Danese Cooper gone, CTO resigns after 16 months Options

[NuclearWarfare]

On 2 June, the Foundation's Chief Technical Officer (CTO), Danese Cooper, announced her resignation from the post after 16 months (WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list). Cooper, who joined in February 2010 (see previous Signpost coverage), cited the changing requirements of the role:

“Sue [Gardner], Erik [Möller] and I have agreed that there's no longer a fit between the identified near-term needs and goals of the organisation, and my own interests. I've therefore decided to [resign] as CTO, but I remain a friend of the organisation and the mission. ”

The resignation of Cooper, who has largely remained out of the technology spotlight compared to previous CTO Brion Vibber, nonetheless attracted sympathy on the Foundation-l mailing list. "It is a sad day", wrote Gerard Meijssen, whilst Thomas Dalton commented that "the WMF is significantly poorer for losing you". A fuller summary of the impact Cooper's resignation will have on the overall Engineering hierarchy is expected from Erik Möller shortly. Cooper also said that she would stay on until the end of July to help with the transition; the post of CTO took some five months to fill last time it was vacant.

Anyone know anything further about this? The wording of the quote makes it sound like she was instructed to resign by Sue Gardner and Erik Möller, but that could just be me reading into things too much.

[EricBarbour]

I would not be a bit surprised if she was forced out because she didn't agree with the Sue & Erik Show on some important operating item. After all, they pushed Vibber out. Vibber was THE primary developer on MediaWiki software. He was there right from the beginning.

But he left......I wonder if it was the money. There have been grumblings about what the CTO gets, compared to the "Holy Acolytes" Moeller and Susie. (How's the flagged revisions coming, Brion? (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/yecch.gif) )

The more I read about Wikipedia's beginnings, the more toxic and slimy Moeller looks. His "core competency" appears to be propping up the neurotic little ego of The Wales, and manipulating others below him. I can't say much about his coding ability, since I haven't uncovered much confirmable evidence of code that he wrote. I can't even blame him for wiki-markup. Read the "official history" for yourself.

Guess they'll have to update this soon........

[melloden]

Cooper, who has largely remained out of the technology spotlight compared to previous CTO Brion Vibber

One thing Brion had for him was pretty strong community support, if my memory serves me right (if not him, another one of those pushed-out old-timers). Danese has just been ... lurking. I mean, when was the last time you heard something big about her job? I'd hope that the CTO was more involved, or at least have some sort of presence in the community's spotlight.

In any case, this does seem like she disagreed over something important, and Sue decided to push her out. Good riddance. She wasn't bad, probably just not as progressive as Sue prefers. And I wonder what Erik has to do with all this--at one point, I thought he was in danger of being forced out by Sue, as well. I wonder if he actually sided with her just to get on her good side.