The Founder Of Wayland Has Joined Google

Last week we reported on Kristian Høgsberg, the founder of Wayland and a long-time Linux graphics developer, leaving his position at Intel. We now know he headed off to Google.

Through his LinkedIn profile he has confirmed that he's now working for Google in the Portland area as a software engineer.

Unfortunately, any details beyond that aren't public right now, but will be interesting to see what he ends up working on! Chrome OS is still using the Aura and Freon and the Ash window manager. Android continues to use SurfaceFlinger, not Wayland for managing its surfaces. Perhaps Google is looking at possibly switching to Wayland for one of their platforms? Kristian hasn't actually been involved much in Wayland development late in his tenure at Intel and was rare to see him engage on the mailing list or even make any Git commits. I guess we'll be looking to see if Kristian re-engages with Wayland over the coming months to see if Android or Chrome OS could be heading in that direction.

Of course, it's entirely possible he will just be working on other graphics projects at Google, but with his talent (in addition to being the founder of Wayland, Kristian Høgsberg was largely responsible too for AIGLX and DRI2) it will be interesting to see what he tackles.