Unavoidably, my taking on a new job at Mozilla means that I’ll be leaving my old one behind. After eight years, that’s something that begs commenting, especially if to those who’ve known me primarily through my various roles at ActiveState.

ActiveState has been a tremendous home for me for many years. Throughout my tenure I’ve grown tremendously as an engineer, a manager, an “open source guy”, and hopefully as a friend and colleague. It’s going to take some adjustment to not be an Activator.

At the same time, I think my leaving ActiveState is the right thing to do, not just for me, but for ActiveState as well. ActiveState is in better shape now than it’s been in years, with a strong CEO who knows how to nurture his team, a supportive board, a solid core business providing support for dynamic languages to people and companies worldwide, an exciting adventure for our collective child, Komodo, and some intriguing possibilities in the hyper-growth arena of social networking platforms. ActiveState is poised to do great things, they’ll do so just fine without me around on a daily basis. My leaving will allow the organization to evolve, and I’m confident it will be for the better. The best bit is that I’ll have a great ongoing role as an advisor, so I’ll still get to talk to my friends and participate in the most fun discussions. I’ll stay based in Vancouver, which will make it quite a bit simpler.

It’s a testament to the depth of relationships I’ve formed at ActiveState that everyone‘s reaction when hearing of the reasons for my leaving was the same: “Congratulations.” They understood that “the mozilla mail thing” is a unique gig. Thanks, all, for everything.

I’m sure I’ll blog about ActiveState news periodically, as projects like OpenKomodo evolve.