Systemd daddy quits Microsoft to prove Linux can be trusted

Lennart Poettering's Amutable aims to bring 'cryptographically verifiable integrity' to the other OS

Linux celeb Lennart Poettering has left Microsoft and co-founded a new company, Amutable, with Chris Kühl and Christian Brauner.

Poettering is best known for systemd. After a lengthy stint at Red Hat, he joined Microsoft in 2022. Kühl was a Microsoft employee until last year, and Brauner, who also joined Microsoft in 2022, left this month.

The trio are leading lights in the Linux and open source world. Brauner posted on Mastodon: "My role in upstream maintenance for the Linux kernel will continue as it always has."

Poettering will similarly remain deeply involved in the systemd ecosystem.

According to the company's website, Amutable focuses on "determinism and verifiable integrity" in Linux systems.

In its announcement, the company wrote: "Amutable's mission is to deliver verifiable integrity to Linux workloads everywhere. We look forward to working towards this goal with the broader Linux community."

Systemd and Poettering have attracted their fair share of controversy over the years among parts of the Linux community. Like it or loathe it, systemd can be found in most mainstream Linux distributions. At the risk of triggering a slew of angry comments, it can best be described as software that runs first, then starts other required services and applications.

Poettering's role as chief engineer in Amutable, therefore, makes sense. The Berlin-based company's goal is to build "cryptographically verifiable integrity into Linux systems. Every system starts in a verified state and stays trusted over time."

It is unclear why Poettering decided to leave Microsoft. We asked the company to comment but have not received a response. Other than the announcement of systemd 259 in December, Poettering's blog has been silent on the matter, aside from the announcement of Amutable this week.

In its first post, the Amutable team wrote: "Over the coming months, we'll be pouring foundations for verification and building robust capabilities on top."

It will be interesting to see what form this takes. In addition to Poettering, the lead developer of systemd, Amutable's team includes contributors and maintainers for projects such as Linux, Kubernetes, and containerd. Its members are also very familiar with the likes of Debian, Fedora, SUSE, and Ubuntu. ®