As you may recall, the CodePlex Foundation indicated in January that it expected to name a permanent Executive Director within a few weeks’ time. That has now happened, and in the “small world” department, the new ED happens to be Paula Hunter – someone I’ve known for years, and worked with several times in the past. The full press release is below. Paula is someone I like and respect a lot, and a great choice for CodePlex.
As you’ll see from the announcement, one of Paula’s prior jobs was as the Executive Director of UnitedLinux. UL was a client of mine, and that’s where I first met Paula. And if you’ve never heard the saga of UL, it’s a rather fascinating story.
Since it was a client, I can’t go into many details, but suffice it to say that it was an early casualty of SCO’s maniacal and misguided obsession with trying to tax the development of Linux. The write-up at the Wikipedia will give you an idea of how the UL concept figured into (or tried to figure into) the evolution of the commercial Linux marketplace. You’ll also see that the UL technical program included reliance on the Linux Standards Base, the creation of another client of mine (the Free Standards Group). Paula later worked with the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), which merged with FSG to become today’s Linux Foundation, a current client.
So as you can see, the threads of collaborative commercial Linux development and support have been very much intertwined, including at the personnel level. Needless to say, what that means is that Paula knows her way around the block. And as will see if you browse your way through the links above, the commercial Linux ecosystem really is a small world. No surprise, then, to see who will be leading CodePlex in the days ahead, and I’m glad to see that the new CodePlex Board has been able to land someone with Paula’s experience and integrity.