| Ian Murdock leaves Linux Foundation, joins Sun |
Mar. 21, 2007
In a surprising move, Ian Murdock, one of the founders of Debian Linux and the CTO of the Linux Foundation, is joining Sun Microsystems in the new position of Chief Operating Platforms Officer.
According to Sun's Chief Open-Source Officer, Simon Phipps, Murdock will be "responsible for building a new strategy to evolve both Sun's Solaris and GNU/Linux strategies."
In his blog, Murdock expanded a bit on this. He wrote, "I'm not saying much about what I'll be doing yet, but you can probably guess from my background and earlier writings that I'll be advocating that Solaris needs to close the usability gap with Linux to be competitive; that while as I believe Solaris needs to change in some ways, I also believe deeply in the importance of backward compatibility; and that even with Solaris front and center, I'm pretty strongly of the opinion that Linux needs to play a clearer role in the platform strategy.
Murdock has made this move because, he explained, "Sun is a company I've always loved, and being a part of it was an opportunity I simply could not pass up." His move did not, however, have any connection with his disappointment in what he sees as Debian's failure of leadership and management has lead to the popular Linux distribution's delay of its next version, Etch.
Some Linux leaders, such as Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth, are very pleased with this move. In his blog, Shuttleworth wrote, "Sun's free software credentials took a big step forward today with Ian Murdock's decision to join the company. ... Hopefully, Ian's experience will lead to something ISV's very dearly want -- commonality and standardization across their non-Windows target platforms." Shuttleworth recently accepted a seat on the Linux Foundation's board of directors.
One Linux system integrator, who wished to remain anonymous, was more cautiously optimistic about what we can expect from Murdock joining Sun. "If they give him the authority to actually make changes in Sun, I think it will work out well for OpenSolaris and Sun. If they don't, it will just be a cosmetic change."
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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