Canonical's chief operating officer is leaving the company after less than a year, and heading to an HTML5 start up.

Matt Asay said the COO role was not what he really wanted and he preferred being more involved on a day-to-day basis with customers.

Asay, a regular contributor to The Reg, called his decision "difficult" and the move to his new employer Strobe "a leap of faith". He joined Canonical in February from Alfresco, an open-source content management system vendor, after having been contacted by Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth.

Canonical's chief executive officer Jane Silber blogged the company will recruit a replacement for Asay.

"While his time here has been relatively short, we all appreciate the positive impact he has had in many areas and I will personally be very sorry to see him go," she said.

Asay is joining mobile HTML5 apps newbie Strobe to run sales and business development.

Strobe uses the open-source SproutCore framework to develop applications for mobile devices. The company was founded by Charles Jolley, who left Apple, where he was JavaScript Frameworks manager for MobileMe, to work on the SproutCore framework at his startup Sproutit. Apple was a main contributor to SproutCore. ®