Ward Cunningham Leaving Microsoft

Headline News in OctoberZeroFive: WardCunningham is leaving MicrosoftCorporation, to join the EclipseFoundation, as Director of Committer Community Development.

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,1872348,00.asp?kc=MWRSS02129TX1K0000535

Going to Eclipse: http://dev.eclipse.org/mhonarc/lists/eclipse.org-committers/msg00121.html

So I see from SlashDot that you're leaving Microsoft, Ward. Any commentary on the experience? --PeteHardie

I'm excited about joining the EclipseFoundation. I don't regret the time I spent at Microsoft. It is the only company I ever worked in where everyone understood what it meant to develop software. The engineers I met really did want to do good for the world and were sometimes personally hurt that the world thought otherwise. -- WardCunningham

Interesting. Do the engineers feel that other parts of the company are perhaps 'getting in the way' of them doing good, given the public perception of Microsoft? --PeteHardie

I feel a real deep sadness and remorse that Ward didn't make the point more obvious by leaving for Google. --PhlIp

What point would that be? --TimLesher

MS doesn't sound like a very healthy place to work.

I understand and agree with that sentiment, but I'm just trying to figure out how leaving for Google would make the point more obvious than leaving for the EclipseFoundation. --tl

I was in no way trying to make a point by joining or leaving Microsoft. My departure has been a bigger story than I would have thought. At first I thought it was about me, but the news is really about Microsoft. -- Ward

The eWEEK article plays up the Microsoft-Eclipse competition, with "Click here to read more about Eclipse and its rivalry with Microsoft's Visual Studio." which leads to "Eclipse Makes Moves to Pass Microsoft's Visual Studio" -- http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1855841,00.asp

So, now we are free to let the MS jokes roll? :-)

Sure, lets have a MicrosoftWay section here :) As long as it does not trip the DeleteInsults wire

One of the slashdot one-liners on this story was, "if you leave Microsoft, do you get your soul back?

Pray for Ward. ;-)

I think the DarkLordOfPortland can fend for himself. I for one welcome the return of our XP Overlord.

Funny jokes only please.

MicrosoftWay is

strewn with chairs.

some abandoned, and some flung ;-)

Well, I'll pass on a conventional (and devoid of comment re: Microsoft) word of congratulations to Ward, especially since this new job will hopefully let him move back to Portland with his family. And I'm delighted he may occasionally fly to my home turf of Ottawa. -- SunirShah

Me too. Congrats. -- JeffGrigg

I'm extremely curious what Ward is actually doing at Eclipse. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places but there doesn't seem to be much about it on the web.

Ward, for example, will you integrate FIT into Eclipse? Or can we hope for wikifying it so that class names automatically become hyperlinks, everyone can edit the codebase and easily rollback to earlier versions? (As imagined on ProgrammingInWiki)?

-- PhilJones

And of course, now we have TipsForWardAtEclipse.