Walter Knapp was an arrogant tool. Good riddance.

Matt, where do you get your info? Walter has never been a GM of Suse or anything else for that matter. Neither he has been a head (effective or however you want to call it) of the Linux Impact Team.
Please get your facts straight.

You're right on the GM thing - I pulled that off his Spoke profile....I guess he (or someone) put down the wrong info for him. I haven't been there for two years, remember.

As for his role with LIT, I stand by that. Nancy ran it, but Walter was the effective lead on it. I got that from many people within the company, LIT and otherwise.

Someone has bravely been making comments anonymously, trashing Walter (and probably is the same person who occasionally bothers to trash me). If you can't think of something nice to say, at least put your name next to the rude commentary. I'm not going to publish your comments otherwise. It's fine to be a coward, but don't expect to have your words published as such.

I haven't bothered to trash you, since there wasn't any reason to do so. I won't allow my name to be put in public, since I don't care to lose my job at Novell. I was part of the LIT, and saw up close just what a dolt Walter is. I was one of the people he was supposed to find a new job for. If I had left it up to him, I would be unemployed right now. Sorry if you don't like hearing the truth about someone you obviously like, but that's the way it goes. He may very well be a perfectly nice person outside of work. For those people that had to report to him, he was a nightmare.

Are you people concentrating of hailing people? Good or Bad!? Why not recommend to Novell all your best ideas for their considerations improving their great interests or product lines. Stop thinking a company would die or gone wrong because of one or two persons leaving out. There are so many infinite reasons behind.. no gossip please! I think the author is not fair enough..

Undoubtedly Walter and Ted are likable guys, but you shouldn't confuse personality with perfromance. There we're dozens of unsung heroes that did far more than Walter or Ted combined.

According to
http://www.streetinsider.com/Contributors/McAfee,+Novell,+And+Company:+New+Takeover+Technique/2144525.html , Novell might become (or has become) a takeover target.

If IBM doesn't take over Novell, then people at Novell and IBM should be fired. It now makes entirely too much sense. IN fact, all of Novell's actions since Messman fired Stone makes complete sense if you believe Novell is heading for an IBM buyout.

look, "people" might be upset over the microsoft/novell deal but none of us suse users are. do the community a favor and move one for cripes sake. there must be better things to write about then spreading novell fud.

hmmm...

Uhm, is there some REASON he left Novell? Other than the vague "for other work"?

Implying that it's all about the Microsoft deal is not sufficient. How about some facts?

As for Novell being taken over by IBM, fine, whatever. Email me when this happens. Personally I'd love to see IBM get their own real distro and it might do Suse a world of good to get somebody with the money and manpower to test the releases adequately.

Now if we could only get someone to buy Ubuntu - or PCLinuxOS and provide Tex with a real salary so he can keep up the good work.

Anything to stop the headlong rush to eye candy and "nothing works and nobody cares" that most of the Linux distros appear to be heading toward.

It's a shame. I used to be a huge Novell fan and huge advocate of Netware. Novell could have been great for linux. But they had to get in bed with Microsoft and ruin everything. Microsoft is trying to divide the community into patent haves and have nots, and Novell did it for them. But if Microsoft succeeds in destroying linux using this tactic, no patent pact will save Novell from going down with the ship.

Hi Geek49203. I'm a SuSE user and I'm still upset. You're assertion is therefore patently false.

Hi Geek49203. I WAS a suse user and I'm still upset. I took all my suse material (manuals, disks, box, etc) and tossed it all in the trash. Your assertion is completely false.

heathenx writes:
> look, "people" might be upset over the
> microsoft/novell deal but none of us suse
> users are.

False. I used to run SuSE on my machines and recommend it to clients and friends. That's all stopped. It isn't FUD to inform people of strategic blunders made by their suppliers that have long-term consequences for critical technology --- especially when there are good (or even better) alternatives available.

The reason Walter Knapp left was two-fold. The Linux Impact Team was being disbanded. And Walter decided he would never get promoted to a vice president position if he stayed. So, he took the severance package and left. That's it, end of story. Nothing to do with Microsoft, or anything else.

For the record, I never said Walter left because of the Microsoft deal. I'm not sure where people are getting that. Re-read the post. I said he's leaving. I said Novell will be the poorer for him. End of story.

I do know that many in the company aren't happy about the patent deal, and that some of the engineers (the Linux savvy engineers) were on the way out, only to be pulled back in with golden (financial) handcuffs. In fact, I suspect that some of got paid with the Microsoft money. Ah, the irony.... :-)

Btw, Anonymous, you wouldn't happen to have the name of one of the Biblical gospels, would you? ;-)

".....but none of us suse users are....."

Hey Heathenx, don't speak for all SUSE users, because when you do, you put your foot squarely in your mouth. I'm glad you're not upset with the deal, but I am. I am just as upset with rug/zmd/zypper and anything that comes from de Icaza.

The way I see it, Novell allowed the Ximian group to pollute SUSE, crippling it. I still use SUSE because for my money, I feel it is still the best. That doesn't mean I agree with the current decisions.

Enjoy

Im another (former) suse user who is highly critical of the novell sellout. The day I heard of the pact I removed Suse from my 3 production servers. I went from a big suse supporter to an equally large critic. Dont get me wrong, I thought the OS was good, at least up to 10.0, my last distro. But I refuse to support a company that betrays the community the way novell did.

Ditto Ian. I am now an EX-SuSE user having switched first to Mepis and now to Kubuntu (maybe going to PCLinuxOS when it gets back online).

The reason people are thinking you said that Walter left because of the Microsoft agreement is your very first paragraph:
"While John Dragoon ... attempts to confuse the issue as to why people are annoyed with the Microsoft/Novell pact... the Novell exodus continues...with Walter Knapp..."

You're the one that conflated the two topics. If you think they're entirely separate concepts, you shouldn't have put them in the same posting, let alone the same sentence.

BTW, Walter didn't work out of the Waltham office. He worked in an entirely different state.

Walter was pathetic to the point that I would never let him talk to one of my customer again. When SLED was right about to ship, he was doing a demo for a very large customer of mine and shows that he's running XP. He just matter of factly states to my customer "Oh yeah, I don't use Linux desktop myself because I'm a power user" Worthless tool

[ASAY COMMENTS: If so, that's not saying much for Novell. If your best is a worthless tool, what does that say about the rest of the company? ;-) ]

Matt, you're the one saying that Walter was one of our best. By my calling him a worthless tool, one could assume that I disagree with your opinion :)

Do not judge the level of talent we have here at Novell based on Walter. He was definitely not the stud that you made him out to be. You admitted that it's been a couple years since you've worked here. A lot has changed since.