After reading lots of useful nginx/ruby/rails stuff for years on Ezra's blog, I met him at merb camp a few years ago - a cool and interesting guy -- I wish him well!
This could easily be read that EY was acquired. Not many people quit their job and announce they're buying a house unless there is a liquidity event in their personal timeline.
It being almost exactly 4 years in makes it seem a lot more likely that he's fully vested and is now looking at doing something new.
I personally think some mix of time-based and milestone-based vesting would make sense for founders. Basically, you get some of your equity for reaching product market fit on various metrics, some for profitability, and some for scaling. A lot of startup founders would move on after reaching one of those milestones. If the company is doing very well, but you just don't want to be in the "scaling" role, you could accept longer vesting of the remaining stock in a different capacity, maybe one where you can work on another project full-time.
The news would likely be about Ezra, and not Engine Yard.
He no doubt has a confidentiality provision as a part of his employment agreement, not to mention in the separation agreement I'm sure they had him sign. Even without the legal risk, it'd just be poor form to talk about EY's future activities.
Quite livable too - you can get around with a bike or public transport (or a car too, it's easier to find parking than in SF).
And: Portland has Powell's Books.
The problem is the weather: from October to as late as July, there is an awful lot of gray and rain. Not exciting, thunder storm rain, but steady, drizzly rain.
If you can handle that, it is indeed a great place.
Southwestern Washington (Vancouver, WA, etc.) seems like an even more cost-effective location (0% corp and personal tax in WA, although there is the B&O tax). I'm not sure if the tax/cost savings would make up for the general awesomeness of Portland and suburban/rural boredom of SW WA though.
I first learned of Redis by watching Ezra give a lightning talk about a database "by his friend from Italy" (hi Antirez!) who is now working on Redis at vmware.
