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Open Source Advocate VP Chris Stone Leaves Novell

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the greener-pastures dept.

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?"

14 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. They Got 'Political Capital' with Us by brandonp · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!

    1. Re:They Got 'Political Capital' with Us by lawpoop · · Score: 5, Funny
      Dude, the word 'political' has no 'u's in it.

      Oh, wait, I read "They got 'Political' with Capital U's." n/m.

      --
      Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
      -- Pablo Picasso
  2. Kicked Out? by BisonHoof · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

  3. Isn't it obvious? by nightsweat · · Score: 5, Funny

    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
  4. Re:I will say one thing: by scupper · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Novell extends open-source push
    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.
  5. Wall Street didn't appreciate it by scupper · · Score: 5, Interesting

    http://www.reuters.com/financeNewsArticle.jhtml?ty pe=businessNews&storyID=6727589
    "Software maker Novell Inc.'s stock (NOVL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) fell 4.5 percent after the company announced the departure of Chris Stone, its vice chairman"
  6. "Capturing value" vs. free beer by xtermin8 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "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.

  7. Re:He's coming to MS. by billbaggins · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I call shenanigans (sp?).

    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:

    Cornett wrote that the $2 million severance package, plus health care, given to Stone "suggests that Mr. Stone was asked to resign." The severance details were unveiled in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
    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
  8. Re:He's coming to MS == Bullshit troll by tomhudson · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Novell vice-chairman kicked out of office
    http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?News ID=2564 A choice quote:
    According to an official statement, Stone has left "to pursue other opportunities". It is rather more likely however that he has become a victim of his own political manoeuvering.
    ... or you can try this ... http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/softwa re/story/0,10801,97278,00.html
    He returned again though when Eric Schmidt stepped down as CEO and was replaced by Jack Messman.

    Messman appears to be just as keen to retain his CEO role as Schmidt was however.
    ... and ...
    Cornett wrote that the $2 million severance package, plus health care, given to Stone "suggests that Mr. Stone was asked to resign." The severance details were unveiled in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
    Office politics, pure and simple.
  9. what it is like to work with Stone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:what it is like to work with Stone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      To dispel the troll myth let me put it this way, Stone was in my cubicle once a week to review things. Was he a good motivator? yes. Was he technically astute? no. He was good at knowing current buzzwords in the industry like 'XML database' but he lacked the technical ability to see how useful the buzzword was. Was the company fun to work at? Not really. The engineers never really knew the direction of the final product. The company had a feeling to it like it was being run by old IBM exec's, which was weird for a startup.

  10. Re:Sky is not falling, no film at 11 by dodgy_knickers · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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

  11. Re:He's coming to MS. by tomtomclub · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

  12. Re:He's coming to MS. by archen · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.