me." He did manage to find a few things he liked, though. Audio/video production was one; he even had his own TV show on a public access channel for a while.


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Plant has always been a geek. He's never done any serious hacking, but he does cop to a little phreaking back in the day -- just some stuff he picked up reading about the telephone system in the public library, you understand. He first became involved in Unix and Linux when some friends put together a free net in Boston.


He also likes to hang on IRC. In fact, he got his start as a writer when he met a guy there named Jeff Alami, who has also become a well-known scribe in the community. Alami had a zine called Bleeding Edge Magazine. It was a relaxed environment; Plant said they would update the site "whenever." Alami wrote a daily column called "Linux Journeys," and Plant began a weekly column called "Fantasy and Microchips." (See Resources for a link to an article remembering that period.)


That's how Plant got on the merry-go-round, but he didn't stay put for very long. He went from Bleeding Edge to an EarthWeb site called "open source IT." He was astounded to learn that the site would pay him real money to write 800-word pieces. And the money was far better than the 7 or 8 cents a word he was getting trying to break into science fiction.


Everything was going well at EarthWeb; Plant even became a contributing editor. The problem was that he bumped into someone else: Dave Whitinger, founder of Linux Today. Plant told Whitinger one day, "Why don't you let me write a games column for Linux Today, unpaid, just for the heck of it?"


Discussions began between Plant, Whitinger, and Dwight Johnson. But just as things got rolling, the wheels locked up. Plant didn't know that Whitinger and Johnson were in the process of selling the site to internet.com. Plant had talked to Johnson about joining the site as an editor, not just an unpaid writer.


Eventually, of course, the sale was completed, and Plant became Linux Today's staff editor and wrote "Welcome Wagon." But there were problems in paradise. Plant was asked to produce two 800-word research pieces a day. One of his pieces was reworked by internet.com editors and went out quoting a source who had not agreed to be quoted. It was, as Plant put it, "bad mojo." At about that time, Robin Miller of Slashdot contacted him.


Conversations with Miller led to a job offer that Plant quickly accepted. In fact, it stunned him. Plant told me, "I mean you can't actually apply for a job at Slashdot, you have to be asked to work for them. So they wanted to do a little more in-depth research pieces and things like that, and I kind of fit the bill for what they wanted ... It's frightening to think that -- oh my God -- I'm going to be working at Slashdot, which is pretty much like a focal point for the open source community. And it's like, wow! Who the hell am I?"


Summing up the experience now that he's moved on, Plant said, "I was forged in the fires of Slashdot, I mean as a writer more than everything else." He had moved from a big site to probably the biggest site in the community. But it wasn't quite what you might think. Plant said there is no "ivory tower" to house the Slashdot staff. People who work or write there also visit the site. The line between the inside and outside is often invisible. And they surely did not all drive around in "IPO money limos."


Even while he was with Slashdot, Plant couldn't keep still. He was quickly offered the position of editor in chief at Linux.com, another Andover.Net site.


Plant admits that moving from Slashdot writer to Linux.com editor in chief may not have been the right move. He told me, "Professionally, that job change made the most sense. Physically and emotionally, it was the worse thing I could have ever done."


Profit was the problem. He had a tiny budget with which to pay writers. He tried his best to turn the site into a place where new talent, writers who wanted to come up the same way he did, could get their chance. He said, "My dream for Linux.com was to let volunteers and writers walk on the Emmett trail."


At one point, Plant was forced to let a popular staff member go. He said of that experience, "It's like firing Gandhi. There is just no way to do it." To make matters worse, he had been told that the person's salary would be added to his editorial budget, but only 10 percent of that figure was allotted to him. Add a serious disagreement with management over the ethics of mixing sponsor-submitted content and editorial by volunteer writers, and you had a very unhappy editor in chief. He resigned from Linux.com on Jan. 9. He said about 90 percent of the staff writers left with him.


But Plant is as unsinkable as he is talented and popular. Sooner than seems possible, he has reappeared as editor in chief of his own site: Binary Freedom. Popularity helps; Plant said he had advertisers before the first line of HTML was done.


Plant wants to avoid the problems and mistakes he has seen along the way, such as sites where "one person is very, very talented at doing one thing and manages to do a lot of other things very poorly." So he is the editor in chief, but Chris Campbell is the CEO and Amanda J. Waterman is the CFO. Plant is not the CIO or CTO either. He wants the right people doing the right things.


I asked Plant what makes Binary Freedom different from the other sites he's worked for. He gave me three major distinctions:


Binary Freedom will not cover Linux exclusively; it will also deal with open technology, both software and hardware. Plant said the staff wants to keep it interesting for themselves, so they can keep it interesting for the readers.


I like the looks of the new site, and I wish Plant and his team all the success in the world. But I really just want Plant to keep that job a little longer than the others in his recent track record. I may have to write about him again someday, and trying to keep up with all his moves makes me dizzy.

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