[UPDATED] Was Cory Linden fired, or did he quit?

I've been hearing rumors about one of Second Life's dear leaders, Cory Linden (aka Cory Ondrejka), Linden Lab's CTO. Apparently he didn't see eye to eye with Philip Linden (aka Philip Rosedale), LL's CEO, about the engineering direction. Either way, he quit, or Philip fired him. Care to clarify, Linden Lab?

Tateru Nino recently did a piece on Philip's mission statement blog entry. It seemed to come out of nowhere and maybe this has something to do with it. We'll keep you updated as we know more!

[8:47pm EST] I have obtained a copy of Philip's email that he sent to his employees, which you can read after the jump ...

Cory is going to leave LL. He has been with us for 7 years, and was the fourth person to join. So this is a big deal. Cory has been a huge part of the company, having designed big parts of SL, hired many people, contributed greatly to the culture, and given a powerful voice to SL and LL. Among other things, he had the original design idea for the love machine, single handedly wrote the scripting language, and got us all doing A&Os back in 2001. Losing him will be hard for the company. I will miss him a lot. What's worse is that ultimately his leaving is my decision.

Cory and I have differences in how we think Linden should be run, differences that in the past few months have become irreconcilable. These are tensions that were more manageable when we were smaller, and there have been times that they have helped us do great work together. But now, as we change and grow as a company, I feel that we need a different set of strengths in engineering leadership. I strongly believe that this is the right decision, although not without pain, for both LL and Cory. Of course, I'm not going to go into the details of these differences. This is one of those times when, in having me as your leader, you will also have to trust me in my decision. I will hold a brown bag as soon as possible to talk about this with anyone who would like, and will schedule time both in-world and in person here in San Francisco. Please send any external questions you get about this change to Robin who will make sure they get answered.

Philip

[UPDATED 9:15 PM] Philip Rosedale (Philip Linden) responds to the departure.

[UPDATED 9:45 PM] Cory's reply to Philip Linden's mail

[UPDATED 1:30 AM] Our very own Tateru Nino looks at What this departure means for the future of Linden Lab

[UPDATED] It was confirmed that Cory Ondrejka was fired, or forced to resign.