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No details have been given as to Seibt's future plans or the dynamics behind his departure. However, his role within Novell was less than clear even at the time of the acquisition, when Novell CEO Jack Messman said he would: 'oversee the integration of SUSE into Novell'.

Seibt's duties will be assumed by Ron Hovsepian, president, Worldwide Field Operations, but Novell's Bruce Lowry hinted that this too may be transitory.

'Richard decided to leave Novell for personal reasons, and we don't know what his follow on plans are ... Ron Hovsepian, recently promoted to president of Novell's Worldwide Field Operations, will oversee EMEA for the time being,' he said. 'Richard had begun the process of transforming the field organization to a more customer focused, rather than product focused, team and that will continue under Ron's direction.'

Seibt joined SUSE - the number two Linux operating system behind Red Hat - in 1993, having previously worked in IBM.