Novell today terminated CEO Jack Messman and CFO Joseph Tibbetts. Messman is replaced immediately by Ronald Hovsepian, Dana Russell is interim CFO.

Novell has long been the hardest-to-parse of the major OS vendors. To say they "owned" the network market in the early 90s is to understate things. Their fumbles have been extraordinary. Lately, I've liked their plan to become a major Linux vendor, but execution is everything, especially in the tricky world of making money by being a corporate supporter of OSS.