In a morning press call on December 17th, 2009 Mark Shuttleworth announced that he was stepping down as head of Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu. In his place, Jane Silber, the current Chief Operating Officer who has been with Canonical since 2004 will take over as CEO.

Shuttleworth added that he will not, in any way, shape, or form be leaving Ubuntu. In an interview, Shuttleworth said that he's will stay head of the Ubuntu Community Council and the Ubuntu Technical Board. Instead of managing the business, he will be "Working closely on product design and our enterprise customers. I will also be working more closely with partners, especially in Asia. I will also work more closely with larger enterprise customers in our new cloud offerings. I will be spending more time on the areas that interest me the most and where I feel I can do the most good."