“I had more than 1 year of time to think about my future and came to the conclusion that the thing I’m most interested in still is Linux.” During an exclusive interview to Data Manager Online and pc-facile, SuSe co-founder confirms, after he left one year ago, he’s back at Novell since early December.
A big welcome back to one of the true top guys in the F/OSS world.
its good to see the high profile using their fame to bring linux into the mainstream
(if nothing else more positive press coverage involving linux)
.. IMO good short interesting interview
Welcome back in the full time OSS philosophy involvement job to Hubert Mantel
I wonder what job he now has – ?
Interesting little infolets I didnt know about SuSE
I’m amazed that YaST was already there from the start .
🙂
I agree that it was a good interview, and it was certainly interesting to learn some of those little tidbits. When Mr. Mantel left Novell, a big stink was made. Since he came back, this is the first that I’ve heard about it.
It’s also interesting to hear his perspective as one of the founders of SUSE on the MS/Novell deal. I agree that we should be interested in doing what’s best for Linux rather than what’s bad for MS. When considering the arguments that I’ve heard that have actually focused on the effect of the deal on Linux directly, the positive seems much more concrete than the negative.
Regarding YaST, to me a distribution is most uniquely characterized by package management and setup tools. I actually assumed that YaST was there fairly early on. Many of the newer distributions reuse mature tools now, but those tools weren’t available when SUSE was in its infancy.
Edited 2006-12-19 21:23
welcome back Hubert!
When he left you could see gobs of comments he returns and voice that he is inline with Novell’s moves and all of a sudden everyone is on mute. Eugenia I know you have the post from his departure. Please be so kind to tell me the stats of the rants vs today.
As a community we still seem to focus on the negative, unless the positive is in direct contact with Microsoft. I am still searching for the community unity welcome back Hubert
Not even open source advocates are immune to being caught up in sensationalism. That’s just the way we, humans, are.
I am still searching for the community unity welcome back Hubert
Well, in fairness this is probably news to the community. I like to try and keep on top of things, read the trades, visit forums, planetsuse, that sort of thing, and I haven’t seen a whisper anywhere about this.
If you hit google news, you’ll only find two references to this: the article, and this OS News article about the article.
I’m sure the reception from most people will be positive, excluding a few disgruntled primates
I’m just in awe of the absolute cone of silence over this as far as communications goes. Hell, with the PR blunders Novell has suffered through recently I would have thought they’d be happy to announce Hubert’s return, even if his departure was wrapped in a bit of controversy. But to not even see a mention of it from the developer blogs of people working at Suse that even worked with Hubert in the past? Frankly, I’m cynical enough to be suspicious.
Hell, with the PR blunders Novell has suffered through recently I would have thought they’d be happy to announce Hubert’s return, even if his departure was wrapped in a bit of controversy.
Well, Novell’s PR/Marketing isn’t exactly known for efficiency or expediency.
When he left you could see gobs of comments he returns and voice that he is inline with Novell’s moves and all of a sudden everyone is on mute.
Basically, like everyone else, Mantel needs to pay his bills, which is indicated by him towing the party line over the Microspoft deal ;-). It has been debated to death as to why that was an extremely bad idea, and how the deal, in reality, is actually totally worthless to Novell.
Rest assured, the comments he made when he left are his true feelings.
hopefully this return will seal Novells commitment to providing a first class KDE desktop as assiduously as they do for Gnome.