Shuttleworth quits CEO post at Ubuntu backer

NEWS

Ubuntu Linux backer Canonical is changing top management in an effort to become more operationally disciplined, with founder Mark Shuttleworth passing the chief executive job to Chief Operations Officer Jane Silber by 1 March.

Shuttleworth will continue working at the company, focusing on the company's desktop Linux product, its cloud-computing efforts, and meetings with partners central to the company's business. Silber, who has worked for the company for almost all its five-year history, will spend more of her time on Canonical's enterprise products for business customers.

"Within the company I can say very strongly everyone's expectations will be that Jane will bring a focus on financial performance as much as operational performance. It's something I want for the company," Shuttleworth said in a conference call with reporters on Thursday.

Shuttleworth founded Ubuntu and Canonical in part as a reaction to Red Hat and Novell's Suse Linux, both of which are available as a free version that differs from the commercially supported product. With Ubuntu, the two versions are the same, meaning that those who want the better-tested and certified product need not necessarily pay for it. Canonical does offer support subscriptions and is working on gradually proving its server operating system's mettle beyond just test and development situations.

For more on this story, see Ubuntu Linux founder stepping down as CEO on CNET News.

Talkback

I read a couple of articles about this today elsewhere on the Internet and found people's blog comments more interesting than the original story. For instance, <A HREF="http://blogs.computerworld.com/15275/shuttleworth_steps_down_as_ubuntu_ceo">SJVN's article at computerworld.com</A> has attracted many "radical" comments. (Incidentally, SJVN's blogs often are a breeding ground of "bloggers with beefs".) The comments range from "good riddance" at the stupid end of the spectrum to "the guy's fantastic" at the other end, and a comment purporting to be from an ex-employee who comments on the hard work Shuttleworth continually does.

Some of those people can't seem to differentiate (look it up in the Cambridge Online Dictionary, sonny) between the commercial business enterprise called Canonical and the Free and Open Source GNU/Linux distribution called Ubuntu. True, Shuttleworth and employees at Canonical churned out the Ubuntu distribution, but Ubuntu is an entity separate from the business organization of Canonical. And when reading carefully we see that Shuttleworth will be spending MORE time with the distribution while Jane Silber will be looking after the business of Canonical.

Is this worrying news? I think not. Mark Shuttleworth was behind the great drive that resulted in the distribution I am sitting in front of right now. If he focuses more of his attention on that whilst Jane concentrates on running Canonical, I imagine that future development of my current O/S of choice will be good.

FPDW

Fat Pop Do Wop 18 December, 2009 12:18
Reply

That Shuttleworth is going to focus more on the distribution is most likely to turn out for the best for Ubuntu. Even with the hiccup I had with Karmic Koala on an older box (Dell Dimension 2400), it has been solid on newer systems I use at work and at home (Dell GX620, 755 and HP dual core systems).

Xwindowsjunkie 18 December, 2009 18:26
Reply

more a step side-ways, than a step down....


Desktops are the thing. Servers are in big anonymous rooms.. somewhere on mars... so distance to the Linux=server connection might be a good thing. A great company figure like Mark Shuttleworth needs to be the Bill Gates, Steve Jobs of Linux, and Ubuntu.

God Bless him.

Dava


ps quit is bit strong isn't it?

dava4444 9 January, 2010 17:12
Reply

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