| SUSE cofounder leaves Novell |
Nov. 10, 2005
SUSE Linux co-founder Hubert Mantel announced his resignation from Novell Inc. via email to friends and business associates on one of the SUSE mailing lists Tuesday. Mantel, chief maintainer of the SUSE Linux kernel, said in his brief note that he could no longer work for the company.
"This is no longer the company I founded 13 years ago," Mantel wrote, in an explanation of his departure.
In what could be seen as a jab at Novell's recent decision to make GNOME the default desktop interface for its enterprise Linuxes -- SLES (SUSE Enterprise Linux Server) and NLD (Novell Linux Desktop) -- Mandel ended his email, "I'm very confident the Novell management will find a competent successor very quickly. After all, there are lots of extremely skilled people over there in the Ximian division."
Ximian, before being acquired by Novell, created GNOME.
And, indeed, Gordon Haff, senior analyst for Illuminata Inc., observed, "The Ximian folks seem to have integrated well into Novell; SUSE much less so."
Still, "It's always hard to know the reasons behind these things. It's indisputable that being part of Novell is far different from having your own small German Linux distributor," Haff said.
Dan Kusnetzky, IDC's vice president for system software, said, "I get the impression that Novell believes that it understands how to address the needs of enterprises and that its approach is not consistent with that preferred by these former SUSE executives."
Mandel is only the most recent of several SUSE's senior staffers to leave Novell since the company acquired SUSE in January 2004.
Last month, Novell SUSE European channel executive Petra Heinrich resigned to take a new position at Open-Xchange, an open-source e-mail company based in Germany. Former Novell European area executive and former SUSE President Richard Seibt left Novell in May.
Stacey Quandt, research director for Aberdeen Group Inc., said this particular departure is cause for concern.
"Historically, SUSE has had strong technical leadership, and a key indicator of change would be the departure of core members of the engineering staff," Quandt said.
Illuminata's Haff, though, said he isn't that concerned about the migration of senior SUSE employees from Novell. "I'm not sure that SUSE departures [by themselves] mean much at this point."
"Novell's success -- or not -- in Linux and open source have little to do with some personnel at what was once a small, largely regional Linux distributor. In a sense, what they bought was more of a brand and a market position. The concern isn't that they've failed to hold SUSE together, but that they haven't yet taken it to the next level," Haff said.
If you found this eWEEK.com article by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols informative, be sure to check out eWEEK.com's Linux & Open Source Center for the latest open-source news, reviews, and analysis.
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