Bonum Certa Men Certa

Novell Does More Harm Than Good at This Stage

Stop button

Summary: An overview of Novell's activities over the past month, showing both weaknesses and threats to the Free software community

NOVELL is already an historical company, whose trademark may stay for a while because it is widely recognised. Novell is generally mentioned in the Utah press because of its proprietary legacy, not the new paths which did not work out after Microsoft had joined. Also from Utah ("Salt Lake marketers offer advice for 2011"):



Mark Steele, a Marketing Manager at Novell offers this terrific advice, “ If you want to sell your stuff through a third party channel, take a look at your product and potential customers, to help you decide whether to take any and all partners to sell to all the many that buy your product; or focus on a few that will reach your select clientele.”


Novell is still a proprietary software company stuck in a proprietary mindset. The people who were community members as well as employees got laid off so that Ron Hovsepian, the CEO, can enjoy his massive bonuses which equate the annual wage of something like 100 full-time developers. And yes, that's just the bonus for one single person in a collapsing firm.

“Novell is rapidly becoming a big liability.”The management of Novell may still rely on some apologists, such as Bruce Byfield, who is still standing up for corporate abuse of power (he always defended Novell). It is always amusing that apologists for corporate abuse of power try to describe other analyses as "conspiracy" while the conspiracy exists (a rebuttal to this piece was linked here some days ago). Well, here it is again with an even sillier headline (containing the word "Conspiracy" too).

Novell is rapidly becoming a big liability. As Jan Wildeboer of Red Hat put it, "even if procedural, indication of a change in #CPTN setup. New partners joining? Some partner(s) leaving? [...] CPTN withdrawal raises bigger question: Is #AttachMSFT/NOVL deal in troubled waters? At least doesn't go as planned AFAICS."

The head of the FSFE replies to him by posting the "[o]riginal FSFE letter to German competition authorities re Novell, CPTN" and as our reader Satipera put it: "Again. The original reasoning behind patents involved public disclosure yet Attachmate has not even listed the patents. NDA's proliferate..."

Wayne has responded to disinformation about it, coming from WatchTroll as we noted the other day.

Gene doesn’t think that Open Source or Free Software is a good idea. He’s wrong, mostly because he doesn’t understand what Free Software really is (and he’s not alone in this). He also doesn’t seem to understand the difference between Free Software and Open Source.


We could go on and on giving new examples of Novell's failure as a company (see Nick Farrell's "Ye book of Revelation of Novell" and Nick Farrell's coverage about the CPTN scandal). Novell gets treated as a problem, not merely a victim.

Groklaw points out that Singer, the vulture who put Novell on sale against its will, is crowned one of the "The Most Profitable Hedge Funds, Thanks to Fees -- Not Performance"

OZ Master, by Daniel Och for Och-Ziff Management, ranked sixth in profits, and Elliott International, by Paul Singer for Elliott Management, ranked seventh, but they tied for 99th in performance: a 6.7% return. According to Bloomberg Markets, the S&P 500 index gained 6% over the same span. Not much value added there for those fees.


Novell's planned acquisition is mentioned in [1, 2] (mostly annual roundups) and another site points out that: "As part of the transaction, Elliott Management Corporation, one of Novell’s largest shareholders, will become an equity shareholder in Attachmate Corporation."

“The truth of the matter is that Novell is on its last foot/toe...”See this report [1, 2] which claims: "Back in 1995, Novell Corp. of Waltham, Massachusetts, had $2 billion in revenue and was considered a rival to Cisco Systems Inc. in computer networking. Cisco then was only 10 percent larger than Novell by revenue. Today, with revenue below $1 billion, Novell is less than 3 percent of Cisco’s size. In November it agreed to be purchased by Attachmate Corp. for $2.2 billion."

As another site claims, "the stack providers have gaps, which makes Red Hat and a portion of Novell interesting." Well, Novell might not be around for much longer. Someone from the comments section in CNET says that "Novell's vaunted BrainShare (finally) died awhile ago." Novell will attend the National Retail Federation Show, but it's nothing like having one's own event. The truth of the matter is that Novell is on its last foot/toe and Novell customers/users face uncertainty, which helps not at all. Timothy Prickett Morgan explains: [1, 2]

Thoma Bravo was also one of the investors in the Attachmate conglomerate, which added together host access and application transformation vendors Attachmate and WRQ and systems management and security tool vendors NetIQ and PentaSafe. By the way, Thoma Bravo has a hand in the $2.2 billion acquisition of Novell by Attachmate, which was announced two weeks ago.

Thoma Bravo is showing legacy software businesses more attention than either IBM or Novell have done in a decade. If you have ever wondered what you would do if you could buy the IBM midrange business, think about this: Orlando Bravo and Scott Crabill, the managing partners at the private equity firm who have been behind all of these investments, do not have to wonder. They seem to be doing it, bit by bit, and they know.


In summary, all we can state is that Novell is irrelevant to Free software and all it does to it right now is elevate risk to it, not just with the patent sale but also with OOXML, Mono, Moonlight, and other bits of Microsoft enablement. Why are some people still defending Novell?

Recent Techrights' Posts

Pushers of systemd Rewrite History (Richard Stallman Said UNIX "Was Portable and Seemed Fairly Clean")
Unlike systemd
Trajectory of The Register: From News Site/s Into "B2B"... and Into Microsoft Salespeople
Something isn't right at The Register
 
The Week to Come
Planning ahead
LLM Slop Has Only Been a Boon for Misinformation Online
The very same companies that were supposed to maintain quality (again, not limited to Google with PageRank) are now actively participating in generating and spreading slop
When They Tell You It's Free, Does That Mean No Charges (If So, Who's Paying and Why)?
there's "no free lunch"
We're Going to Focus Less on the Molotov Cocktail-Throwing Microsofters and More on Patents
We can get back to focusing on what we wanted to focus on all along
Just Trying to Keep Web Sites Honest (Journalistic Integrity)
the latest articles in LinuxIac are real
Links 27/07/2025: Political Affairs, Data Breaches, Attacks on Freedom of the Press
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/07/2025: Hot in Japan and Terminal Escape Codes
Links for the day
Links 27/07/2025: More Microsoft Layoffs Coming, Science and Hardware News
Links for the day
Links 27/07/2025: FSF Hackathon and "Hulk Hogan Was a Very Bad Man"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/07/2025: DAW Mixer Chains and Simple Software
Links for the day
The Register MS is Inventing or Giving Air Time to New Conspiracy Theories so as to Distort the Narrative As High-Profile Agencies Fall Prey to Microsoft Holes
But the problem is holes, i.e. Microsoft making bad products; the problem is Microsoft
Most Editors at The Register Are American, Including the Editor in Chief, a Decade-Long Microsoft Stenographer (Writing Prose to Sell Microsoft)
It's not easy to tell where the site is based (we tried) because it's hiding behind ClownFlare and CrimeFlare hasn't been well lately
"New Techrights" Soon Turns 2 (A Few Days Before the FSF Turns 40)
We have a lot more to say about LLM bots
When Silence Says So Much
Garrett, a 'secure' boot pusher, will need to defend himself in the UK High Court
The Register in Trouble
There is not much that can be done at this point
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 26, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, July 26, 2025
Misinformation in Social Control Media
Social control media passes around all sorts of tropes
Slopwatch: Fake Linux 'Articles' and Slopfarms With "Linux" in Their Names/Domains
throwing bots at "Linux" to make some fake articles
Links 26/07/2025: Amazon Shutdown in China, Russian Economy Slows
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/07/2025: History of Time (1988) and Gemini Games
Links for the day
Links 26/07/2025: 50 Percent Tariffs in Amazon, Dying Intel Offloads Network and Edge Group (NEX)
Links for the day
Doing My Share to Tackle Online Slop and SPAM
Trying my best to 'fix' the Web
Blaming Programming Languages for Users' and Developers' Bad Practices
That's like blaming cars for drivers who crash into things
Slopwatch: Fakes, FUD, Duplicates, and Charlatans Galore
The Web as we once know it is collapsing. Some opportunists try to replace it with low-quality slop.
The Register UK Seems to Have Become American and Management is Changing (Microsofter as Editor in Chief)
The Register 'UK' is now controlled by the Directions on Microsoft guy
Many People Still Read Techrights Because It Says the Truth, Produces Evidence, and Does Not Self-Censor
Unlike so many other sites
The Register is Desperate for Money, According to The Register
I decided to check how they're doing as a business
Microsoft Finally Finds a Use Case for Slop?
Create low-quality chaff to shift the media's attention?
Microsoft Windows Lost 400 Million Users in a Few Years, Why Does The Register Double Down on Windows With New US Editor?
days ago they hired a new US editor
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 25, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, July 25, 2025
For Libel Reform One Must First Bring (or Raise) Awareness to the Issues and Their Magnitude
I myself know, from personal experience
Links 26/07/2025: Rationed Meals in the US and TikTok Repels Investments (Too Toxic)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/07/2025: "Bloody Google" and New People in Geminispace
Links for the day
Response to Solderpunk (Father of Gemini Protocol) About the Gemini Community
Solderpunk responds to non-sequitur
HTML and the Web Used to be Something a Child Could Learn, "Modern" Web is a Puzzle of Frameworks, Bloat, and Worse
When the Web was more like Gemini Protocol
New US Editor in The Register is 84% Microsoft/Windows Booster
It'll be worrying if it carries on like this
Links 25/07/2025: Slop Blunders and China Has Code of Conduct for Lawmakers in HK
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/07/2025: Some Books and Babies and Capital
Links for the day
Links 25/07/2025: NOAA Cuts Endanger Lives, "Europe's Self Inflicted Cloud Crisis"
Links for the day
They Try to Lecture Us on Ethics
They even removed "master" from Microsoft GitHub
The Future of the Web is One Rendering Engine or 'Flavours' of Chrome
The future of the Web does not look bright at all
Best Sites Are Not Optimised for Any Browser, They Work Equally Well With All of Them
Red Hat (IBM) is making rubbish sites
YouTube is a Spamfarm, Slopfarm, and Clickfarm (a Lot of Numbers There Are Fake)
Those who don't fake look unpopular and unimportant
We Don't Do JavaScript and Pages Are Small
Thankfully Gemini Protocol has nothing like JavaScript
'Tech' is Not Technology
Some people use terms like 'Old Tech'
IBM's Debt Rose by Almost 10 Billion Dollars in the Past 6 Months Alone
The "hey hi" circus is coming to an end
Yes, Master
Gaslighting by actual racists
Microsoft Bribes and Buys Politicians to Tell Europe What to Do About Free Software (Which It's Attacking)
Microsoft: we speak for the thing that we are attacking! Follow the money...
Making Backups Quickly and Reliably
Backups are imperative, more so in an age of uncertainty, unpredictable weather, and worsening standards (quality of products going down while prices go up)
Techrights Investigation: Estimating the Point in Time LinuxIac Turned Into LLM Slop (Part of the Time)
Bobby Borisov got lazy
10th Month, Ten Weeks From Now, at Ten AM
In Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 24, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, July 24, 2025
A Nadella Memo Distracts From Microsoft's Cheapening Of the Workforce
Right now the "MSM" (mainstream media) is flooded/overwhelmed by garbage pieces that relay lies for Nadella
Vanishing Faces of GNU/Linux
Free software projects do not depend on any one person or company to still exist
Microsoft Says It Lost 400 Million Windows Users, Now It's Waiting for GNU/Linux to Stop Booting on 'Old' PCs
When it comes to Windows, Microsoft is fully aware of the issue and statements it made earlier this summer suggest it lost 400 million Windows users
Slopwatch: LinuxTechLab, linuxsecurity.com, LinuxIac, and More
Also: The Register's Microsoft agenda (new editor)
Gemini Links 25/07/2025: Gemtext Aware Titan Editor and Gemini Protocol Comeback
Links for the day