Mark has said that when the opportunity to fulfill almost any dream became available to him, his first thought was “go to space”… quickly followed by the realisation that if he didn’t make it happen, he’d spend the rest of his life wondering what could have been, or worse, hating himself for letting it pass by. I’ve also heard him say, many times now, “do what you love”.
No, I’m not going to space. But I’ve stung myself with a similar dilemma — what if “do what you love” means taking bare-knuckled, stomach-churning risk head on? There’s only one answer that I know I’ll be able to live with: DO IT. POP THE TRUNK.
So today, I resigned from Canonical. I finish up at the end of the month.
It seems like an insane time to step off the merry-go-round, considering the ever-rising crescendo in the Ubuntu community, and the incredible progress I have been privileged to watch within Canonical — the juggernaut is in fifth gear, heaving and chomping at the bit to shift up to sixth.
So, why now? I’m excited about Ubuntu, passionate about its mission, confident in its future, and have thoroughly enjoyed being part of it from the very beginning… But ultimately, my heart lies with another, and I have to take that chance, face that risk, while my family commitments and responsibilities allow it. (To avoid any confusion this will inevitably bring — no, Pia is not pregnant! Stop asking that!)
What’s next? Swimming upstream.
25 Comments
Oh com’on, this is just low! Now I can’t sleep, wondering what your next endeavors will be!
Admirable, and excellent — I hope — best wishes. :d
This kind of scares me. I too love Ubuntu, and when you said your heart lies with another (link went to gnome.org) that sends an interesting message. I know there has been talk that Mark really likes KDE. Does this indicate in any way Ubuntu’s not going to be default gnome? Am I the first to make this leap?
I wish you the best as well, and am eager to see what new endeavor you take on, especially since it seems to involve Gnome directly.
Good luck and keep us updated…and don’t keep us in suspense too long!
Trae, Mark just said that he was going to use KDE on his desktop as Kubuntu was becoming a supported element of the distribution. Note, however, that he never actually uses his desktop.
Good luck dude, it should be interesting to see what you get up to next
that’s what i call have balls. I hope everything goes well, best of luck
Jeff, you’re my desktop hero!
Rock out the town. You’ll do great.
Sad to see you go, you’ve been the epitome of the heart and soul of Ubuntu since the beginning.
Luckily for us, you won’t be far. Working fulltime on GNOME will only help Ubuntu be better.
Good luck, and godspeed.
What a shock! Jeff you’re the nicest, approachable guy I’ve met in the world of free software and I’m sure you’ll rock hard doing GNOME full time. I’ll see you in LCA Sydney soon!
I just wonder how you are going to earn your living.
Get hired by some other firm to work full time on GNOME ?
Didn’t you already do that at Ubuntu ?
If so, any hints about who your next employer will be ?
Uff… that was some hit… at first. But then you mentioned you’ll dive deeper into gnome. -uff
Still a sad loss for Ubuntu/Canonical. I hope you and Canonical part as friends, so there’s still the love… only the love for Gnome-project seems to be stronger. Well then, you sure show some balls indeed! I don’t know if the recent Guadec was the trigger for that or just the last poke you needed for something that has been brewing for longer in you. After all I see all this as a bit “family” and since we’re all pursue ideals and goals in the OpenSource world nothing is really lost, which is a great thing. Also from my side best of wishes to you.
You gave me quite a scare too, and it is a loss for Canonical, Ubuntu, and the community to see you go.
I wish you all the best, and I hope you can make even more of a difference upstream at GNOME. It is in everyone’s best interest to see 10×10 happen, after all.
Rock on!
A courageous decision, Jeff. Best of luck!
Oh… that’s kinda shocked me.
It’s a great loss for Canonical and Ubuntu. Hope you will still be a part of the Ubuntu community. But people will come and go, thats a bitter fact.
I wish you all the best for your future. I wish, the you will rock the GNOME desktop and make it even better.
So long and thanks for all the fish!
Good luck, man. I met a girl from Bangladesh yesterday and asked her to tell me how to say “where are my trousers?” in bengali. “What do you want to know it for?”, she said. I answered I didn’t really have a reason, other than that this guy Jeff Waugh was collecting lines meaning that in all languages of the world.
“Tell Jeff to ask me then”, she said, and turned around. It was good I had a drink to hide my shame in.
Good luck, and hope you keep up the good cheer.
Jeff, being what we want to be, and doing the things that we want to do, is the best choice that you could ever made. Instead of being sad about you not being at Canonical anymore, I feel really happy about you for doing what you want to do with your life.
Rock on!!!
good luck matey!
Good luck with your next endeavor Jeff!
Having you leave Canonical to work on GNOME isn’t really that bad of a loss for Ubuntu though – I mean, Ubuntu does use GNOME.
Now, if you ended up working for Microsoft, that’d be a different story.
Good look jdub your work in GNOME will be highly appreciated by we the now legions of desktop users. Greetings from Peru.
Wish you the best mate – keep up the brilliant work.
Good luck Jeff! You’ve been one of the most recognisable members of the Ubuntu community. It’ll be fascinating to see what you’re up to next.
Whatever you do, I’m sure it will rock! Rock on!
good look jeff -
i yesterday was thinking about gnome and that it needs some more love – and now i read this.. great
Good luck.
I know how hard these decisions can be, but from experience, what I also know is that you’re always better off in the long run.
Hope to hear of you’re new adventures soon
David
11 Trackbacks
m accurately remembering who’d left and who hadn’t by this point) the irremediable mrd. As you might imagine, these sort of conditions are a perfect breeding ground for a particular type of discussion, and with Jeff’s departure from Canonical not that long beforehand accompanied by the then ongoing DPL elections, talk turned to the future of Debian, and in particular Jeff’s views on that future. Obviously more than a few weeks have passed since then, so please imagine this as a dream
m accurately remembering who’d left and who hadn’t by this point) the irremediable mrd. As you might imagine, these sort of conditions are a perfect breeding ground for a particular type of discussion, and with Jeff’s departure from Canonical not that long beforehand accompanied by the then ongoing DPL elections, talk turned to the future of Debian, and in particular Jeff’s views on that future. Obviously more than a few weeks have passed since then, so please imagine this as a dream
[IMG ] Skype protocol reverse engineerd ( allow me to quote Nelson when I say: Ha, Haaaaaaaaa)Jeff Waugh is leaving (Ubuntu-centric) Canonical ( Jeff’s a great speaker and Ubuntu/ GNOME advocate. This change doesn’t have to mean anything gnarly. Why such a cryptic post?)Ubuntu Studio (a wiki all about/ for musicians using Ubuntu)
Matthau attitude towards change, but there’s always a bit of apprehension from me when I see friends change careers or directions. Until I consider the possibilities those new paths open up, at which point I’m excited again. Yes, I was bummed when Jeff announced his departure from Canonical, but then I began to think about what he’d be up to next and thought “maybe it’s something really cool that I don’t even know about.” And so it goes here. Best of luck to Alex and Brenda.
Matthau attitude towards change, but there’s always a bit of apprehension from me when I see friends change careers or directions. Until I consider the possibilities those new paths open up, at which point I’m excited again. Yes, I was bummed when Jeff announced his departure from Canonical, but then I began to think about what he’d be up to next and thought “maybe it’s something really cool that I don’t even know about.” And so it goes here. Best of luck to Alex and Brenda.
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But ultimately, my heart lies with another, and I have to take that chance, face that risk, while my family commitments and responsibilities allow it. I this is a great loss to Canonical and Ubuntu, and I am sure he would be greatly missed. read more | digg story Posted by digg [IMG] Permalink [IMG] 1 Comment so far…
Jeff Waugh says
First, hello to all the Planet GNOME people [IMG *Grin*]. Jeff, I wish you luck in doing great things in the future. Follow your dreams and realise them. You will be happy when you do what you want to. I tried to use Seahorse for the GPG agent facility. I wanted it to cache my password, but although the respective
fame) to make the trip out to the next GNOME Summit, so that GNOME can continue to be a kick ass platform for thin client deployments. Kudos to Hub for fixing leaks in the GNOME print icon thing, I owe you a round of beers. Good luck Jeff! May your new adventures greet you with no pants. Speaking of Jeff, and thin clients, he was quick to point out the new audio server hotness, Pulseaudio. They say it’s like ESD, but maintained. And by the guy that brought us
Swimming upstream jdub »» July 15, 2006 at 3:48 am