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." Suse Linux Founder Exits Novell Log in/Create an Account | Top | 193 comments | Search Discussion Display Options Threshold: -1: 193 comments 0: 189 comments 1: 147 comments 2: 104 comments 3: 40 comments 4: 19 comments 5: 12 comments Flat Nested No Comments Threaded Oldest First Newest First Highest Scores First Oldest First (Ignore Threads) Newest First (Ignore Threads) The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way. 13 years for what (Score:2) by visionsofmcskill (556169) <vision@gBALDWINetmp.com minus author> on Wednesday November 09, @05:06PM (#13992772) (http://www.getmp.com/ | Last Journal: Monday November 18, @12:11PM) Its a tough week for novell when they loose botha founder and 600 employees.... makes you wonder just who is using their solutions anymore? [ Reply to ThisRe:13 years for what by Amouth (Score:3) Wednesday November 09, @05:11PM Re:13 years for what (Score:5, Interesting) by Reducer2001 (197985) <jasonfischer@nOspAM.gmail.com> on Wednesday November 09, @05:22PM (#13992944) Perhaps you meant to say that administrators who have Novell solutions in place don't have anything to do? My company has NetWare servers for file/print/auth/e-mail/Internet proxy/etc. in place. Our servers have uptimes in the 100's of days (our best record was 438 days until the mobo died) and require almost no upkeep. Not to mention that I don't have to worry too much about nasty viruses coming in. Oh, and our NetWare servers have a bash prompt that I can use, as well as running several OSS programs (Apache, PHP, MySQL). [ Reply to This | ParentRe:13 years for what by Amouth (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @06:10PMRe:13 years for what by ekwhite (Score:1) Wednesday November 09, @10:36PMRe:13 years for what by PygmySurfer (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @11:49PMRe:13 years for what by Scott7477 (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @10:38PMRe:13 years for what by toofast (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @10:48PMRe:13 years for what by schon (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @05:46PMRe:13 years for what by Amouth (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @06:13PM3 replies beneath your current threshold.Re:13 years for what by KilobyteKnight (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @05:12PM Re:13 years for what (Score:5, Interesting) by krgallagher (743575) on Wednesday November 09, @05:22PM (#13992937) (http://www.krgallagher.com/) "I love Suse. It's my favorite distro by far." 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. [ Reply to This | Parent Re:13 years for what (Score:4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 09, @05:27PM (#13993000) Yes, especially since kernel development is not exactly Ximians forte. This is probably a clash between company cultures. German engineers believe that quality matters while american managers know that playing golf with executives is more important. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:13 years for what by penguinrenegade (Score:1) Wednesday November 09, @07:46PMXimian does kernel stuff by r00t (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @09:13PM Re:13 years for what (Score:5, Insightful) by ScriptedReplay (908196) on Wednesday November 09, @06:22PM (#13993489) 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.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' [ Reply to This | ParentRe:13 years for what by Zemran (Score:3) Wednesday November 09, @09:32PMRe:13 years for what by donscarletti (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @11:44PMRe:13 years for what by LordMaxxon (Score:1) Wednesday November 09, @10:53PMRe:13 years for what by Sir Joltalot (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @11:09PM2 replies beneath your current threshold.Re:13 years for what by Stephen Samuel (Score:3) Wednesday November 09, @07:49PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:13 years for what by TrekCycling (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @05:27PMRe:13 years for what by chronicon (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @09:26PMRe:13 years for what by Miguelito (Score:3) Wednesday November 09, @05:53PMRe:13 years for what by Phishcast (Score:1) Wednesday November 09, @07:39PMRe:13 years for what by DTC-Bob (Score:1) Wednesday November 09, @06:47PMRe:13 years for what by vawlk (Score:1) Wednesday November 09, @07:39PM "Too Late"? (Score:4, Interesting) by adavies42 (746183) on Wednesday November 09, @05:06PM (#13992774) What is the "too late for me" in reference to? TFA give no clue. [ Reply to ThisRe:"Too Late"? by cloudmaster (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @05:11PM Re:"Too Late"? (Score:5, Insightful) by ElGuapoGolf (600734) on Wednesday November 09, @05:12PM (#13992850) (http://www.buildhigh.com/) I'm not sure what the "too late" comment means, but I think he takes a shot at some of the ximian folks later on when he suggests a maintainer for the SuSE kernel could be found from somewhere in the Ximian group.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. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:"Too Late"? by mbanck (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @05:51PMRe:"Too Late"? by AhaIndia (Score:1) Wednesday November 09, @09:43PMRe:"Too Late"? by blair1q (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @11:13PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:"Too Late"? by gad_zuki! (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @06:59PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Novell moves to GNOME; SuSE founder resigns? (Score:3, Insightful) by Srdjant (650988) on Wednesday November 09, @05:11PM (#13992837) Could Hubert Mantel have quit due to Novell making SuSE a GNOME-centred distro instead of keeping it a KDE-centred one?Novell standardise on GNOME: http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/05/ 1620206&tid=223&tid=106 [slashdot.org] [ Reply to This Re:Novell moves to GNOME; SuSE founder resigns? (Score:5, Interesting) by civilizedINTENSITY (45686) on Wednesday November 09, @05:22PM (#13992946) The comment about finding a kernel maintainer was likewise interesting:"I have been the maintainer of the Suse kernel for more than a decade now," Mantel wrote. "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."It is enough to make one wonder if there is a power struggle, or at least the perception of one, arising from differences of opinion between the SuSE and Ximian groups. SuSE's technical excellence is perhaps not so appreciated as some feel it should be? How important is mono? [ Reply to This | Parent Re:Novell moves to GNOME; SuSE founder resigns? (Score:4, Interesting) by Arandir (19206) on Wednesday November 09, @06:53PM (#13993716) (http://www.usermode.org/ | Last Journal: Sunday September 04, @07:28PM) To me, that sounds like subtle (or not so subtle) sarcasm. Perhaps Mantel heard the phrase "lots of extremely skilled people over there in the Ximian division" used one too many times as an excuse by his bosses, that he simply used it back at them.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? [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Novell moves to GNOME; SuSE founder resigns? by ambrosius27 (Score:1) Wednesday November 09, @07:49PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Novell moves to GNOME; SuSE founder resigns? by oever (Score:3) Wednesday November 09, @05:35PMRe:Novell moves to GNOME; SuSE founder resigns? by DAldredge (Score:1) Wednesday November 09, @05:38PMRe:Novell moves to GNOME; SuSE founder resigns? by oever (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @05:46PMRe:Novell moves to GNOME; SuSE founder resigns? by DAldredge (Score:1) Wednesday November 09, @05:54PMRe:Novell moves to GNOME; SuSE founder resigns? by oever (Score:1) Wednesday November 09, @06:06PMRe:Novell moves to GNOME; SuSE founder resigns? by DAldredge (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @06:20PMTrollTech has made fantastic contributions. by CyricZ (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @06:39PMRe:TrollTech has made fantastic contributions. by markhb (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @09:55PMRe:Novell moves to GNOME; SuSE founder resigns? by Gentlewhisper (Score:1) Wednesday November 09, @07:25PMRe:Novell moves to GNOME; SuSE founder resigns? by paugq (Score:3) Wednesday November 09, @06:14PMRe:Novell moves to GNOME; SuSE founder resigns? by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Wednesday November 09, @08:41PMRe:Novell moves to GNOME; SuSE founder resigns? by CyricZ (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @06:15PMRe:Novell moves to GNOME; SuSE founder resigns? by DAldredge (Score:1) Wednesday November 09, @06:22PMRe:Novell moves to GNOME; SuSE founder resigns? by CyricZ (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @06:29PMRe:Novell moves to GNOME; SuSE founder resigns? by DAldredge (Score:1) Wednesday November 09, @06:56PMRe:Novell moves to GNOME; SuSE founder resigns? by Jason Earl (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @07:15PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Novell moves to GNOME; SuSE founder resigns? by Waffle Iron (Score:3) Wednesday November 09, @06:16PM2 replies beneath your current threshold. Novell is going the RedHat way (Score:1) by lonesometrainer (138112) <vanlil AT yahoo DOT com> on Wednesday November 09, @05:15PM (#13992874) Like RedHat with Fedora, Novell looks for Community backup with their OpenSuse.org project.Their best option will be a profitable enterprise-linux distribution with _zero_ community backup.They're making the life of all those shuttleworths' out there extremely easy.Not good. [ Reply to ThisRe:Novell is going the RedHat way by cloudmaster (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @05:19PMRe:Novell is going the RedHat way by talksinmaths (Score:1) Wednesday November 09, @05:59PMRe:Novell is going the RedHat way by cloudmaster (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @06:21PMRe:Novell is going the RedHat way by div_2n (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @07:01PMRe:Novell is going the RedHat way by cloudmaster (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @11:51PMRe:Novell is going the RedHat way by talksinmaths (Score:1) Wednesday November 09, @07:12PMRe:Novell is going the RedHat way by cloudmaster (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @11:56PMNo by RedNovember (Score:1) Wednesday November 09, @05:30PMRe:No by AvitarX (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @05:46PMRe:Novell is going the RedHat way by nine-times (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @05:51PMRe:Novell is going the RedHat way by rm69990 (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @05:59PM Time to Fork Suse (Score:3, Interesting) by Bruha (412869) on Wednesday November 09, @05:16PM (#13992882) (http://www.silentbrouhaha.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday July 31, @07:42AM) Novell promised big things for Suse 10. Claiming it was a Windows Killer. I find it no better or worse than the last version of Suse 9.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. [ Reply to ThisRe:Time to Fork Suse by DAldredge (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @05:21PMRe:Time to Fork Suse by daeley (Score:3) Wednesday November 09, @05:38PMRe:Time to Fork Suse by rm69990 (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @06:02PMRe:Time to Fork Suse by daeley (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @06:13PMRe:Time to Fork Suse by RedNovember (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @06:02PMRe:Time to Fork Suse by Software (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @07:02PMProof? by alandd (Score:3) Wednesday November 09, @05:54PM who is it unclear to? (Score:5, Funny) by frovingslosh (582462) on Wednesday November 09, @05:16PM (#13992889) It's unclear if Mantel's resignation is related to the restructuring. Who is it unclear to? And what are they smoking? [ Reply to ThisRe:who is it unclear to? by AkaXakA (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @06:09PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Especially... (Score:5, Funny) by alamandrax (692121) on Wednesday November 09, @05:18PM (#13992904) (http://thisisnotfrozenfish.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday May 11, @03:20AM) When we took away his stapler. That just pissed him off. [ Reply to ThisRe:Especially... by Robocoastie (Score:1) Wednesday November 09, @07:02PMRe:How is that "insightful"?! by alamandrax (Score:1) Wednesday November 09, @05:36PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. The question for Novell is... (Score:1, Insightful) by Hymer (856453) on Wednesday November 09, @05:19PM (#13992913) Is SuSE without Hubert Mantel a SuSE people want ? [ Reply to ThisRe:The question for Novell is... by TrekCycling (Score:3) Wednesday November 09, @05:33PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. My Bet (Score:4, Insightful) by Crimsane (815761) <crimsonking@geekspot.org> on Wednesday November 09, @05:22PM (#13992934) (http://www.geekspot.org/) If I had to make a wager as to why he left, I would bet someone close to him got layed off and he put his own job on the line to defend them.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. [ Reply to This Probably not a big deal (Score:5, Insightful) by Jherek Carnelian (831679) on Wednesday November 09, @05:22PM (#13992941) This departure is probably no big deal. Every single "amicable" corporation acquisition that I have ever seen worked out the same way. The founders of the acquired company stay on board in order to help assure a smooth merger. But after about a year or so, they almost always take off for new projects. I suspect that sticking around until now was a contractual obligation on his part as part of selling the company.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. [ Reply to ThisRe:Probably not a big deal by segedunum (Score:1) Wednesday November 09, @05:37PMRe:Probably not a big deal by T-Ranger (Score:1) Wednesday November 09, @06:30PMRe:Probably not a big deal by superpulpsicle (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @08:13PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.1 reply beneath your current threshold. Yet another Novell failure (Score:3, Interesting) by stryemer (34743) on Wednesday November 09, @05:23PM (#13992956) Someone should put a stop to Novell. SuSE may be the next in a long line of great products (Corel, WordPerfect, etc) that Novell flushes down the toilet. It's really too bad because from my experience with SuSE was better than RedHat and Windows. Hey Novell management, fire yourselves! [ Reply to ThisRe:Yet another Novell failure by rm69990 (Score:3) Wednesday November 09, @06:10PM Restructure... (Score:5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 09, @05:24PM (#13992968) / Sorry, SuSE's restructuring supposed   \| that chamaleon got fired. Get used to  || me: the more efficient, featureful     |\ allmighty and POSIX compliant Clippy!  /        \     ____         \   / __ \          \  O|  |O|             ||  | |             ||  | |             ||    |              |___/ [ Reply to ThisRe:Restructure... by AndroidCat (Score:1) Wednesday November 09, @05:44PMRe:Restructure... by keg (Score:1) Wednesday November 09, @07:08PMRe:K5ARP, we love you by HishamMuhammad (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @09:11PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.2 replies beneath your current threshold. So why no KDE?? (Score:5, Interesting) by questro (802656) on Wednesday November 09, @05:26PM (#13992987) Is this guy leaving because KDE is being dropped? I really like SuSE and have been using it for a while. KDE is a big part of that. I like the polish. Is there some license issue that's driving the KDE issue? What gives? I hate to go switching distros AGAIN! This is why I stopped using RedHat/Fedora. [ Reply to ThisRe:So why no KDE?? by cloudmaster (Score:3) Wednesday November 09, @05:31PMRe:So why no KDE?? by wik (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @08:03PM2 replies beneath your current threshold.Re:So why no KDE?? by rm69990 (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @06:13PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:So why no KDE?? by billybob2 (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @08:47PMRe:So why no KDE?? by houghi (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @09:08PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Those Ximain Guys? (Score:2, Redundant) by Erore (8382) on Wednesday November 09, @05:26PM (#13992997) Rather interesting choice of words there at the end referring to the talent of the Ximian folks. Makes me wonder his resignation is tied to possible internal power struggles between KDE centric SUSE folks and GNOME centric Ximian developers. From last weeks announcement we know who won those battles, and it's possible his resignation is just part of the fallout. [ Reply to This1 reply beneath your current threshold. Not Unexpected. Next Stop Bankruptcy (Score:4, Interesting) by segedunum (883035) on Wednesday November 09, @05:32PM (#13993047) Well, some of us could have told him that as soon as Novell took over Suse. Novell has a terrible track record of making anything work. 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. [ Reply to ThisRe:Not Unexpected. Next Stop Bankruptcy by deviator (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @07:52PMRe:Not Unexpected. Next Stop Bankruptcy by plieb (Score:1) Wednesday November 09, @10:57PM The Conversations (Score:4, Funny) by mpapet (761907) <mpapet@@@yahoo...com> on Wednesday November 09, @05:33PM (#13993048) (http://www.michaelpapet.com/) The guy probably heard a few of these lines before throwing in the towel.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! [ Reply to ThisRe:The Conversations by segedunum (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @05:44PM Re:The Conversations (Score:4, Funny) by The Monster (227884) on Wednesday November 09, @05:51PM (#13993213) (http://slashdot.org/) 10. I think we need to establish a committee to deal with that.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. ...again.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! [ Reply to This | Parent fork it? (Score:2, Interesting) by towsonu2003 (928663) on Wednesday November 09, @05:37PM (#13993082) someone better fork (open)suse as soon as possible before it dies with novell... [ Reply to ThisRe:fork it? by rm69990 (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @06:17PM Ximian division? (Score:3, Interesting) by LittleLebowskiUrbanA (619114) on Wednesday November 09, @05:41PM (#13993126) (http://slashdot.org/~LittleLebowskiUrbanA/journal/ | Last Journal: Saturday July 23, @03:42PM) After all, there are lots of extremely skilled people over there in the Ximian division    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. [ Reply to ThisRe:Ximian division? by Stumbles (Score:1) Wednesday November 09, @06:41PMRe:Ximian division? by Jason Earl (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @07:33PM I have been on the fence, but this does it (Score:1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 09, @05:45PM (#13993157) I've never particularly liked the leadership and vision of RedHat. I guess RPM worked on some level and put them on the map, but I've hated it since I first started having to use it.So I've always been hoping for another group to step up. I thought I had found it with SuSE, where I experenced for the first time on Linux, something approaching a fully integrated GUI.However, this move signals that Ximian is going to start to get their hands all over SuSE and essentially ruin it. I hated the Ximian Desktop and those guys have absolutely NO SENSE WHATSOEVER about polish and quality. They royally suck. Then, add in stupid crap like MONO and that whole nonsense, and it's so easy to decide it's not even funny. GNU classpath is almost there, Eclipse already compiles and runs on Fedora core.You can get every level of fully community supported+bleeding edge, community supported on top of enterprise-ready (whitebox, centos, etc.), all the way to complete enterprise support.It's been a long, hard fought and well deserved win for RedHat in the area of Linux dominance through proper leadership instead of strong-armed tactics. I'm going all Fedora/RedHat on all my new systems. [ Reply to ThisRe:Avoid disappointment by rm69990 (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @06:20PMRe:Avoid disappointment by LnxAddct (Score:2) Wednesday November 09, @06:22PM2 replies beneath your current threshold. all I have to say is... (Score:3, Funny)