Mark Shuttleworth Announces A New Canonical CEO

Mark Shuttleworth has announced he wants to focus on energy on product design, partnerships and customers and the new Canonical CEO will be Jane Silber, currently Chief Operating Officer and Director of Online Services.

This change should be be completely in place by 1 March 2010.

Mark Shuttleworth points out that this doesn’t mark a change of direction, however:

this change does mark our commitment to continually optimise our operations and offerings, and as Canonical matures as an organisation I believe that Jane brings the skills and experience that we need in the CEO role.

Mark's role will be to focus on design and development. Mark Shuttleworth says:

I want Ubuntu to succeed as the open platform of choice for almost all use types whether on netbook, notebook, desktop, server, embedded device or wherever people compute. That is an large undertaking and being able to focus on that, thanks to Jane, is a great privilege. I will also spend more time talking to and visiting partners and customers about what they demand from an open platform and feeding that back into the product through the community and Canonical.

More about this, on the Canonical blog and Mark Shuttleworth blog.