Strategy Decisions
4+ recent decisions
Support Nathan CVE-first prioritization over the Google minimal-kernel delivery; own the customer comms
Jul 9, 2026 · strategy · medium80% confidence
Nathan flagged that in-flight critical local-privilege-escalation CVEs collided with the committed 6.18 minimal-kernel delivery to Google and called for CVE remediation to come first. Peter backed that call rather than making it: agreed to a bounded slip (no more than a week, not three), was comfortable asking the team to work a weekend to verify already-built patches, and took personal ownership of communicating the slip to Google - framed as value-add (surface only the CVEs Google benefits from), not an apology. Peter wrote and sent the explanatory email to Tissa and the Google team the same day.
People: Peter Nelson, Nathan Blackham, Justin Haynes, Bjorn Hovland, Kelly Hall
Reinforce that an automated Linux CI/CD pipeline is one of the top-3 H2 company objectives
Jul 7, 2026 · strategy · medium72% confidence
Peter had already set an automated Linux CI/CD pipeline as one of CIQ three top company objectives for H2 (base decision not previously captured). In the Max 1:1 and Engineering Weekly he reinforced to people that it is there and that it is critical to Linux delivery - a company objective, not just a Nathan-team objective. Logged as reinforcement.
People: Peter Nelson, Max Spevack, Nathan Blackham, Justin Haynes
Everfox desktop-OS: require explicitly scoped and funded eng-investment before supporting the deal
Jun 30, 2026 · strategy · medium66% confidence
On the Everfox desktop-OS deal, Peter framed it as a fundamentally different business (be like Ubuntu while also being like RedHat, not add desktop support to Rocky) and insisted the unknowns around hardware enablement / driver support and a dedicated lab be made explicit. His engineering-side conditions: the MSA must fix the hardware scope with out-of-scope hardware priced separately, and CIQ should proceed only with an explicit commitment to fund the engineering regardless of revenue. He tasked Max to assess technical feasibility with Nathan before committing. Relates to the prior logged Everfox decision d1ea8ed9; this is the engineering-stewardship condition layer.
People: Bjorn Hovland, Nathan Blackham, Ramesh Srinivasan, Max Spevack, Suzanne Spencer-Purcell
Open strategic review of RLC/RLK identity + upstream binding (Dirty Frag triggered)
May 12, 2026 · strategy · high78% confidence
Saturday 5/9 in #department-heads, in immediate response to Justin's Dirty Frag status table and Nathan's note about CIQ patches being shared with the RESF, Peter announced he wants the leadership team to take up a strategic question next week: what recurring vulnerabilities imply about CIQ's kernel posture, how tightly to bind to upstream, how to work with the RESF, and what it means going forward to be RLC and RLK. Aimed at framing input for the mid-to-late June LA in-person product-strategy session with Bjorn and Greg.
People: Peter Nelson, Greg Kurtzer, Nathan Blackham, Justin Haynes, Bjorn Hovland