CTO Ondrejka out of Linden Lab
By Adam Reuters
SECOND LIFE, Dec 12 (Reuters) - Linden Lab Chief Technology Officer and Employee No. 4 Cory Ondrejka is leaving the company amid reports of a dispute with Chief Executive Philip Rosedale over the Second Life’s future direction.
Massively.com’s Sasha Rudie (SL: Moo Money), who broke the news, reported that an email from Rosedale to Linden Lab employees stated:
“Losing him will be hard for the company. I will miss him a lot. What’s worse is that ultimately his leaving is my decision. Cory and I have differences in how we think Linden should be run, differences that in the past few months have become irreconcilable.”
Ondrejka’s departure was subsequently confirmed by CNET’s Daniel Terdiman.
Bookmark This Page
3 comments
Please note that comments should not be regarded as the views of Reuters.
To understand better what Cory’s departure is all about,there are some basic questions that all journalists need to ask.
1. What was Cory Linden working on in the last 6 months before his departure? He didn’t give town halls since December 2006 or blog since May 2007, so what did he do besides go to conferences, such as the one in Dubrovnik? What was his role exactly within the company?
2. Why was Cory Linden moved to the position titled CTO and down from a VP position?
3. What is the relationship between Joe Miller (VP of Platform and Technology) and Cory Ondreijka (CTO) and Gene Yoon(VP)?
4. Philip says in the BBC interview that the two didn’t disagree about the company’s future; yet in his departure email Cory says that they did. Which is it?
5. What are some likely sub-issues underneath the overall goal of open sourcing about which reasonable engineering minds could disagree?
I would suggest they would include issues like: how to protect copyright and IP; how to assess link-up costs and methods and trust verification; timing of OS; whether to initiate OS by licensing only some trusted parties to use the software; whether to create a parallel grid upon which a brand-new bug-free worldwide server-distributed SL 2.0 will be launched, and who will have access to it and what costs will be involved in porting the rank and file users to this new grid; what is SL’s business model if they don’t sell land, and only sell avatar account names or grid hook-ups — and many more.
6. I understand Cory was not at any of the VW interoperability meetings of recent months. Why?
Sat Dec 15, 2007 9:12am PSTSadly this seems to be the last nail in the second life adventure coffin, As much as I grumbled on LSL radical changes in the code’s core, I still hold the highest respect for the language itself and to the one man who created it – Mr. Ondrejka.
Wed Dec 19, 2007 11:12am PSTIf there is one thing Mr Ondrejka supported was fair play and high morals, especially on fair trade and protecting creator’s rights, it’s not the first time we see LL taking the dark path of unfair trading, mostly by simply looking the other way as copy bots and other illegal “toys” ripped and embezzled all the fun (and profit) out of second life members.
Yes, this ship is going to town. I simply recommend to all of you out there to bail out now - just like in any pyramid game.
With that I am still left aghast to see large companies from small and somewhat “left behind” countries still spills money in, second life in 2008 will be focused on setting a “bail out” path to LL original team members as they “sell away” second life to people with no idea of innovation and artistic creation, less then making some more money on the backs of the poor souls that failed to exit.
I believe they destroyed SL on purpose. The first thing they did was remove gambling. The second (and worst) thing they did was create and sell 30 new sims a day, plunging land value, and STEALING assets from all land owners in SL (Many land owners land assets were effectively halved, giving profit to Linden Labs at our expense, which equals STEALING in my book).
Tue Dec 25, 2007 4:12pm PST