Remnant: Leaving Canonical [LWN.net]

Worth a read: Scott James Remnant's goodbye note to Canonical. "Ok, Mark wasn't really a Nigerian 419 scammer, but some people did discard his e-mail as spam! The job sounded interesting, and I was largely waiting for him to stop talking on the phone so I could say yes. Even better, he was going to pay me up front for the first couple of months because the company hadn't been formed yet let alone contracts signed and such. No, I didn't have to send him any money first to make the transaction happen."

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Remnant: Leaving Canonical

Posted Jan 11, 2011 13:43 UTC (Tue) by loevborg (guest, #51779) [Link]

The server didn't respond for me. If the netsplit persists, you can read the post at: http://planet.ubuntu.com/ (at least for the next few hours). For the curious, "the job sounded interesteding" doesn't carry the implication that the job turned out tedious, nor is "Mark wasn't really a Nigerian 419 spammer" intended to convey the thought that he is all but a scammer.

Remnant: Leaving Canonical

Posted Jan 11, 2011 15:54 UTC (Tue) by leomilano (guest, #32220) [Link]

Yes, I am sure it wasn't done in bad faith, but rather in the spirit of picking up the humorous original post written by Scott. In any case, I also got a sense, from the summary here in LWN, that he had left in bad terms.

In a nutshell, he was a happy camper at Canonical, he is leaving in good terms, he's going to Google and he's just happy about life right now. He will remain involved with Ubuntu.

Remnant: Leaving Canonical

Posted Jan 11, 2011 16:03 UTC (Tue) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

Certainly I didn't mean to convey any such impression. Honestly I don't see how that could be, really; I feel like I'm missing something. Apologies, anyway, for any confusion I may have caused.

Remnant: Leaving Canonical

Posted Jan 11, 2011 19:28 UTC (Tue) by DOT (subscriber, #58786) [Link]

I'm just guessing here, because I simply read the source article without reading the quote:

The quote shows the humorous setup for the post. But the LWN reader tries to get an immediate sense of why Remnant is leaving Canonical. If the quote would have been all there was, then you might think that Remnant was leaving because Shuttleworth somehow 'scammed' him. The original article makes the humorous meaning clear by using a smiley face, and then going on to explain what's what. A clearer quote might be:

So Im going to be joining Google. After months of waiting, and worrying, my US Visa was approved last week and Im half way through procrastinating about packing my house and life up for the big move! Dont worry though, I wont be disappearing into a black hole! Im retaining my Ubuntu membership, Core Developer upload privileges and my seat on the Ubuntu Technical Board (which means there will be a non-Canonical person on the board once again!). Ive even re-activated my Debian membership.

Remnant: Leaving Canonical

Posted Jan 12, 2011 11:55 UTC (Wed) by loevborg (guest, #51779) [Link]

I didn't suppose you did. I did get the quote wrong initially, but the confusion was mostly mine. Thanks for your good editorial work!

Remnant: Leaving Canonical

Posted Jan 11, 2011 19:00 UTC (Tue) by jcm (subscriber, #18262) [Link]

San Francisco is an excellent place to be. I wish him all the best...great guy, lots of cool stuff in the future, I'm sure.

Remnant: Leaving Canonical

Posted Jan 17, 2011 13:54 UTC (Mon) by kena (guest, #2735) [Link]

I imagine it's more than just travel. Any time someone leaves a company under good terms, there are usually multiple -- sometimes even conflicting -- reasons. "New challenges." "Want to return to things I had forgotten I enjoyed." "Exciting, new (to me) company." "Enjoyable $LOCALE." Etc.

The bottom line, though, is that he *is* leaving on good terms, and is looking forward to a new chapter. Seven years is a long time for most folks to stay at one company. Let's just hope that neither Jon nor Linus start getting ideas about changing *their* professional pursuits.