Tags: Linux

SuSE Linux founder Hubert Mantel leaves Novell

SuSE Linux founder Hubert Mantel has announced that he is leaving his position at Novell. His resignation came in a mass mailing list. He said in a brief letter, sent to recipients in a SuSE mailing list that he no longer can work in the company, which acquired SuSE in 2004. He said: “Too late for me. I just decided to leave SuSE/Novell. This is no longer the company I founded 13 years ago.”

Novell has confirmed that Hubert has resigned but gave little details out. A statement from the company said: “We can confirm that Hubert Mantel has tendered his resignation to Novell. However, this departure does not impact Novell’s Linux strategy or our ability to execute on that strategy.”

This is just the latest of the series of high level resignations Novell has seen in the last couple of weeks. In October, former Novell EMEA and SuSE channel chief Petra Heinrich announced her exit and took a new position at Open-Xchange, an open-source e-mail company based in Germany. Before that, former Novell EMEA president and onetime SuSE president Richard Seibt left Novell.

Mantel added in his message: “I have been the maintainer of the SuSE kernel for more than a decade now. 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.” This news come just das after Novell announced massive job cuts in the company.