Sun's head of open source leaves the company

published 10 March 2010

Oracle has lost its third high-profile executive since it merged with Sun Microsystems in a $7.4 billion deal at the beginning of the year.

Simon Phipps, previously chief open source officer, announced his departure on his blog earlier this week.

"Today is my last day of employment at Sun (well, it became Oracle on March 1st in the UK but you know what I mean). I am a few months short of my 10th anniversary there (I joined at JavaOne in 2000) and my 5th anniversary as Chief Open Source Officer. I hope you'll forgive a little reminiscence... Looking back, we've achieved some amazing things," he wrote.

While Phipps didn't disclose the reasons for his departure - which sees him in the company of fellow leavers founder Scott McNealy and chief executive Jonathan Schwartz, he did reminisce about what he and his fellow workers had managed to achieve, and not achieve, during his tenure.

"There are far too many people to attempt to thank here each "we" above represents a bunch of smart people of whom I was the least. You all know who you are, thank-you so much for the privilege of working with you," he added.

"Of course, no story with highlights like that can be without disappointments too. I'm sad that Apache did not get the TCK license they requested. I'm sad that we didn't get the code for some of those projects permanently outside the sun firewall. I'm sad we never got to a place where co-developers become a priority for various product teams. And I'm sad that, despite the success of the open source software businesses, it still wasn't enough to rescue Sun in the end. But overall, I am amazed and humbled to see what the open source team at Sun has achieved."

Maggie has been a journalist since 1999, starting her career as an editorial assistant on then-weekly magazine Computing, before working her way up to senior reporter level. In 2006, just weeks before ITPro was launched, Maggie joined Dennis Publishing as a reporter. Having worked her way up to editor of ITPro, she was appointed group editor of CloudPro and ITPro in April 2012. She became the editorial director and took responsibility for ChannelPro, in 2016.

Her areas of particular interest, aside from cloud, include management and C-level issues, the business value of technology, green and environmental issues and careers to name but a few.