Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth is to step down from his role as chief executive of the open source firm by next March.
Instead, he'll be spending his time working on design as well as extending partnerships in the industry and with customers.
"Those are the areas that I enjoy most and also the areas where I can best shape the impact we have on open source and the technology market," he said in a blog post.
"I've become very passionate about design and quality, and want to spend more time figuring out how we harness the collaborative process to build better, more insightful products," he added.
His role as chief executive will be handed over to chief operating officer (COO) Jane Silber.
"Since Jane joined the company, she and I have shared the load of coordinating between the leaders of all the key teams that make up Canonical," he wrote, adding "I couldn't think of a better person to take over my formal management and leadership responsibilities at Canonical than Jane."
The firm will hire a replacement COO and will also be looking for a new lead for the Ubuntu One project.
Read on to see how Ubuntu 9.10 compares to Windows 7.
