Borland Software Corp. CEO Dale Fuller resigned Thursday after the company reported preliminary financial results that were lower than expected.

Fuller will continue as a member of the company"s board of directors; Borland Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Scott Arnold will take over as interim CEO.

Fuller"s departure coincided with Scotts Valley, Calif.-based Borland"s announcement that revenue for the second quarter would be lower than expected based on preliminary financial results. Fuller, who worked for Borland for six years, was initially brought on board to sell the company, said Gartner Inc. analyst Mark Driver.

"Ironically, he brought it back to profitability," Driver said. "[But] it has been a slow slide down since then."

That slide, according to Driver, is in large part a result of the success of open-source development tools from the Eclipse Foundation. "[Borland"s] Java IDE [integrated development environment] was at one point the best-selling one on the planet," Driver said. "Eclipse has a had a tremendous impact on them. How do you make money on tools when more and more you are competing against free? They waited too long to address Eclipse."

Based on preliminary data, Borland expects to report total quarterly revenue of $65 million to $67 million, lower than the US$70 million to $73 million it had projected. The company declined to provide further details on Fuller"s departure, but said in a statement that the board doesn"t expect any additional changes in leadership.