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.

Philip is Back at the Helm

In a surprisingly swift chain of events has Mark Kingdon(M Linden) stepped down and Philip Rosedale has returned as interim CEO. CFO Bob Komin will take the extra responsibility of COO.

The COO traditionally is responsible for managing the day-to-day activities of the corporation and for operations management. Philip mentions that Bob and He will be working side by side with each other, at least suggestion that Philip will be deeply involved in the day to day stuff for some time.

What I find interesting is that Philip will step in as interim CEO. Suggesting that he will leave and be replaced once Linden Lab and Second Life reaches a positive upward swing again and/or a new CEO has been found.

Mark leaving the Lab happened surprisingly quick, he was announced to speak yesterday on the Second Life 7th birthday, but Philip stepped in at the last minute because of a 'emergency'. Philip mostly repeated his speech from last Monday. On that same Monday Mark was reportedly seen enjoying SL7B, apparently unaware that he was going to 'step down' on Wednesday.

There where jokes on the blogs and twitter yesterday morning that Philip would come back and take over from Mark, after Philip gave the second speech instead of M. When rumours appeared last night that the joke was becoming reality, I and some others where quite surprised and unwilling yet to believe it could be true. Hat tip to Hamlet at NWN for reporting on it last night first.

The community has taking this news with overwhelmingly joy and optimism in the first hours, which hopefully will have some lasting quality. In Mark's tenure at the Lab as CEO he got a lot criticism from the community that never seemed to turn to the positive. Eventually the upward movement that SL was in when Philip left halted and at best reached a plateau. The SL blogoshpere and Main stream media that once was mostly optimistic about Second Life turned to the critical and pessimistic of Mark's decisions and Second Life's viability as a platform.

The recently downward trend of Second Life resulted that the once stable currency exchange Lindex had started to slowly rise, and had last week a day where a short panic had broken out. The new positivism has already resulted in a increase of buy orders at the Lindex at this time, which helps stabilize the market. The following days/weeks will tell if this is lasting or just opportunistic behaviour.

Philip is a visionary, but more importantly he is a visionary who has the ability to make you believe in his vision, and that is what Second Life needs most. People have started to doubt the prospect of Second Life and lost the vision, if Philip can do one thing is bring that back. He won't be the only visionary working on that, Mitch Kapor, famous technology entrepreneur and investor in Linden Lab has announced that he will be working closely with Philip as he returns as CEO.

Philip's two speeches from last week will now come under scrutiny, trying to find clues of what is to come. One of the Philip's repeating statements in those speeches has been: "We were doing to much, we actually have to do less then two thirds with two thirds of the people". The two thirds is referring to the massive 30% lays off from earlier this month.

Links:
Press Release
Sl Blog Post
NWN Post
Linden Lab Laid off 30 percent of Staff