Stéphane Graber has announced their resignation from Canonical after 12 years of working at the company, mostly on LXD.
The decision follows news last week that Canonical has taken the LXD project in-house after years of it existing as a community endeavour under the Linux Containers (LXC) umbrella.
Stéphane’s engineering expertise and enthusiasm for LXD (and containers in general) has arguably made them the “face” of LXD. In social media replies to their (somewhat unexpected) decision, many have commented on this and thanked them for their contributions and help over the years.
Clearly a major loss for Canonical (though a talented team remains) – what prompted it?
“As I’ve told colleagues and upper management, Canonical isn’t the company I excitedly joined back in 2011 and it’s not a company that I would want to join today, therefore it shouldn’t be a company that I keep working for either,” Graber writes in a blog post.
Which is fair enough.
They also comment on Canonical taking control of LXD.
“I obviously wish that [change] hadn’t happened, I strongly see value in having a project like LXD be run in a more open, community environment where everyone’s opinion is valued and everyone’s contribution, no matter the size, is welcome.”
To be fair, Graber is far from the only one miffed at that move.
The good news is that Graber intends to remain an active user of LXD (and Ubuntu) and plans to contribute fixes and file issues. They don’t plan to sign Canonical’s (deeply contentious) Contributor License Agreement but, one hopes, this won’t be a barrier to their continued involvement.
As for what’s next for Stéphane: devoting time to neglected pet projects, and pursuing freelance consultancy and training work.
Admittedly LXD (and related tech) isn’t something I cover much on this blog. Still, I am hugely aware of Stéphane’s contributions in this area and beyond, as well as the popularity of their frequent talks at Linux conferences and events.
I hope you’ll join me in wishing Stéphane all the best for their future — which I’ve no doubt will be continue to be very bright.
