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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?"
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?"
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!
He may have been told where the door was. http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?News ID=2564
Too bad.
The Evolution will not be televised.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
I mean, all I want to do is bind to my god damned LDAP tree using SASL. Is that so much to ask? You can connect to IMAP servers using SASL mechanisms with Evolution, so what gives with LDAP?
Published: May 11, 2004, 12:42 PM PDT
By Stephen Shankland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Excerpt:
Get help somewhere.
tr.v. sited, siting, sites
To situate or locate on a site: sited the power plant by the river.
tr.v. cited, citing, cites
To quote as an authority or example.
Do it now, before it's too late.
No, Vern. They just let him in.
http://www.reuters.com/financeNewsArticle.jhtml?t
This does make sense. Microsoft has been under increasing pressure since *they* think that Open Source has really degraded *their* 'image'.
Though some of they work is good and genuinely well-intentioned, the OSS community know that they never really had an 'image' to begin with among the UN*X/OSS community - and I don't believe I need to expand or prove that claim. Maybe to organisations, companies and average users; but not to anyone who understand how MS 'thinks' collectively.
I think Ballmer's open desparation to cut-down Linux is continuing its established course.
As they have said Open Source/Linux is a concern to them and they continue to over-estimate the threat.
"Mr. Stone was instrumental in pushing Novell toward a strategy of capturing value from open-source software, as opposed to other members of management maybe more inclined toward giving away Linux to fuel demand for [Novell's] other offerings" As a potential user, and not a stockholder, his leaving doesn't sound like bad news. He pushed a Red Hat-like strategy vs IBM style strategy? "Respected open-source advocate?" Sounds like he was a businessman making business decisions.
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.)
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
1) If 'younger ones' at MSFT already know about this (suggesting it's widely known in Redmond), why is an AC posting on /. the first the rest of the world hears about the alleged offer?
2) From TFA:
Doesn't exactly tally with your tale of Ballmer buying him off. Which is not to say that he couldn't go to MSFT, but I doubt that Redmond was his intended destination when he left."The best argument against democracy is a five minute chat with the average voter."
--Winston Churchill
Maybe Ballmer wants to Open Source Windows and has hired him to show them how to do it?
Stick Men
http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?New
"UID"? That sounds like Linux talk to me! You're not from MicroSoft!
Even just reading the article, it sounds, at best, Stone was a "fan" or "enthusiast" not an "advocate." It doesn't hurt to remember that its flaky idealists who championed and continue to advocate opensource/free software. Its nice to have mainstream business understand the benefits, but these guys have different agendas- its "Evolution", not "Revolution," after all.
I worked with Chris Stone at his startup company tilion. I was never really impressed by Stone and here's why.
We spent 2 years putting together a fancy XML based web application for inventory tracking at Stone's Tilion web startup company in Maynard. We went, burned, through about 26 million. The sales people couldn't sell the Tilion product at all. Nobody wanted it. Stone desperately tried to retool the product several times by adding in other third party software. We just ended up spending more money on a more expensive product that still nobody wanted! Eventually the investors showed up one day and pulled the plug on the company.
I followed his path for awhile after he left Tilion for Novell. He seemed to be doing the exact same thing he did at Tilion his failed startup: buying up third party software and mashing it all together. My guess is the same exact thing happened at Novell which happened at Tilion: a lot of money was spent and sales didn't increase -- a practice which is discouraged in the corporate world.
In conclusion, lately I have been seeing Stone as the Al Gore of software executives. Just because he claims to have 'invented' CORBA doesn't necessarily mean he is a good business leader. He is a decent guy but just not a great leader.
Well, if this does come to pass it may indicate a whiplash inducing U turn (MS embracing the internet with IE). Right now MS is trying to destory Linux with FUD and is failing miserably. Even Balmer has to see this. If MS really wants to prevail in the market, it will HAVE to return to it's core strategy of "embrace and extend". This would mean a MS branded linux, with ports of proprietary (non GPL) sofware such as DirectX, MS Office, IE, etc. Mixing proprietary with GPL has already been done in many distributions. They should also provide a developer kit for porting their applications to MS Linux, especially games. Right now gaming is where Linux is weakest and is a MS strength. IF MS were to port DirectX and a development kit (for porting MS Windows games to MS Linux) they would in quickly 'own' linux on the desktop for gaming and could leverage this to other core areas (ie. office software). I have to wonder if this wouldn't have happened already if Gates was still running the show.
With the provisio that Stone may be going somewhere, the posters indication office politics are probably correct. The "Shootout at O.K. Corral" probably went along the lines of "Stone thinks he's responsible for the recent upswing in interest Novell products." And therefore threatens Messman tenure. Yet, "Messman thinks he made the right choice bringing Stone back and will make further right choices pertatining to the future of Novell." This probably went before the board. The board would have to decide in favor of Messman as he was there first. Messman gets the first chance to show that he is the one responsible for the turnaround. So Stone gets walking papers. Messman is on his own now. If Messman can't sustain the momentum, look for Stone to replace him (if isn't getting rich beating up Novell somewhere else). In the past Novell's boards have shown criminal neglect in monitoring their CEO's perfomances and thus slow to act when removing them. I mean, the rest of the world new Microsoft was wiping Novell off the face of the LAN, but no one at Novell seemed to. Novell fans can hope the board has learned how to read and do math by now. Personally, from some of the speeches Messman has given, I don't hold much out for him (Either Brainshare 2002 or 2003 I think). Not only does he not seem to know what open source is, but what Novell's role in it is either. He's been roundly ridiculed in the trade press for such gaffs and coming off as an opportunist rather than at a minimum, a convinced advocate. We should know in the next year or so. TT
Actually I doubt MS could open source all of windows even if they wanted to. I think there's a lesson to be learned from the Netscape code. Netscape spent a LOT of time ripping out proprietary parts that belonged to other people. I can only imagine how much licensed code is stuffed into windows.
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.
;)) 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.
(Now back to the topic
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.
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).
Good point. When Netscape Confusicator was released as OSS, it diddnt so much as compile. As you say, too much cross-licensed code ripped out. And, I suspect, the build enviroment was weird enough that that was a major hurdle.
But the community at large was highly motivated to build a better browser, and Netscape had staff working on it too. Some of those staff members, JWZ with xemacs and xscreensaver, had experience with OSS projects.
Is the same true of Microsoft? If they wanted to, and if they activly persued it, could they create a community around an OSS Windows, and get more back they they put out? (lets be honest, that is the reason any company, "good" or "evil" by any definition, releases stuff as OSS) Interesting question.
After claiming they want to move to a more Service oriented model, Novell has lost (will lose, has it come out yet?) their VP of Worldwide Services, Bob Couture. Now they lose Chris Stone and the issue has reportedly has something to do with his management style with regards to their Open Source developers.
There is a culture war underway between the products side of the house and the services side. This is the beginning of much restructuring at the big red N house...
Over the years, Novell has had just four CEOs. I can't count the number of vice presidents/vice somethings they've hired that had intentions of ruling the Novell world. They read like the who's who in business.
The acquisitions were pretty good, although Novell's not known for integrating their acquisitions very well-- if at all given they let Unix slip from their fingers at a crucial time.
Novell has one of the strictest hierarchies in the business world. That hasn't changed, and likely never will until they're acquired. It's their corporate culture-- embedded by Ray Noorda-- still another guy that tried to face down Bill Gates and lost. So, Stone's departure isn't any news; it was simply a matter of how long Chris could survive there.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
The biggest problem I still see with Novell is that they don't understand the desktop.
.deb packages? Last I looked at it, it was a manual install.
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
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.
Sounds like computerworld really needed a story honestly. An employee leaving doesn't always mean because they diss the company.. In fact, if you read the article, they dont even interview him to get the facts straight.
Sadly, I hope this form of media reports, based on jumping to conclusions isn't the future of journelism