Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Debian founder leaves Linux Foundation to join Sun

Debian founder Ian Murdock is leaving his position as CTO of the Linux Foundation to become Sun's Chief Operating Platforms Officer.

Ian Murdock, creator of the Debian Linux distribution, is leaving his position as the CTO of the recently formed Linux Foundation to take a job at Sun. As a former member of the Linux Foundation board and as workgroup chair of the Linux Standard Base (LSB) initiative, Murdock is a prominent and influential member of the Linux community. Sun's decision to bring in Murdock coincides with the company's recent efforts to increase transparency and become more integrated with the rest of the open-source community. Although Murdock is leaving the Linux Foundation, he plans to keep his position as chair of the LSB workgroup and he points out that Sun is a Linux Foundation member.

Sun's Chief Open Source officer, Simon Phipps, describes the decision to hire Murdock as "both brilliant and controversial," and "the logical next step" for Sun. As Sun's new Chief Operating Platforms Officer, Murdock "is responsible for building a new strategy to evolve both Sun's Solaris and GNU/Linux strategies," says Phipps.

Murdock, who has expressed affinity for Sun in the past, is also cognizant of the challenges faced by the company. In a blog entry written yesterday, Murdock comments, "The last several years have been hard for Sun, but the corner has been turned. As an outsider, I’ve watched as Sun has successfully embraced x86, pioneered energy efficiency as an essential computing feature, open sourced its software portfolio to maximize the network effects, championed transparency in corporate communications, and so many other great things. Now, I’m going to be a part of it."

Sun's decision to bring in Murdock has indeed stirred up controversy. Some critics within Sun express skepticism, arguing that Sun should have promoted someone from within the OpenSolaris community rather than bringing in an outsider who hasn't contributed to the project and may not understand its community.

Unlike the critics, I think it's still too early to say whether or not this is a good move for Sun. Murdock's capacity to succeed in his new job is predicated on his ability to discern what Sun needs to do to move forward. In his blog entry, Murdock says that "Solaris needs to close the usability gap with Linux to be competitive," and that "Linux needs to play a clearer role in [Sun's] platform strategy." Both are sound observations.

In previous blog entries, Murdock has expressed interest in Nexenta, and argued that "a Debian-based OpenSolaris distribution [is] exciting, as it promises to vastly improve Solaris installation, packaging, and overall usability." If Murdock's approach to Solaris popularization revolves around bringing Debian-like packaging and ease of installation to Sun's operating system, I think there is some hope for positive change.

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