The CTO of Second Life, Cory Ondrejka, announced his resignation on Tuesday, and the man responsible for that could be no other than Philip Rosendale, CEO of Second Life, who was apparently unsatisfied with the user interface and the frequent site crashes.

“The needs of our company are changing, and the role of CTO, or technical lead, had also evolved” said Rosendale in a statement, and also added: “Cory and I are in a agreement that our paths, at this point in time at least, lie in different directions.”

According to one of his memos, Ondrejka said he “continues to believe in both Second Life and Linden Lab” but Rosendale’s and his visions were “divergent enough” that their paths have to split.

Although a very popular virtual destination, Second Life has been experiencing several problems in the past year, which is why Rosendale decided he needed a new user interface and a new CTO.

Second Life was launched in 2003 as an Internet-based virtual world that enabled people to interact through motion avatars. The project was developed by Linden Research Inc. and had its mainstream media peak in late 2006 and 2007. Despite the 11.5 million accounts that have been registered over the years, There, Active Worlds and Red Light Center appear to be serious competitors.

The predominantly American base of users has currently extended all over the world, with versions of Second Life available in several languages (more than half of the registered users come from outside U.S.)

Rosendale wrote in a memo that they “were more manageable when (they) were smaller, and there have been times that they have helped us do great work together.”

The increasing number of residents of Second Life demand much more technical support capability and new policies (user age or illegal gambling) and CEO Philip Rosendale thinks that they “need a different set of strengths in engineering leadership.