Ubuntu Linux Community Manager Jono Bacon Leaves Canonical

In a few days, Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, will bid farewell to its longtime community manager. Jono Bacon, who has long been one of the most familiar faces in the Ubuntu world, is moving to a new position at the XPRIZE Foundation.

Bacon, who joined Canonical in 2006, reported on his blog that he decided to leave Canonical after receiving an offer from XPRIZE, which describes itself as “an innovation engine” and “catalyst for the benefit of humanity.” He will work at XPRIZE as senior director of Community, bringing to bear the skills he acquired helping to coordinate the Ubuntu community over the last eight years.

Although Bacon was not directly responsible for the business or development side of things at Canonical, his departure is significant for the Ubuntu and open source worlds, where executive titles have tended to matter less than actual community involvement. Alongside Ubuntu founder and former Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth, Bacon was one of the leading figures in the Ubuntu ecosystem since the project’s earlier days.

Bacon was arguably even more influential in shaping many aspects of Ubuntu than Jane Silber, who has been Canonical’s CEO since 2010, but whose public presence has generally been limited.

The team Bacon led—which includes Daniel Holbach, David Planella, Michael Hall, Nicholas Skaggs and Alan Pope—will continue his community leadership work at Canonical after his departure, he said. It is not yet clear, however, whether Canonical will be filling the community manager position he leaves behind.

Perhaps Canonical shouldn’t. In many ways, maintaining an official community leader is at odds with the open source ethos, which tends to celebrate decentralized, user-driven community organization. Few Ubuntu fans are likely to panic at the news of Bacon’s change of jobs.

Still, Bacon has helped to guide the Ubuntu community through a slew of crises—from Canonical’s failed attempt to style the Ubuntu Software Center as a store, to friction with the Fedora crowd, to controversy over the Amazon.com search features built into modern Ubuntu. He has left a mark on the Ubuntu ecosystem, and it won’t be quite the same without him.