Slashdot Log In
Suse Linux Founder Exits Novell
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed Nov 09, 2005 05:04 PM
from the look-for-a-new-project-soon dept.
from the look-for-a-new-project-soon dept.
csplinter writes write to tell us that SuSE Linux founder Hubert Mantel has resigned from Novell stating "Too late for me. I just decided to leave Suse/Novell. This is no longer the company I founded 13 years ago." Novell confirmed his resignation but had little else to say on the topic. From the article: "Mantel's departure also comes less than a week after Novell announced a major restructuring that would result in 600 layoffs. It's unclear if Mantel's resignation is related to the restructuring."
Related Stories
[+]
Hubert Mantel Returns to Novell 68 comments
Krondor writes "Hubert Mantel, SUSE Co-Founder, has confirmed in an interview with Data Manager Online that he has returned to employment with Novell. When asked why he left Novell to begin with, Hubert responded that he was 'burned out' and 'following unpleasant experiences with our investors needed some time off.' Slashdot had reported previously Hubert's departure from Novell approximately one year ago shortly following Novell's acquisition of SUSE and subsequent layoffs.
Hubert also provides his opinions on the Novell-Microsoft Agreement, which he characterizes as 'a good thing.'"
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
"Too Late"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:"Too Late"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ouch. I mean, given the bloated (but usable) mess that is Evolution, would you want those guys maintaining your distribution's kernel?
I think he's right, SuSE isn't the same company anymore. Kubuntu, here I come.
Parent
Re:"Too Late"? (Score:3, Funny)
Its, umm, Bladerunner. Right before he left Novell he reportedly also said, "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain."
Dramatic fellow. Maybe he should be an actor.
Novell moves to GNOME; SuSE founder resigns? (Score:3, Insightful)
Novell standardise on GNOME: http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/05
Re:Novell moves to GNOME; SuSE founder resigns? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Novell moves to GNOME; SuSE founder resigns? (Score:5, Insightful)
After all, if you have a division of perfect people down the hall, why not let them work on the kernel? Even if they're applications people with absolutely no kernel experience, how hard can it be for perfect people who have all the answers?
Parent
Re:Novell moves to GNOME; SuSE founder resigns? (Score:3, Informative)
This should be no problem, since KDE is compatible with this requirement. Any software Novell might want to add would probably be GPL anyway, because that's the most common license for Linux distros.
Only if Novell wanted to develop a closed source program would
TrollTech has made fantastic contributions. (Score:3, Interesting)
TrollTech has proven time and time again that they do truly care about the open source community. Even ignoring the fantastic contribution of the GPL'ed edition of Qt (on several platforms), they've made many contributions to the open source community. They have done significant work on KDE and Mozilla, for instance. The open source community would be far better off if there were more companies like TrollTech around.
Why is it
Re:Novell moves to GNOME; SuSE founder resigns? (Score:3, Informative)
It doesn't say here that the GPL doesn't allow you to do these things, only that the QT commercial license does allow them. What the GPL allows and doesn't allow is in the GPL. The GPL is one of the licenses included in the software; that is the
Re:Novell moves to GNOME; SuSE founder resigns? (Score:4, Informative)
It's not that Novell can't afford the price of a few development licenses, but rather it is that Novell can't afford to put another company between itself and customers that want to develop for Novell's desktop. Imagine the following discussion between a Novell salesman and a potential development partner.
Novell salesman: "You want to develop software for the Novell Linux Desktop? Ok, well go talk to some tiny company in the Netherlands," (yes, I know that the company is actually Norwegian, I am making a point), "they own a critical piece of our development toolkit."
Development Partner: "Let me get this straight. You want me to develop software using an oddball development framework written in C++, and you don't even own the framework."
Novell salesman: "That's correct, on the plus side if you skip our fancy KDE libraries you can run your software on Windows too. Of course, QT-only applications also don't take advantage of some of the nice features of Windows, but if the cell phone industry ever comes out with a useful Linux-based cell phone you could probably port to that as well."
Development Partner: "I think that I am going to talk to Red Hat now."
Any way you slice it the fact that Novell doesn't own QT is problematic for Novell's use of KDE. Throw in the fact that most of the applications that Novell wants to sell as part of the Novell Linux desktop are either Gnome applications or allied with Gnome, and the fact that with Mono Novell can point Microsoft developers to a "way out" while still reusing their C# code and its no wonder that KDE is getting the short end of the stick at Novell. KDE is getting the short end of the stick from all of the big Linux players. IBM based SWT on GTK for the exact same reasons, and Firefox is based on GTK as well.
Parent
Time to Fork Suse (Score:3, Interesting)
What Novell is doing here is creating a platform for Ximian and the only way to get any distro to accept Ximian was to buy Suse. This apparently has proven true with Hubert's comments that Ximian had lots of talented people.
Proof? (Score:3, Interesting)
And by what stretch of logic is the above "proven true" by "Hubert's comments that Ximian had lots of talented people." ???
Re:Time to Fork Suse (Score:3, Informative)
who is it unclear to? (Score:5, Funny)
Who is it unclear to? And what are they smoking?
Re:who is it unclear to? (Score:3, Funny)
Especially... (Score:5, Funny)
My Bet (Score:4, Insightful)
I was sad to hear suse layed of This dude [beaufour.dk] who was doing lots of xforms stuff for FF.
But of course Novell has been doing lots of good for a while now, all the time losing money, so I couldn't be too critcal.
Probably not a big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
These guys tend to be of two types - "startup" guys who don't think it is fun to run an established business, or a "control types" who aren't satisifed unless they are running the whole show. Either way, when they sell the company, they are no longer in the position that most appeals to them so they move on as soon as they can.
So, I wouldn't take this event too seriously, he's probably had short-timer's disease for the last six months anyway.
Yet another Novell failure (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Yet another Novell failure (Score:3, Insightful)
Restructure... (Score:5, Funny)
| that chamaleon got fired. Get used to |
| me: the more efficient, featureful |
\ allmighty and POSIX compliant Clippy!
\ ____
\ / __ \
\ O| |O|
|| | |
|| | |
|| |
|___/
Re:K5ARP, we love you (Score:3, Funny)
So why no KDE?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So why no KDE?? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm gonna have to drive by the Weinerschnizel on the way home now, and get a Polish sandwich. Or maybe just some mini corn dogs. Yeah, I think I'll get mini corn dogs. I like the corn dogs *and* the Polish.
Parent
Re:So why no KDE?? (Score:3, Insightful)
KDE is built on QT [trolltech.com], a C++ framework released under the GNU General Public License (GPL) [gnu.org], a free software license that has strong copyleft [gnu.org] (forced sharing) protections meant to ensure that derivative code stays free.
Some corporations are raising hell against QT and KDE because the corporations want to make proprietary, non-free, closed-source software on the QT framework without compensating the makers of QT. Of course, those same corporations don't h
Not Unexpected. Next Stop Bankruptcy (Score:4, Interesting)
The warning signs were there when Richard Seibt and a few others left some time ago, as well as other Novell employees who didn't even come from Suse like Alan Nugent. And despite the positive spin [eweek.com] some people in the company have tried to make of this for their own ends, there's no denying that a lot of people from different parts of the company have been layed off. Yes, even a lot of Gnome oriented people have gone, which means that Novell has no resources and people whatsoever to carry out all of those desktop plans some people say they're doing. They're going to need to spend even more money just to tread water and maintain everything. Looks like there's some truth to Kurt Pfeifle's article, and Mantel's swipe that they should be able to find someone talented to replace him as a kernel developer from Ximian is telling.
Novell may end up with no Gnome or KDE at all, or even worse, no Linux. People talk about KDE and Gnome a lot, but the fact is that Novell haven't even moved to Linux - that's where the real problems are. Open Enterprise Server is a bastardised Linux OS with Netware running on top of it. What customer wants that and what's the point?! No one judging from the people not buying it and going Red Hat instead. Unless this new COO really does understand his market, the technology and what's required we're seeing Novell go bust right here. Judging from this he's got the basic concepts of how to make people redundant badly wrong. Get that wrong, throw in the towel because it's not worth the effort. You need the right people on your side, not to alienate them.
Re:Not Unexpected. Next Stop Bankruptcy (Score:4, Informative)
I have always been a huge fan of Novell's software; it tends to be stellar stuff. But they have never been able to market their way out of a paper bag since Microsoft decimated Netware back in the NT 4.0 days. Still, products like GroupWise and eDirectory (NDS) have no _real_ technical equivalents in the market.
OES is not "Netware on top of Linux" - it's actually a collection of java-tomcat (web-based) services that previously ran on Netware that now also run on Linux. Things like iPrint, eDirectory, iFolder, iManage, NSS, etc. You can run these enterprise-value-added services on Netware 6.5 or on SuSE Enterprise Server 9. The management tools are the same for both platforms. It all works quite well--and they've had rave reviews, actually. Once again, their software is stunning - but their marketing sucks.
I have been playing with OES here - and really, really like what I see. Imagine being able to deploy SuSE 9 across a large enterprise and having _real_ tools to manage them all! That's the promise of what Novell can deliver - but again, the message has somehow been completely lost on the appropriate people.
I doubt they will declare bankruptcy - Novell has come back from the dead many, many times in the last decade (just like Apple!) But they definitely have some serious challenges to deal with in the coming months, as their traditional Netware revenue base has all but dried up.
Parent
The Conversations (Score:4, Funny)
1. Bring that point up at the next meeting.
2. Check with person X to okay Y.
3. Find out when person Z's subordinate has the time to do that task.
4. I know you preferred Option A but the company is doing Option B.
5. Fill out that form and give it to accounting and wait 30 days to get reimbursed.
7. The Board has decided to go a diffferent direction.
8. Let me run that by person A before doing anything.
9. Send me an email about it to remind me....
There's a bunch more probably much funnier too. Join in and add a few!
Re:The Conversations (Score:4, Funny)
11. Is this initiative compatible with our Mission Statement?
12. Can we proactively leverage vertical syergies to deliver five-nines reliability?
13. We need a subcommittee to work on that aspect of your plan.
14. Now that you've written all that code, we're changing the design specs on you.
15.
16. If there's such a thing as a sub-subcommittee, we'll be needing one of those.
17. We need a cross-departmental task force to get a wider perspective on things.
18. The task force needs to divide itself into committees along departmental lines.
19. We need to make everything top priority!
20. ???
21. PROFIT!
Parent
fork it? (Score:3, Interesting)
Ximian division? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is that a comment on mperhaps the Ximian guys being laid off too? Goddamnit, I like Suse and would hate to see Suse founder with all of the headway they've been making in the community.
all I have to say is... (Score:5, Funny)
(Apologies to both NOFX and the late Douglas Adams)
Wish him well (Score:5, Interesting)
curse of Novell (Score:3, Insightful)
and who founded Caldera? and what are they now?
exactly
Re:13 years for what (Score:3, Funny)
Re:13 years for what (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:13 years for what (Score:4, Funny)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/04/12/missing_n
(a friend of mine was an admin up there when it happened.)
on the other hand.. i have seen horridly setup stuff.. and the client computers always having issues.. my favorite is watching network packets and seeing printer discovery packets from a school network in greensboro in a school network in wilmington..
Parent
Re:13 years for what (Score:3, Interesting)
I love Suse. It's my favorite distro by far.
Re:13 years for what (Score:5, Interesting)
Same here. I really do not understand staements like "This is no longer the company I founded 13 years ago." Of course it isn't. It is Novel. Novel is an old corporation with a well known corporate culture. Mantel knew that when he sold the company. If he had any illusions, he was just deluding himself. I think the most telling quote in the article is "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." Sounds to me like corporate infighting and Mantel lost.
Parent
Re:13 years for what (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:13 years for what (Score:5, Insightful)
This is SuSE's *founder* that you're talking about. Meaning he had a *vision* for his company which, from his quote, just isn't there anymore.
Sounds to me like corporate infighting and Mantel lost.
Of course it does - and that's probably what it is, too. The question is, however, *what did he lost to*? Now, if you look at the quote more closely, he's saying 'those smart guys from Ximian will pick up on kernel maintenance in no time' - which is of course untrue (at least the 'no time' part, although I suspect whoever will end up in his place will most likely *not* be coming from the desktop division) and to me it sounds like a veiled accusation that the Ximian guys pushed agendas in areas they had little clue about. Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but it does not sound that implausible in the light of recent evolutions at Novell that 'loud' was preferred to 'clueful'
Parent
Re:13 years for what (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:13 years for what (Score:3, Interesting)
He may have figured that the combination of a powerful KDE group and a powerful Gnome group would have left the Novell linux group with a powerful one-two punch, but now the two punch (that his group was expecting t
Re:13 years for what (Score:3, Interesting)
Finding autoyast to be much more powerful, rpms far easier to deal with and easier build custom ones, kernel easier to patch (when we need to, which is far less often), etc.
Whil
Seems like flamebait and troll, but maybe not... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:The question for Novell is... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Novell is going the RedHat way (Score:3, Insightful)
Right, damn those Novell people, open sourcing all the good bits from the companies they've acquired. They're just doing it because they want the community to help them! Let's not fall for it though-- we should all refuse to use YaST or the Evolution connector! If I make it so I can't connect to my e-mail, that'll show'um!
They're making the life of all those shuttleworths' out there extremely easy.
Yeah, because
Re:Sour Grapes (Score:4, Insightful)
Or he is bright enough to realize that competing head on with redhat and indirectly with Sun is a mistake?
At this point, how is Suse different from Redhat? I recently switched to Suse (from Mandrake due to their lousy QC). At the last job, I was coding on Redhat. I was loving Suse until the gnome/kde announcement. At this point, I am telling ppl if they want a Gnome distro to do redhat, and am back to looking for a good kde distro.
Parent
Re:Sour Grapes (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, will the trend of SuSE being a quality distribution continue? Perhaps not. Things aren't necessarily looking up for SuSE since the acqui
Re:Sour Grapes (Score:3, Insightful)
How is that a mistake? Novell has something no other distribution has. A front seat to NDS. In fact, I'm pretty sure their whole original reason for their buying SuSE was to have a solid OS platform to run NDS off of. They probably were not even running against Redhat or Sun. It could be a Hail Mary comeback for network services management on Microsoft shops. Even if they're only partially suc