Will Cory Ondrejka Return? [updated: Cory says not returning as CTO at LL]

A common sentiment after the return of Philip Rosedale as (interim)CEO at the Lab, is that a lot of people want Cory Ondrejka to return too. If that is in the works remains to be seen. Cory's departure of Linden Lab in December 2007 was not one of his own choice. No, it was Philip himself who decided that they should part their ways over irreconcilable differences on how Linden Lab should be run. The rumours afterwards suggested that part of differences was about open sourcing the server code, implying that Cory wanted it to be done sooner.

This is the email Philip send to his employees, telling them Cory was going to leave:

"Cory is going to leave LL. He has been with us for 7 years, and was the fourth person to join. So this is a big deal. Cory has been a huge part of the company, having designed big parts of SL, hired many people, contributed greatly to the culture, and given a powerful voice to SL and LL. Among other things, he had the original design idea for the love machine, single handedly wrote the scripting language, and got us all doing A&Os back in 2001. 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. These are tensions that were more manageable when we were smaller, and there have been times that they have helped us do great work together. But now, as we change and grow as a company, I feel that we need a different set of strengths in engineering leadership. I strongly believe that this is the right decision, although not without pain, for both LL and Cory. Of course, I'm not going to go into the details of these differences. This is one of those times when, in having me as your leader, you will also have to trust me in my decision. I will hold a brown bag as soon as possible to talk about this with anyone who would like, and will schedule time both in-world and in person here in San Francisco. Please send any external questions you get about this change to Robin who will make sure they get answered.

Philip"

An interesting fact you can get from the email is that Cory came up with the original design idea for the Love machine, which Philip developed as his star product at LoveMachine Inc in his time away from Linden lab. It is unclear to us if something unresolved is lingering there as well. In any regards, any differences left now would have to be reconciled first, and ego's kept in check. It might be difficult to come to a understanding where Philip and Cory could work closely together again.

This does not mean that relations has completely cooled down though, recently on the 17th of June, Cory met with Linden Exes, hardly a week before M 'stepping down'. We can only speculate wildly about what was talked about in these meetings, though it seems reasonable to assume the recent past and future where discussed.

Cory made the following two statement on twitter about these meetings:

"Today was a full collector's set of Lindens."
"For those who asked, no, u only get bobblehead collectable Lindens if u meet with execs."

More recently Cory seemed pleased that Philip replaced Mark Kingdon, by sending these tweets:

"good news for #lindenlab according to @slhamlet: it's welcome back Philip time http://bit.ly/c6ABJx"
"Officially official RT @SecondLife: Philip Rosedale returns to Linden Lab as interim CEO: http://bit.ly/d93FHP #goodthings"

While some may want Cory to return, the question is why? Could Cory give a new inpluse to improve Second Life technology faster and better, or are the current technical developments(mesh,mono,plugins, etc) in excellent hands already?

What do you think?

Update: Troy McConaghy alerted me in the comments that Cory has updated his blog today. Cory list several projects he is involved in, and non are Second Life related, as if he was spurred on to do that by this blog post. A question arises though, why doesn't he say he is not involved with Linden Lab and Second Life. Or is this all a coincidence?
Cory's blog post: What's Cory Doing Now?

Update 2: 1:25pm(PDT) 28th june: I have since been told by Cory that the initial disagreement had nothing to do with open sourcing the server code. He also appears in the comments, saying the following:

"Cory Ondrejka said... Frans said:

"It is unclear to us if something unresolved is lingering there as well."

There's nothing unresolved there. LoveMachine's a cool company/project and Philip has done a fine job running with it."

update 3: 5:45pm(PDT): Hamlet on NWN is running a story on Cory today, where he quotes Cory saying:

"Haven't spoken with Philip since the announcement. Exciting to see him return as interim CEO -- he and the board definitely made the right call -- but I don't know what his plans are.

"I don't have any interest in returning to Linden as CTO."

Links:
Hamlets story on Cory on New World Notes.
Cory's recent tweets #1,#2,#3,#4
Dec 11th, 2007 - Massively breaking the news first
Dec 11th, 2007 - Second Thought with some historical anecdotes about Cory
Dec 12th, 2007 - New Worlds Notes on Cory leaving
LoveMachine Inc.