This will be my last week working for Canonical Ltd.
I joined the company almost seven years ago, right at its inception. I was contracting at the time and a member of the Debian project maintaining the dpkg package manager, when I received an e-mail out of the blue that led to a phone call with a South African I’d never heard of who wanted to offer me a dream job working on a Debian-based Linux distribution. Sadly I never kept that original e-mail, but I tried to replicate it from memory for Canonical’s 5th birthday:
Dear Friend,
How are you and your family hope fine?
I am Mark SHUTTLEWORTH, from the great country of SOUTH AFRICA.
Due to good fortune mine in business, I have come into money of the sum $575,000,000 (US).
I would like to with you discuss BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY, and solicit your confidentiality in this transaction.
Pleased to discuss by phone at your earliest convenience.
Ok, Mark wasn’t really a Nigerian 419 scammer, but some people did discard his e-mail as spam! The job sounded interesting, and I was largely waiting for him to stop talking on the phone so I could say yes. Even better, he was going to pay me up front for the first couple of months because the company hadn’t been formed yet let alone contracts signed and such. No, I didn’t have to send him any money first to make the transaction happen 
So I joined the super-secret IRC channel (#weirdos, on the FreeNode IRC network, just fire up Pidgin in Ubuntu and…) and discovered Jeff Waugh, Robert Collins and Thom May already onboard. This was going to be big. After a month of being in awe at each new person being brought on, we had our first meeting in London over Easter. For many this was their decision time about whether to join, or not. Plans were drawn up, mostly on napkins at Pizza Express in Sloane Square:
Photo by Lamont Jones
Funnily enough, there’s a Pizza Express in Millbank Tower, the current location of Canonical’s Offices.
We weren’t very good at coming up with names, the original domain name of the company was no-name-yet.com and the Debian folk called us the Super-Secret-Debian-Startup. The company started out as MRS Virtual Development (Mark’s middle name is Richard). And the nickname for the distribution before Ubuntu was settled as the final name was The Warty Warthog.
Everything was announced at Debconf in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The first of many long economy class flights taken on behalf of the company. This meant that by the time Jeff and I attended GUADEC in Kristiansand, word had got around. There was much joking about our insane plans:
Mrs VD’s Warty Ubuntu? Sounds like an STI cream!
Yes, it cures Red Hat.
Many were of the opinion that users just didn’t want a six-monthly release of Debian, with a hard emphasis on the Desktop, hotplug and making things just work. Fortunately they were wrong, but we didn’t have time to be smug because things got a bit out of hand. I remember Mark saying that his goal for the first two years was that Ubuntu be in the top three Linux distributions. Ah.
Next up was our first ever big company meeting. Lots of variations happened of these over the years before we finally settled into the Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) format. Initially they were all-hands events, and started off a bit more like sprints/rallies than anything like the current schedule-frenzy that is UDS. Fortunately one of the changes is that they’ve gotten a bit shorter. After a two week coding sprint at Mark’s apartment in London, there was a two week all-hands in Oxford, UK.
Robert and the Hoverbook
I wanted to find a photo with laptops in, for some this event was painful. We learned that hotel cleaners are not always to be trusted. Fortunately Robert’s laptop was far too heavy to be stolen.
Then Ubuntu 4.10 was out! And the world changed. Well, maybe a bit.
The next conference was LCA in Canberra, followed by our own third developer meeting in Sydney. This developer meeting was pretty recognizable as a UDS in fact, except two weeks long and all-hands again. I was granted the very rare privilege of flying to Australia on Mark’s personal private jet.
"Canonical One"
I actually got to fly on this a few more times over the years, and after an amazing night-time landing flying across San Francisco into San Jose airport, got the bug and learned to fly myself! But I’m digressing.
On the plane we’d bought Ubuntu 5.04 CDs, our second release. We’d got a few boxes of them, and it was my responsibility to look after them and try and persuade the conference staff to let us put some out to pick up. I took a small handful and wandered to the reception desk, with a sheepish look on my face. I was accompanied back to my dorm with the reception staff who wanted the rest! I think that’s when I finally realized how popular Ubuntu had become, seeing almost everyone at the conference running Ubuntu machines only solidified that.
We had a big printed-out version of the 5.04 CD cover that we got people at the conference to sign. It’s still on the wall of the Canonical Offices to this day.
Matthew signing the Ubuntu poster
I’ve probably made all this sounds a bit glamorous, jet set life style, celebrity, probably even danger. But at the end of the day, it was a job. For example, at no point did we find ourselves white-water rafting in Brazil with an instructor who didn’t speak English.
White-water rafting
To this day I don’t know whether “Frenchie!” means “Faster!” or “STOP! We’re going to DIE!”.
There was a lot of hard work too. When we were preparing to release our first Late To Ship, err, sorry, Long Term Support release a few of us decided to use the space at Canonical’s new offices at Mossop Street to get together and test the hell out of it. The idea being that any serious issues could be fixed there and then. We still do these “Release Sprints” to this day, though the next one breaks the tradition of being in London due to some Prince getting married that week.
Everything will be OK
We kept track of the release status using a sign helpfully provided for us by the then-COO Jane Silber, it has two sides. This is the happy side.
More releases followed, more conferences, more meetings. We got better at the releases, and even started getting better at the conferences after enough goes at it. The meetings were generally ok, except sometimes there was a bit of a problem getting to them!
You see, myself and a colleague Colin King are cursed. Seriously, if you ever find yourself getting on a plane and see both of us on that same plane, get off the plane. No, better yet, get the hell out of the city!
You remember that great big snow storm in the UK back in the winter of 2009? That was our fault! Colin and I were booked to fly on the same flight.
Cancelled
Things went well until we were sat in the Gatwick business lounge, and it started snowing outside. Our plane never arrived so our flight was cancelled. Since the queue for the Easyjet desk went around the airport three times, our travel agent got us booked on a flight out of City Airport in the morning, and sorted us a hotel by that airport. Easy. Gatwick Express into London, District Line tube, then transfer onto a bus for City Airport. Only problem is by the time we’d left the tube, there were several feet of snow on the ground and more falling all the time, the buses were not running and we were a couple of hours walk from the airport. Oh well, needs must!
The next day we rebooked repeatedly onto later flights until the afternoon, when we finally managed to get Eurostar tickets to Brussels. Another night in a hotel, another 6am start, ICE to Köln and another to Berlin. Finally arriving Tuesday afternoon. Our average pace from Gatwick to Berlin turned out to be roughly walking speed.
Now this might have been an interesting story for the dinner table, except it happened again! That volcano in Iceland? Our fault! Just over a year since the previous time, we were at a conference in San Francisco together, and we ground all air traffic in the skies of Northern Europe. We really are sorry about that, and since the disasters seem to be escalating, that’s why I have to leave Canonical.
Running in San Francisco
While an amusing thought, there’s actually a small amount of truth to it. You see, due to airlines, flight priorities and so-forth I was actually stuck in San Francisco for three weeks as a result of the volcano. Instead of attending the release sprint, I worked from the offices of Ubuntu-friendly companies in the bay area and fixed problems flagged the previous day by the release manager. At night I explored the city.
I’d been to SF before quite a few times, including a long holiday with my then-partner, and I’ve always loved the place. I was for all intents and purposes living there for three weeks, and a previous dream to move there got stronger.
I also bought an iPad which made me realize that perhaps the desktop distribution was approaching a decline.
I also got a chance to do pure development again, having bugs triaged for me and I fell in love with programming again – rather than the oddball effort that is distribution engineering.
And I was working in offices, and while I’ve enjoyed working from home for the past seven years, I was far more productive in the office environment.
There are lots of other reasons of course, but ultimately they all come down to it being time for a change. So where next?
One Infinite Loop
No.
While I do really admire what Apple have done, they’ve already got their ideas set in stone and I want to beat them.
So I’m going to be joining Google. After months of waiting, and worrying, my US Visa was approved last week and I’m half way through procrastinating about packing my house and life up for the big move!
Don’t worry though, I won’t be disappearing into a black hole! I’m retaining my Ubuntu membership, Core Developer upload privileges and my seat on the Ubuntu Technical Board (which means there will be a non-Canonical person on the board once again!). I’ve even re-activated my Debian membership.
I’m also going to continue developing Upstart, I’ve been working hard on the new version for what seems like an age now, and I’m not giving up now; not in the least because Google use Upstart themselves on many projects, including Chrome OS.
The only real worry is whether I end up spending more time at the Google Gym or the wide variety of Google cafés.
Rock on Scott!!
Good luck at Google, I’m sure you’ll have lots of fun there.
Wow congrats on the job and great that you wont be disappearing, from the title of the post I got a bit afraid. I remember you were very nice when I met you in UDS Dallas and it would have been a shame if you fell into a black hole *cough* *cough* Apple. Anyway good luck in Google
Thanks Scott for all the precious work, involvement, energies you spent to convert this ‘dream job’ into this concrete reality we all love, that is Ubuntu.
I can imagine that was not an easy decision for you, cause you worked with passion and you were a big part of the Ubuntu family… but that will never change, ever.
Best wishes and good luck with your new challenges!
Good luck at Google! Hope you enjoy your time there and get
to work on some cool new stuff to kick Apple’s ass
Thanks a lot for everything you have done for Ubuntu, it’s been a real pleasure to work with you! I wish you all the best for your next endeavour in Mountain View.
Good luck at Google Scott. I’m happy to hear that you’ll be
continuing with upstart. I’m sure you’ll leave a big hole at
Canonical.
Good luck with the new job! Glad you won’t be totally gone
(that first photo: wow)
nice have fun… i wish i was smart enough to join google
:’(
Awesome blog post. Thanks for a great read. Good luck at
Google.
I couldn’t never get the hang of the USA… But I’m sure
you’ll love living here. All the best with your new job. I know
you’re not going to be a drone at google, so that’s good.
Good luck at Google Scott!
Hard to believe it has been so long. Almost time to call Mark on his plan to take the company to Antarctica for its 10th birthday. Do you think he’d take the Warty crew as well?
I hope you have a kickarse time at Google. Especially sweet that you’ve been enjoying San Francisco and an office environment.
This enhances Google’s reputation by a ton.
Good luck
and thanks for making Ubuntu better!
Congratulations.
Congrats on the move. Thanks for being great to a complete neophyte in 2004. I do miss those bags of death at Mataro. On second thought, I don’t.
Hey Scott,
good luck with the folks @ Google
They deserve the best and smartest people we have in our opensource business. You are one of them.
Even when I hate (
) you sometimes for some things you did in Upstart, I really appreciate your work, especially the work on your MoM in past times 
So I wish you all the best at your new home and have a great start @ Google
Regards,
\sh
Hey Dude,
I wish you all the best. Thanks for all your hard work on the ubuntu project and your continued suport. You will be missed.
I also hope that Colin does happen to be waiting at the airport to see you off I don’t think the world can take it
Once again all the best in your new endevors.
Congratulations Scott, you’ll be missed!
Scott, had a great time reading the post. Much luck in your new professional and personal projects. Thanks for the contributions thus far to Ubuntu and Canonical, as otherwise a lot of us would not be here!
Good Luck at Google and I love reading your posts on here, your so interesting to read about and talk with
Good luck Scott, Canonical won’t be the same without you.
Good luck in your new journey to Google!
Nice blog post!
Congrats on the new job.
I’ve added you to my list of google open source stars
Ahhh… Scott! I shall miss you. We’ve had some good times and good laughs (and we’re sure to have plenty more). Canonical won’t quite be the same without you but I do wish you the very best in your new endeavours.
Looking forward to visiting you in SF!
Congrats and good luck!
Very amusing read. Thanks for taking the time to write up the story. Have fun at GOOG.
Scott, I remember meeting you at the SF all hands event in ’06 and watching your upstart lightening talk and thinking, “Wow, that is real computer science.” I hold your technical skills in the highest regard and when I tell my friends that I work with some amazingly bright people yours is one of the faces that immediately comes to mind.
I pray that your move brings you some extremely interesting challenges. Best wishes! –newz2000
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Great post. Good luck for your future. Just one addition about your curse: you forgot to mention the fire in the channel tunnel when you and Colin were booked on the same train back from Belgium.
Thought that surely is not to be compared to San Francisco. 
Thanks Stefan, I’d forgotten that one.
“Frenchie” does not exist in Portuguese, I guess he was saying “Frente” (Brazilians generally exchange the sound of t after n for “tch”), it means “Go ahed”.
Luck at Google.
Good luck Scott. It’s been good working with you and sharing a LugRadio appearance with you
Hehe, very amusing post. I’d better let you know when I’m travelling just in case we are on the same trip – I’d hate to cause any further travel disasters!
Good luck at Google! Colin.
Very emotional and motivational post, good luck at Google and welcome back to Debian!
I am joining google too. Maybe we can meet in MV,
Repeating some of what I said in private…all the best. I know San Francisco and Google are great fits for you. Have an awesome time
Jon.
Welcome to Google!
Congratulations and good luck!
Awesome blog post too!
Only just caught this announcement; don’t know where I’ve been for the last couple of months. Congratulations on the new job. However, Small Heath to San Fran.. I hope you’re prepared for the culture shock. Nowhere beats Brum!
Good Luck!
You are rocking Scott! Good luck in SF, hope you like the California lifestyle.
And…. watch over Google, don’t let them be the next evil empire
Congrats and good luck, Google is luck to have you.
That first photo is a stark reminder of why I never tell prospective female companions what I do for a living.
Good luck Scott, it’s been a pleasure working with you.
And now … finally … I have a shot at becoming mayor of a UDS venue …
Best of luck, Scott!
You’ll be missed.
congrats and good luck
That was a great post, made me chuckle!
I will miss your Canonical insights
Good luck at Google, I am sure to be passing someday soon and look forward to catching up them 
And watch out A&F!
Congrats!
Congrats and good luck at Google!
Congrats. and your wrong. all the issues of the world, are my fault.
Yeah! The people do good things get good things in return
Wish you all the best
Goodbye and good luck !
Thanks for this – Good Luck.
I’ve saved that first photo and relabelled it as “Giant_Killers.jpg”
- CH
we will miss you ^^
Really enjoyed the founding story. It just seemed like Ubuntu came out of nowhere. They really changed everything, though. Although my first intro to Linux was Fedora and I’ve remained a staunch Fedora user on my main machine, I’ve seen lots of Ubuntu innovations trickle over. A lot of what Ubuntu has done really pushed all the other distros to focus on ease of use for users.
In the end, it’s one of my favorite things about the FLOSS ecosystem. Since it’s all GPL’d and/or BSD’d we can all borrow the best bits from each other and everyone rises up.
Congrats,
I’m sipping a cup of coffee, installing Ubuntu server on an HP Proliant at the same time enjoying reading your blog, life is great…
Thanks for only showing the happy side of the sign
I’d make a special version for you to use in your new job but I’m sure you won’t need it. Thanks for all your contributions over the years, best of luck, and stay in touch.
Great post, excellent work on Ubuntu (especially Upstart) and congrats on your new position with Google. All the best.
Thank you for sharing that. Takes me back to my first experience of meeting 70 engineers at the Vibe Hotel in Rushcutters Bay. I didn’t know where I had landed
Good luck!man!
I don’t use any of the *buntus, though I sure wish I could get my VirtualBox display bigger than 800×600 with Kubuntu.
Anyway, entertaining post, and so happy you didn’t take the Jobs job.
All the best Scott
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Good luck at Google Scott, thank you for your dedication.
Hey man,
Nice flow of memory and good luck on your big move
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CONGRATS dude, all the best. I have very fond memories of working with you, some fascinating chats and awesome parties (in Sydney & London in particular!)
Hope the move is awesome and the next chapter in your life is full of fun, reward and satisfaction.
All the best
JaneW
new life ha !
good luck for that i love google and EVRE ONE WORK with him
we will see you like Steve Jobs ^_^ i hope that
Dear James Scott Remnant
You are a IT wizard and I hope that you will accept my email within the many thanks and gratitudes that I have for your past, present and future work -you have both inspired and have given vision to a generation.
However I do not think the Desktop – is dead just yet.
A very powerful equipment still -especially in the business of doing graphics or accessing appropriate software in order to the job for something that has not been seen before.
Yes iTabs are cool but they can’t do what is needed at times. Desktop still rule – some (I hope most) of the time!
Best Regards – for allowing me to read your blog and being a bit bullsey! !
Yours Sincerely
Paul