Summary: Novell vice president and also a director move on to other companies; Novell's possession of UNIX continues to raise questions

NOVELL IS still up for sale and negotiations are kept secret (none of the many potential bidders gets named). To some of Novell's managers, the writings on the wall have been apparent for several months now, so they left a while ago. For others, the time is now.

One of Novell's latest losses is the former President of Novell Canada and recently the Vice President of Channels for Novell America, according to this new press release.

Named one of the ‘Most Powerful Women of the Channel’ by VAR Business in 2008, McAuliff’s strategic leadership at Novell, Inc. saw her rise from sales executive to President of Novell Canada and then Vice President of Channels for Novell America where she was responsible for leadership of the Channel Sales Organizations as well as the creation and execution of Novell’s Channel Programs in North and South America.

Another senior person (director of ISV ecosystems) is leaving Novell to join Red Hat:

Red Hat has hired a Novell veteran to lead the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) push into the IT channel, The VAR Guy has learned. Kevin Pereau, Novell’s former director of ISV ecosystems, joined Red Hat about six weeks ago. Here’s the update, plus a closer look at how Red Hat plans to position RHEV against VMware vSphere and and Microsoft Hyper-V.

Combining these with some other recent departures (like Novell's CTO), the company is not in a good shape. It's not easy to recruit talent for a company that's in the process of being sold and whose future is so uncertain.

“It's not easy to recruit talent for a company that's in the process of being sold and whose future is uncertain.”As we showed yesterday, Microsoft is now marketing GNU/Linux FUD, using Novell. The FUD turns out to have come from this joint press release with Novell directly involved. Does Novell wish to be disliked even more among Free software supporters?

SCO's game against Linux (with copyrights) is over, but Microsoft is now using software patents (with Novell) to suppress adoption of GNU/Linux. There is also concern about ownership of UNIX now that Novell is open to an acquisition (which includes UNIX). Novell's stewardship of UNIX is not the safest thing and it's unlikely that UNIX will be released to the public domain. Novell spent a lot of money getting this valuable asset, which is the main reason it fought in court for shareholders (the PR department says it was for "the community"). ⬆