Suse Linux founder Hubert Mantel announced his resignation from Novell Tuesday in a mass e-mailing.
Mantel said in a brief letter, sent to recipients in a Suse mailing list, that he could no longer work for the company, which acquired Suse in January 2004.
"Too late for me. I just decided to leave Suse/Novell," Mantel wrote. "This is no longer the company I founded 13 years ago."
A Novell spokeswoman confirmed Mantel’s resignation but gave no further details. “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,” she said in an e-mailed statement.
Mantel's exit is the latest executive departure from Novell’s Nuremberg, Germany-based Suse unit. In October, former Novell EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Asia) 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. And in May, former Novell EMEA president and onetime Suse president Richard Seibt left Novell.