Well, this caught me as a surprise, but according to Tectonic Stafford Masie - Novell's South Africa Country Manager, and the brave soul who appeared at the CITI forum and Q&A shortly after the announcement of the Microvell deal, is leaving for Google.

As is customary, Stafford cannot or will not make any comments prior to his official departure from Novell. Google is, in my mind, a step up in terms of prestige and I would like to congratulate Stafford Masie and wish him success, and thank him for the source of some of my favorite postings.

My Stafford Masie Greatest Hits List

• Stafford Masie explaining the background of Novell's official entry into the Linux Space, so to speak.
• Stafford explains the negative effects of Microsoft's FUD campaign, then he admits that Novell now sees that FUD as a competitive edge since their deal.
• Here is one of the first times that I recall Novell distinguishing themselves as "Mixed Source", although at the time Masie termed it as a "Hybrid Stack" approach.
• Then, of course there is Stafford Masie at his most prophetic, and I would be remiss to omit this now-classic assertion, which was made long before the GPLv3 patent provisions were taking shape, that also seems to have come true.
• And, finally, there seems to be no progress to date on Stafford's expectation of Native OpenDocument support in Microsoft Office.