From Alfresco to Canonical
After more than four years at Alfresco, I have joined Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution, as its chief operating officer.
You can read Canonical's announcement of my appointment here, as well Alfresco's here.
I am excited, humbled, and, candidly, torn by this opportunity.
In late 2005, John Powell and John Newton, the co-founders of Alfresco, took a chance on me, an open-source evangelist at Novell. I was the 13th employee and the company's first U.S. employee. My prior history had been with embedded Linux (Lineo) and semiconductors/silicon (Mitsui), but they gave me the chance to grow as general manager of the Americas and later as vice president of business development.
These have been the best years of my career, working with wonderful people who have pushed me to work harder, become smarter, and do better. I've been fortunate to help the company to 18 straight growth quarters, with Alfresco's most recent quarter (ending February 28) the company's biggest ever--and by a significant margin. The problem, for me, is that Alfresco runs so well now that I have been having a hard time finding meaningful ways to continue to contribute.
When my friend Mark Shuttleworth texted me over the Christmas holiday about the opening of the COO role, it interested me greatly. It is an opportunity to expand my experience and to work on some really hard and varied problems, including cloud computing, consumer Linux adoption, and community development. It's also the opportunity to work with some fantastic people (over 320 of them scattered across 29 different countries).
I spent a few days in London, meeting with several of the people with whom I'll have daily interaction (including Jane Silber, Chris Kenyon, Mark Shuttleworth, Neil Levine, Suzanne Rozier, Matt Zimmerman), and, as I have at Alfresco, I felt at home. These are bright, driven people. It made the challenges of Canonical feel less daunting.
As COO, I am tasked with aligning the company's strategic goals and operational activities, the optimization of day-to-day operations, and leadership of Canonical marketing and back-office functions. Some of these things are very familiar to me; others aren't. That's precisely the challenge I feel I need.
I will remain living in Utah but will commute regularly to London, where most of the Canonical executives are based. (I will be starting my days at 4 a.m. Mountain Time to try to overlap as much as possible with U.K. working hours. Ouch.)
Despite this change, I want to stress that this blog remains a CNET open-source blog, not a Canonical blog (just as it hasn't been an Alfresco blog). I'm sure that there will be more Linux-related stories, but to my friends at Red Hat and other open-source companies, please--as always--let me know if you think a post in The Open Road has been unfair to your company.
And to my friends at proprietary software companies, well, I won't think less of you for surrendering early. :-)
Matt Asay is chief operating officer at Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux operating system. Prior to Canonical, Matt was general manager of the Americas division and vice president of business development at Alfresco, an open-source applications company. Matt brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
Fortunately for you, Canonical is heavily open-source w/ a practical bent, and I've always seen your philosophy align fairly well with theirs, so it looks like a good fit.
(Utah? mentioning Lineo gave it away before I even read the rest - I lived in Sugarhouse/SLC until 2007).
And yeah - getting up early is a screamer, but you get used to it - I do it a lot for colleagues living one time zone past London.
On a side note at my data center we just launched new ubuntu based DNS servers this week. I'm very pleased with the results.
And best wishes for your Ubuntu future.
While Linux keeps increasing its exposure, it's continually gaining momentum. Windows has been all downhill.
"Take cover"? Wise advice for closed source ;-)
If you can maintain the desktop Linux growth curve the way you did at Alfresco then we'll have some real operating system competition similar to what open source has brought to the web browser.
No data supports this (legal copies or pirated?), BTW what`s MS going to do about about ARM smartbooks, yeah thought so.
Congrats Matt
I'm pretty sure he can go download Fedora any time he wants - just like anybody else...
Alfresco will miss you :) Fortunately Canonical and Alfresco complement each other. That's good news for both I think.
Best wishes on this exciting new endeavour. I almost used the word "sally" but looked it up. Didn't realize all the connotations that come along with it in addition to adventure -- glad I checked :)
Congrats on your new position. I wish you well, and will follow your bolg with interest. The good thing about the "Open Way" is that there is room for all of us.
Been enjoying your blogs here and hope you are able to continue with them, but also look forawrd to good things from Canonical and Ubuntu!
These are exciting times for Linux and Open Source!
First.. FIRE THE ENTIRE Kubuntu division. ALL, 100% of them! They do more disservice to Ubuntu and the KDE WM than KDE 4.x ever did. Most users won't touch Kubuntu due to its totally useless state. I've barely been able to get it to boot consistently for almost 2 years! Mostly it just locks up during the boot process.
Second, Contact Boo and the rest of the Linux Mint KDE CE Team and HIRE THEM! Get them to develop the next version of Ubuntu. They have more of a clue than most of the Ubuntu dev's now.
Third, DUMP gnone and mono and anything else related to monoboi! Him and his baggage needs to go! Talk about ruining Novell and OpenSUSE and SLES. Won't touch them due to this baggage.
Finally, Ubuntu needs to transition 100% to being a KDE based distro for the main release. XFCE, KXDE, fvwm create all the versions of them you like, but just say NO to gnome and mono!
Cannonical is on the precipice of being able to kill the dragon, now lets move this forward and go for the kill!
Congrats Matt!
KMint is far more stable, even with KDE 4.x, than current KUbuntu, by REPLACING THE ENTIRE KUbuntu staff with devs who have a clue on developing a WORKING AND STABLE distro not one that works when it wants to, ie the current Kubuntu version. Put the DVD of in and spin the wheel and take your chance. 8/10 times, fail and thats on CURRENT HARDWARE none more than 2 years old.
Boo from the KMint and his team, along with all the current NON KUbuntu devs (after appropriate de-gnome'ng) work on the NEW Ubuntu KDE.
If you have not tried KMint v. the alleged distro Kubuntu then you don't know what a QUALITY KDE distro is, even if it uses KDE 4.x.
Noah
- by fazalmajid February 5, 2010 8:57 AM PST
- Congratulations! I will be interested in how working for a pure open-source company (as in open source first, and commercial second) will change your perspective on the tension between the two.
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- by Matt Asay February 5, 2010 1:50 PM PST
- Me, too. But that was one of the primary drivers behind the decision. The possibilities that follow from Ubuntu's powerful community...endless. Let's do this.
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