Open Source Leader Matt Asay Leaves COO Position At Canonical

Back in February, bloggers everywhere, and in particular bloggers who focus on open source topics, took notice when noted CNet blogger Matt Asay joined Canonical as Chief Operating Officer. Matt's Open Road blog was for years one of the best places to get a daily dose of open source thinking, and a lot of his ideas on open source seemed to have much applicability to the challenges that Canonical faces going forward. Now, though, as ZDNet reports, Matt is leaving his role at Canonical--as the man behind Ubuntu--to take a new gig at a startup called Strobe.

According to Steven J. Vaughan Nichols, Matt said in an email:

"Basically, I needed to get back to a customer-facing role but hadn’t realized that until my good friend, Bryce Roberts, pinged me about a company he had invested in (Strobe). I hadn’t been looking around but agreed to meet with Charles [Jolley], the founder.”

Asay also noted that he looked forward to the kind of early-stage "spadework" that he used to do as a vice president at Alfresco Software.  I'm not surprised to see this kind of thing happen. A smart guy like Matt can easily find a role where he is happy, and the platelets surrounding the open source community are shifting so radically that many long timers are switching to new roles, as the GNOME Foundation's Stormy Peters recently did. 

Strobe is apparently involved with the open source SproutCore platform and web applications on mobile devices. Good luck to Matt as he changes roles, and no doubt Canonical will march forward.