Open Source Advocate VP Chris Stone Leaves Novell

SafeTinspector writes "ComputerWorld has a story regarding the sudden departure of Chris Stone, a respected open source advocate and the man often sited as the architect behind Novell's acquisistion of Ximian and SUSE as well as the recent open source orientation of Novell.
At the same time, Novell has a web site dedicated to dispelling the mistruths propogated in Microsoft's 'Get the Facts' campaign. What does all this mean to the future of Novell's Linux and Open Source strategy? Does any of this relate to the imminent release of Open Enterprise Server? Anybody?"

They Got 'Political Capital' with Us

[brandonp]

Novell's actions over the past year has really helped them gain some 'political capital' with me, and I believe the rest of the community. I really want to believe that they will keep making the right decisions, and they will keep working with the OpenSource Community.

For example, I've been running RedHat servers for the past 6 years. I am happy with RedHat, even through a few problems here and there. But I'm planning to move toward Suse, because I'm so impressed with Novell's recent work.

They can really change that momentum with the community quickly, by making the wrong decisions. So I really really hope this doesn't mean a change in what they plan to do in the future.

Brandon Petersen
Get FireFox! [spreadfirefox.com]

Kicked Out?

[BisonHoof]

He may have been told where the door was. http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?News ID=2564 [techworld.com] Too bad.

Re:I will say one thing:

[scupper]

Novell extends open-source push [com.com]
Published: May 11, 2004, 12:42 PM PDT
By Stephen Shankland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Excerpt:

For the second time, Novell has released the source code of a once-proprietary software package that makes it easier to substitute Linux for Microsoft's Windows.

Novell, a new power in the Linux landscape, announced last month that its YAST (Yet Another Setup Tool) installation and configuration tool would become open source. And Tuesday, it said it would make the same change with Evolution Connector, formerly known as Ximian Connector, software that lets the company's Evolution e-mail and calendar program retrieve data from Microsoft Exchange servers.

Evolution Connector previously cost $69 per computer, spokesman Kevan Barney said. It will be available as a free download by May 15, though source code is available now.

Sky is not falling, no film at 11

[maggard]

Folks, take a few deep breaths.

Novell is a large company. Not as large as MS (few are!) but not some little two person shop either. That one person left, even from a senior position, does not mean the sky is falling.

Internal politics, didn't like the traffic in Waltham (where Novell is now HQ'd), really did leave to "pursue other opportunities", doesn't matter. The company has set a course, invested considerable resources, indeed likely staked it's future on this: No one person leaving is going to have a huge effect.

As much as folks invest in the cult of personality Linux wouldn't come to a screeching halt without Torvalds, MS wouldn't suddenly shut down sans Gates or Ballmer, Apple would still soldier on absent Jobs, etc. Sure there may be different nuances but honestly, does anyone seriously expect the loss of a VP to completely change over a company?

Novell has reinvented itself as a Linux shop. They've expended huge amounts of effort, plus their dwindling capitol, on making this transition. They've promised their investors, sold their customers, rearranged their products and development. While it's unfortunate Stone is leaving there is no shortage of folks ready to step into his position (heck, he's stepped in & out of it several times!)

My take-away from this? There is a heatlthy enterprise Linux market with employment opportunities for tech managers on the vendor-end. Right now I bet there are more then a few resumes beiong spiffed up at IBM, Red Hat, and even MS (SCO need not apply.)

Re:He's coming to MS.

[Finuvir]

-1, Troll

Re:Sky is not falling, no film at 11

[dodgy_knickers]

The company has set a course, invested considerable resources, indeed likely staked it's future on this: No one person leaving is going to have a huge effect.

This is a non sequitur. Your assumption is that every person in the company contributes equally to the direction of the company. In fact, most companies are held together by surprisingly few people. The rest look to those key personalities for their direction.

If a highly influential leader departs Novell, and those left in his wake have different ideas, those ideas will gain traction because the most powerfull advocate for the status quo has disappeared. I've seen this happen. It's natural. Even on individual engineering projects the first thing many coders want to do when picking up a software project left behind by someone else is challenge the design premises and take the codebase in a new direction. It works the same way in management, only the "codebase" is the company.

The sky is probably not falling. But we cannot say conclusively that it is not falling based solely on the fact that Novell is a big company.

-kev

Re:what it is like to work with Stone

[Bozdune]

Dude, chances are only 1 in 10 that any new company is going to make it. Dissing Stone because his dot-com failed is neither insightful nor interesting. I've started three companies and worked for four more. I've seen good times and I've seen bad. So Tilion didn't make it. Big deal.

How about giving us some perspective on the man? Was he technically astute? Did the product work? Was it cleverly designed? Was he able to motivate people and get them excited? Was Tilion a good place to work, or a shitty place to work, and how much of that was due to Stone?

If you know the answers, share them, please. Otherwise you are indistinguishable from some random troll who happens to know somebody who knew somebody who worked at Tilion, or something.

It's interesting

[petrus4]

This reminds me of when Richard Garriott left Ultima Online...As I recall there was some controversy as to how voluntary his departure in that situation was, as well. I think it's completely safe to say also that UO was never the same afterwards...although from memory Garriott's involvement had only been sporadic for about a year before he finally left. UO has been going down hill for a long time, though...it's why the freeshard scene is as big as it is. Really pissed me off when I read EA's TOS for the Sims Online, specifically prohibiting freeshards. Makes me wish I could write to the company and say to them that if they weren't such utterly mindless, incompetent, creatively-devoid, cash-fixated drones, they might have been able to run UO's official shards in a half-intelligent manner...which would have meant that people wouldn't have had any REASON to start their own shards. Running an MMORPG is no small feat...I'm sure many of the people running indie shards now would glady have not bothered if EA's shards were still worth playing. Of course now that I think about it...it most likely isn't the live team's fault...they've most probably got marketing idiots tying their hands about what they can and can't do. To me, associating marketing people with the live team of an MMORPG is like what Sun Tzu said about needing to keep a king away from a general during a war. The king might have authority, but in many cases was utterly clueless about warfare in particular.

(Now back to the topic ;)) Contrary to an earlier post on this topic, I believe that given an individual in question being sufficiently creative/instrumental, the loss of a single person *can* be a big deal to a project. People have a tendency to develop their own logical frameworks, which others can have a very difficult time understanding. You take away the frame of mind and emotion that was responsible for the inception of a project, and there are going to be ramifications, even if said project continues.

It will be interesting to see how much of a course change results in Chris Stone's having left Novell. If it's true that SUSE are starting to take over the company, I can't see that as being a good thing...I will admit I don't know all that much about SUSE as a company, but virtually all of what I have read about their attitude I haven't liked...especially the debacle about YaST before Novell decided to open it.

Re:He's coming to MS.

[Anonymous Coward]

YHBT, but it's a classic tactic to hire smart people away from your competitors. This all about the person and braindraining your competitor and really has nothing to do with the product (Suse Linux in this case).

Re:what it is like to work with Stone

[Pros_n_Cons]

I was just going to bring this up. I follow the boards on stock forums, and investers seem nervous. This is the guy who was brought in pushing for Linux a couple years ago, now he just up and leaves one day? This is apparently what happened at Tilion it seemed fine then he left and shocked everyone. Also people on the board say many exec's at Novell have been leaving, is this also true? All the news seems bad things like they sold 20,000 subscriptions, but 10,000 of that was to one company.
RedHat is well embedded in the "sure I'll pay for linux" market. Its a tough nut to crack for anyone. I just can't see Novell taking over RH on Linux, RH just plays the game so well in a decade of working with a spazz community the only two real screw up's ppl have flailed their arms at them for are "killing the desktop" and "a bad GCC". One hell of a track record for a company who is surrounded by an emotional community.

Re:They Got 'Political Capital' with Us

[Pros_n_Cons]

I'm not sure I understand.
RedHat has done quite a bit of good over a decade. I'll go out on a limb and say they've done more than any single distributer. And you want to leave them not for technical merrit, but because another company GPL'd ximain connecter and yast? How about the companies Red Hat has recently bought. Netscape Directory, Sistina's GFS or 'stateless linux' on the horizon. I could put together a huge list of software RedHat GPL'd why is SuSE more deserving of "political capitol" than the guys who've been doing this for 10 years?

Might be other reasons he's gone

[Anonymous Coward]

In my company when a top executive or manager leaves suddenly it's not always a performance or political issue. On more than one occasion it's been because the manager was caught boinking a directly-reporting employee. My point is the public doesn't (and possibly won't) know the details. As such the better question to ask is, how will Novell do without him? If one company relies so heavily on one executive, then the company may not be all that stable to begin with.

Re:what it is like to work with Stone

[ljavelin]

Eventually the investors showed up one day and pulled the plug on the company.

Sadly, the investors showed up with $26 million and proceeded to steer the company in a ludicrous direction.

That's why the company failed. Was Chris there? Yes. Was he steering? He wasn't allowed to once the investors came in. Once the investors stepped in, the direction of the company was changed in order to take the company to IPO. Business principles (like "do we have a sellable product?") were made less important, to the point where even a successful IPO was impossible.

Chris and the other founders basically lost what was once a decent idea.

I'm not saying that Chris is a super-genious. But it is very unfair to pin the failure on Chris. His only real failure was to find willing investors that were incapable of running a business.

Re:"Capturing value" vs. free beer

[Etyenne]

He pushed a Red Hat-like strategy vs IBM style strategy? "Respected open-source advocate?" Sounds like he was a businessman making business decisions.

And that is bad ... how ? RedHat have been making business decision that made them profitable, and all the while they continue to contribute massively to OSS. SuSE, er, Novell have been going in the same direction (continued work on Gnome and Mono, open-sourcing YaST, etc). I'm very much happy with both company's direction.

Here is a thought

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of speculating wildly about all the myriad of bizzare reasons that Chris Stone might have possibly left novell/been replaced by a pod person why don't you just ask Chris Stone why he left?

Or mayby its like boats!

[Foktip]

Mayby some view working in buisness the same way you build boats, or hobbies.

Once youve fixed up one nice old boat (Novell), its a job well done. Time to seek another fixer upper boat! Or even build your own from scratch!

Re:Sky is not falling, no film at 11

[Albanach]

They bought a money-losing SuSE, but haven't done much to reposition it or sell it to their current customer base, yet.

Interested to find out where you got that information given SuSE were a private company at the time Novell bought them. Indeed they were anticipated as having a turnover of $35-40 million with a staff base of around 400, so if they were loss making I doubt it was by anything significant. Furthermore, the aquisition wasn't expected to immediatly impact on Novell's figures so I suspect they were running at either a very small loss or profit.

Re:Kicked Out?

[Anonymous Coward]

These journalists, who probably will never hold more than one good job in their life, haven't a clue..

"It is with some regret" is standard verbiage for a resignation letter where you want to ensure your employer that you are not trying to burn bridges just because you're leaving. When this comes in a PR tweaked press release it is even more suspect. If Novell had just fired him, I don't think that they would have made it look like a resignation (which this is made to look like). Resignations are almost never good PR for a company, if a company can get away announcing they canned a guy they would opt for that.

Server, yes. Desktop, no.

[khasim]

The biggest problem I still see with Novell is that they don't understand the desktop.

There isn't a Linux client that will run the login scripts or allow me to use NDPS on a Linux workstation the same as on a Windows workstation.

Novell needs to focus on the CONNECTIONS.

They're rolling out GroupWise on Linux, but there isn't a GroupWise CLIENT for Linux that has the functionality of the Windows client. Come on! You have all of the code available. This should have been done just after you bought SuSE.

ZEN works great on Windows boxes, but not on Linux workstations. Again, you have all the code.

eDirectory is great, but of limited use on Linux boxes and troublesome to install. Where are the .deb packages? Last I looked at it, it was a manual install.

And so on. I'm still convinced that Novell should have skipped buying SuSE and, instead, dumped $1million into funding development on the missing parts of their product line.