Peering inside - What does Cory Ondrejka's departure mean?
by Tateru Nino 
Dec 12th 2007 at 1:30AM
Filed under: MMO industry, Opinion, Second Life, Peering Inside
Ondrejka's leaving Linden Lab at the end of the month. It wouldn't surprise me to see him working for (eg) Google on 2 January. Face it, Ondrejka's hot geek property, any issues of sex-appeal aside.
Recruiters, if you want a piece of Ondrejka, you've probably got very little time to pitch something at him. Whatever Linden Lab's fortunes are, or have been, Ondrejka's the bee's knees right now, both technically and from a PR perspective.
If you asked me this-morning, "Who can Linden Lab least afford to lose" my answer would have been simple: Cory Ondrejka and Robin Harper. At least (sitting on the outside here), every other member of staff seems to be replaceable.
For better or worse, Harper and Ondrejka appear to form the basic core that gives Linden Lab, and thus the Second Life grid its shape and core operational parameters. Linden Lab is what it is more because of Harper and Ondrejka than the contributions of any single individual or pair of individuals.
That's not to say neither of them can be replaced, but those two individuals form the fundamental direction of Linden Lab - whatever the goals are, whatever the strategy, they've made both strategic and tactical choices that have shaped Linden Lab as a company and culture, and Second Life as a platform into what they both are today.
Changing either or both of them is going to be a dramatic change. I'm not going to tell you that Ondrejka's departure is necessarily a bad one or a good one. Two highly creative and motivated people may produce brilliant work, but simply be unable to do so together. So it seems, with Ondrejka and Rosedale.
What we can say is that it signals a major change in direction for Linden Lab as we go into 2008. Ondrejka's next career move could mean a profound change of direction for another company as well. Both remain to be seen.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Grace McDunnough said on 11:47AM 12-12-2007
I'd have to add Joe Miller to your list, a stabilizing "adult" force behind the scenes and infinitely rationale in the spot light.
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Aaron Edelweiss said on 4:49PM 12-12-2007
Heh, I wonder... might we see something rise to compete with SL following Cory's vision?
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jango fell said on 5:15PM 12-12-2007
I'll admit to not knowing a lot about behind the scenes at Linden Labs, but maybe his replacement will be able to focus on fixing a lot of the problems that have been around a long time, rather than introducing things like Voice.
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Tateru Nino said on 9:43PM 12-12-2007
Maybe Cory was the one fighting for bug-fixes over features, I don't know.
Stu said on 6:22PM 12-12-2007
The answer to what Cory's departure means is... "It Depends". :-)
Here's why:
It's important to understand the nature of the disagreement, before we can fully appreciate the impact.
Hopefully, Philip and Cory will agree to be transparent about the nature of the disagreement at some point, outside of any contractual or legal obligations that they must adhere to.
They have both implied in some way that it was a disagreement about the future direction of the company. Second life has the media attention and 'mindshare' that's necessary to grow into the fundamental VR platform of the future. However, if the "invitations go out, and the party sucks”, they run the risk of burning through that 'advertising capital' without leveraging it in a way that benefits the company, the customer base, and ultimately, the world.
So the specifics of their disagreement, especially if these disagreements are around the current readiness of the SL platform (in terms of scalability, feature set, manageability, etc.) prior to any major expansion of scope, are far more relevant to SL-ers.
On one hand, you're never completely prepared for the next round of expansion. It's healthy and natural to have some anxiety around any major shift, but you can't let it stop you from growing. Risk aversion has sunk many companies after their initial successes.
On the other hand, there are some fundamental elements of Due Diligence that customers expect, prior to any major shift in direction, architecture, etc. Ignoring these fundamentals has sunk many companies after their initial successes.
Depending on whether these two opposing perspectives had anything to do with the departure, and if so, which position was held by which person, is crucial to understanding how the company might be affected in the future.
Hopefully, one or both of them will share further details about this 'difference in future direction' when things calm down.
Stu
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Crissa said on 7:20PM 12-12-2007
If I had to pick a Linden to leave, it'd be Robin, not Cory.
But what this means for SL... Well, I can't imagine it'll be much different. Cory had been in administration for some time now, his code is the base for SL, but it was slowly being replaced (at his insistence) with pieces that were more thought out and complete.
His direction was invaluable - a year ot two ago - but now? The blow to morale is the biggest obvious part to this.
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Stacey Sugar said on 2:24AM 12-13-2007
I just hope that its not going to turn into a corporate pile of crap that it seems SL is headed.
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Aki Shichiroji said on 6:19PM 12-13-2007
I think that's something that is not only in the hands of LL, honestly. There are thousands of us actively logging in every day, and more to come as time passes. Some of us will be corporate, and some of us will not be. What direction SL as a whole takes as a result will be very much dependant on what *we* choose to bring to the table, what *we* choose to pay attention to.
Will corporate deals benefit LL? Of course. But those corps are only coming because there appears to be a market for them. Some of us welcome them, some of us don't care, and others dislike them vehemently. But corporations, whether Cory was to have stayed or not, would still be coming to SL.
From a the perspective of someone who both works and plays in-world for extended periods of time, I look to the future and hope that it brings greater scalability, both from an architectural and a managerial point of view.
Will this happen with greater or lesser difficulty now that Cory is gone? I suppose we can only speculate.
Stacey Sugar said on 1:45AM 12-14-2007
What you have to consider as well as the corporates is what SL has become since when LL opened it to everyone. 11 million accounts, and the average concurrency, about 50K! Half of one percent!
Out of those 50K, how many are real people and how many are alts & bots contributing nothing to SL. Go to the top 20 places in-world. Its all camping and bots.
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Aki Shichiroji said on 2:21AM 12-14-2007
Yes, many corporate endeavors (and some notable ones recently too) did bring in many new users... so what? Not all of them have direct dealings with LL. Many of them are brought in by companies run by residents just like you and me. Again, if you dislike the influx of corporations to SL... simply vote against them by not patronizing their services or builds.
Complaining about what people chose to waste their computer resources on is really irrelevant to our own situations unless it begins to affect the performance of our own systems in some way. Otherwise, who are we to complain that so and so has an alt? Also - of those new people brought in on the currents of corporations, can you honestly say that NONE of them would be worthy of being residents? Who can really cast the first stone as far as who should or shouldn't be 'allowed' to take part in Second Life?
I know and have formed friendships with a good number of people who were indeed introduced to SL through corporations. This does not make them any less Residents than anyone else. The fact that more companies are paying attention to SL is an indicator that they recognize SL is an important part of social interaction on the virtual plane.
As for your comment about 'top 20 places' - have a look at those places and ask yourself WHO is gaming those locations to be so high in the rankings? Do ANY of those listings have any direct connection with corporations?
I don't think you can look at people connected to corporations and say they are to blame for Search being abused. This is also NOT behavior exclusive to SL. People will ALWAYS try to abuse the heck out of any given system. It's sad and true, but doesn't mean that corporations are to blame. It's simply behavior that shows up in all facets of our society. All we can really do is to understand it, avoid it, and encourage fairer practices, either from an ethical standpoint or a technical one.
Tateru Nino said on 2:02AM 12-14-2007
Well, that would account for 800 of them.
Remember, Everquest's concurrency at the height of their popularity peaked at 90K. A peak concurrency of 50K doesn't mean that only 50K people are logging in each day. Median concurrency varies a bit, but is better than using an average.
In order to interpret it though, you need to know the median amount of time logged in per user per day. Information that isn't readily available.
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Prokofy Neva said on 9:01AM 12-15-2007
Tateru, you're not making sense, and sounding like a headhunting firm pitching your client. What exactly is bees knees about Cory Ondrejka? I mean, I realize he has god-like status and all, but since when is writing an internal game-world scripting language in a day something that is supposed to land you the next big gig?
Seriously, I think you have to ask this question: what was Cory working on the last six months? The last 3 months? Weeks? What did he do that was vital? If you can describe that to me, you may sell me on your points. But in fact, he didn't give any town hall since December 2006; he had no blogs after May 2007. He was on the conference circuit, to be sure, I remember him speaking in Dubrovnik, for example, but he didn't come to SLCC. So..what was up?
I agree with Stu that the disagreement between the two founders wasn't about engineering, or some issue like "let's do HTML on a prim -- or let's not and say we did." It's more about how to run the business, and that has to do with either the pace and scope of open-source, the business model, or perhaps merely the internal configuration of the love machine.
To persuade us of this fabulous bees knees stuff, we need to understand what could be at stake in this disagreement, and Cory's own work.
As for being scooped up by Google, I'm skeptical. You are forgetting that Cory is radioactive. If a direct competitor picks him up, they are earning an enemy out of the biggest guy on the block, sure to remain big for quite some time to come. I'm also betting that Cory was so much part of the Linden cult that he will not do something to harm the company. I think he will wind up in some parallel field.
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