01.16.11
Posted in Novell at 12:38 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Novell keeps disintegrating
Summary: Novell’s management is continuing the mass departure, finding greener pastures while Novell gets sold in pieces
FOR REASONS we explained here before, the effect of one’s former colleagues/friends/employers makes it worthwhile to track managers (influential workers) as they move out of companies like Novell. Today we summarise a few recent examples, starting with DecisionWise, which adds Linda Linfield as a Director [1, 2]. Linfield worked for Novell beforehand: “In her prior role as Director of Learning & Development for Novell, she worked with leadership and management teams across geopolitical and cultural boundaries, including Europe, Asia, Australia, and throughout the Americas. Linda currently has responsibility for the DecisionWise international network of associate consultants.”
Joe Panettieri highlights Bob Davis, the new CFO for Kaseya. Panettieri explains further: “I first met Davis roughly two decades ago, when he was senior VP and GM at Novell (1986-1994). Davis was one of the key people who had helped Novell to emerge as the leading PC LAN software provider.” This was mentioned later in this post and in this post from the same publisher.
Another new CTO comes from Novell. This one is Stephen Henkenmeier, who joins ClickSquared [1, 2]. We mentioned him recently, but newer articles/PR add that “prior to M|C, Henkenmeier was vice president of finance for Novell, a leading global provider of infrastructure software and solutions. Henkenmeier also managed global strategy and planning in this role, and was a member of the global executive leadership team.”
“A VP and General Manager at Novell (coming from Ximian) finds himself in another new ‘home’.”Joel West elaborates a bit on Eric Schmidt in Novell (recollections), as so many publications these days do, but this one is nothing major. A VP and General Manager at Novell (coming from Ximian) finds himself in another new ‘home’. To quote: “Patrick was formerly the CEO of xkoto, a cross platform enterprise database virtualization software company which was acquired by Teradata. Prior to xkoto, he was VP and General Manager at Novell. Patrick joined Novell in 2003, as part of the acquisition of Ximian, a Linux and open source software company, where he was President and CEO.” This is definitely worth watching, in case Mono and Moonlight, for example, get promoted there.
There is also Jeff Porcaro, who previous worked at Novell. To quote: “With extensive expertise in global enterprise software engineering and quality assurance, Porcaro brings over 20 years of senior management experience at major technology concerns, including Symantec Corporation (Nasdaq: SYMC | PowerRating) and Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL | PowerRating), to the recently-created position focused on overseeing the development of and feature enhancements to Central Logic’s entire patient flow solutions portfolio.” More can also be found here: “Porcaro has previously served at Symantec, Altiris, WordPerfect, and Novell.”
As always, there are less senior Novell workers who are reported to have moved elsewhere. To give just one new example, “BYU senior anthropology student Whitney Andersen attended Saturday’s ceremony with two friends, Karthik Chandrasekaran and Vegin Abraham Varghese, both of India, here in the U.S. working as temporary consultants for Novell.” On notability scale, departure of non-managerial workers is low, so we generally omit that from posts.
The general trend is that as Novell leaders see the company fading away, many of them leave and find greener pastures. People who buy from Novell at this stage are taking a huge risk. █
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Posted in Microsoft, Novell, Patents at 12:05 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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? █
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Posted in Bill Gates, Deception at 2:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
(ODF | PDF | English/original)
Resumen: La admisión de los problemas dentro de la Fundación Gates, de nada menos que de el lujoso Bill mismo
Los juegos de poder de la Fundación Gates [http://techrights.org/wiki/index.php/Gates_Foundation_Critique] no son divertidos. Se trata de hacer daño a un montón de maestros EE.UU. [http://techrights.org/2011/01/09/teach-for-america-es/], por ejemplo. experiencia y la reputación de las personas están siendo ignoradas cuando un plutócrata se hace cargo de campos que simplemente no comprende y no puede entender. Economía sería un ejemplo [http://techrights.org/2011/01/07/marginalising-students-and-teachers/] porque Obama toma el consejo de Gates en lugar de profesores de Economía.
Para crédito de Gates, que recientemente admitió que su régimen equivocado de Relaciones Públicas PR + inversión fue “ingenuo” al principio. Para citar a The New York Times [https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/health/21gates.html?_r=1&ref=global-home&pagewanted=all]:
En una entrevista, el Sr. Gates, sonaba un poco castigado, diciendo en varias ocasiones, “Fuimos ingenuos cuando empezamos.”
No ha cambiado mucho. Como ha señalado Gates Keepers, que más tarde se agrega esto [http://gateskeepers.civiblog.org/blog/_archives/2010/12/24/4711052.html], la Fundación Gates sólo pretende que las cosas han cambiado. Melinda, por ejemplo, todavía “evita el conflicto y una buena pregunta acerca de la Fundación Gates” [http://gateskeepers.civiblog.org/blog/_archives/2010/12/22/4709622.html]:
Aquí está una entrevista informercial con Melinda, uno de los copresidentes de la Fundación Gates. Uno lector le preguntó sobre la opinión de Gates acerca de los países en conflicto y Melinda simplemente no respondió a la pregunta! Ella es muy astuta, o bien informada, para no responder a preguntas difíciles en las entrevistas.
Curiosamente, Tom Paulson realmente ha decidido explorar la Fundación Gates. Siendo un experimentado periodista que es (pero aún no sobornado por Gates), su producción reciente vale la pena lo siguiente [http://humanosphere.kplu.org/2010/10/bill-melinda-gates-the-world-is-in-fact-getting-better/]:
Bill y Melinda Gates: El mundo es, de hecho, cada vez mejor
Bill y Melinda Gates quiere que las personas dejen de quejarse y comenzar a prestar atención al éxito.
Sí, sí, es fácil burlarse de este tipo de conversación – sobre todo de los super-ricos.
Pero algunas cosas, de hecho, son cada vez mejores. Y a diferencia de la mayoría del mundo de super-ricos, los Gates están en realidad “invertiendo” en hacer del mundo un lugar mejor. También quieren convencer a los escépticos por qué esto es realmente una buena inversión para todos nosotros.
Ese fue el punto de su “Living Proof” evento, transmisión por Internet hoy en vivo desde Londres.
El evento se llevó a cabo en colaboración con la campaña ONE, una organización co-fundada por Bono, que defiende en materia de salud global y la pobreza – y que, al parecer, no le gusta responder preguntas de los medios de comunicación respecto a sus finanzas, pero eso es otra historia.
(Uy, no voy de nuevo ser un periodista típico y centrarme en lo negativo.)
Eso es un poco de sarcasmo, por supuesto. En cuanto a la organización de un escándalo de Bono, que escribimos sobre él en ese momento [http://techrights.org/2010/09/27/bono-and-microsoft-donations/].
GatesKeepers se expande a lo anterior por escrito [http://gateskeepers.civiblog.org/blog/_archives/2010/10/19/4659507.html]:
Uno de los mejores analistas de la Fundación Bill y Melinda Gates en el escenario de blogs es Tom Paulson en su Humanosphere. En este artículo parece estar contento con la buena noticia, que resulta no ser nuevo en absoluto, que Bill y Melinda están dando en el aire. El mundo está mejorando todos estamos de acuerdo. Pero Bill y Melinda se han propuesto demostrar que su “ayuda” esta contribuyendo a ella. En esto ellos han fallado:
Las tasas de mortalidad infantil no necesariamente han caido debido a la ayuda. Bill no ofrece gráficos para mostrar el resultado de una mayor disminución en los países con más ayuda. O cualquier otra prueba de que la ayuda tenía nada que ver con la disminución de la mortalidad infantil.
Melinda es particularmente insistente en que las familias más pequeñas son resultado de la mortalidad infantil más baja. Se repite este argumento simplista. Las familias más pequeñas de países en transición demográfica no son sólo causados por la disminución de la mortalidad infantil. La ayuda no ha tenido mucho éxito en la reducción de la mortalidad infantil, pero ha tenido un enorme éxito en traer a las familias a los métodos de planificación en los países más pobres.
La disminución de la poliomielitis es causada en parte por la ayuda. Su persistencia continua también puede ser causada por la ayuda que en las campañas de fondos ineficaces o el movimiento de personas facilita.
Mantenga el buen trabajo, Tom. Y por favor no se deje engañar cuando Bill y Melinda lo alimenten de un montón de mierda bien empaquetada.
En un post más adelante mostraremos que Paulson también está preocupado por la Fundación Gates se esta apropiando de de los medios de comunicación que cubre temas de interés para la Fundación misma. █
Many thanks to Eduardo Landaveri of the Spanish portal of Techrights.
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Posted in Marketing, Microsoft, Servers at 2:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“Que coman SharePoint…”
(ODF | PDF | English/original)
Resumen: La comercialización de SharePoint a través de chantajes sentimentales en el blog oficial de Microsoft, cortesía del sufrimiento de los niños en Haití.
LA EXPLOTACIÓN del terremoto en Haití es un tema que hemos tratado anteriormente en referencia a Microsoft[http://techrights.org/2010/01/18/microsoft-takes-perl-down/] y también [http://techrights.org/2010/01/18/microsoft-takes-perl-down/]la Fundación Gates [http://techrights.org/wiki/index.php/Gates_Foundation_Critique]. “Capitalismo de Desastres ” – que un gran desastre está siendo un utilizado para crear dependencia (por ejemplo, el lock-in*) el “líder heroico” o “salvador de las empresas” – es algo que todos hemos aprendido de Katrina también (no hay buena literatura respecto al tema) . En lugar de regresar a las viejas historias es sobre ella queremos mostrar la más reciente explotación de Haití por Microsoft, la que se disfraza como un esfuerzo de relaciones públicas [http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2011/01/12/haiti-one-year-later-technology-lessons-for-disaster-response.aspx]. Lea esto con escepticismo, (habilidades críticas requeridas), ya que incluso usan una foto para el chantaje sentimental. Es la misma cantaleta de siempre y dice:
“OneResponse, una plataforma online basada en Microsoft SharePoint, contiene piezas vitales de datos tales como listas de contactos, calendarios de reuniones y los resultados de las evaluaciones de las necesidades para ayudar a la respuesta humanitaria.”
¡Qué bonito anuncio. Es absolutamente repugnante cuando el dolor de alguien es que se utilizan no sólo para crear una dependencia de SharePoint [http://techrights.org/wiki/index.php/SharePoint_Reality_Log], lo que sí puede ser tembloroso por momentos [http://techrights.org/2010/06/18/sharepoint-fragility/], pero también a sí mismo publicidad. Como Razvan Sandu lo puso en Identica, “¿Puede imaginar que la gente afectada por un terremoto haga clic en Microsoft Sharepoint? La propaganda comercial no tiene límites”
Eduardo Landaveri, who is responsible for the Spanish portal of Techrights, adds to the above translation of his:
It’s outrageous to see what are (Microsoft) are capable of, but having following them over the years, nothing surprises me coming from them.
Anyway I added the following to the end of the article because “lock in” has no direct translation into Spanish and any future article I will add it to the end. I consider it important because many readers will come across the term for the first time while reading in the Spanish portal or while being hand out any of your articles as ODT or PDF. [...] Here it goes what I added:
Lock-in – has no direct translation into Spanish. It would sound very silly and incomprehensible as “lock”, but much clearer as “Prison.”
This word comes to mean literally forced to submit to electronic formats that make it difficult to escape them.
For example a person or organization that has used Microsoft Office for a long time. When a new version is forced to pay for it because Microsoft has always created and will create artificial incompatibilities, and blame the competition. -READ the Comes vs
Microsoft to see how this has been one of their tactics to create dependency on their products. Therefore becomes an instrument of domination. Digital Colonialism, which we must break the chains NOW for the welfare of our own and future generations.
Many thanks again to Eduardo Landaveri. █
_____
*Lock-in – Tiene no directo traduccion al Español. Sonaría muy tonto e incomprensible como “candado”, pero mucho mas claro como “PRISION”.
-Esta palabra viene a significar literalmente la forzosa sumisión a formatos electrónicos que hacen muy difícil escaparse de ellos.
-Por ejemplo una persona u organización que ha usado Microsoft Office durante mucho tiempo. Cuando sale una nueva versión es FORZADO a PAGAR por ella por que Microsoft SIEMPRE ha creado y creará incompatibilidades artificiales, y echarle la culpa a la competencia. -Lease los Comes vs Microsoft para ver como esto ha sido y es una de sus tácticas de crear dependencia en sus productos. Por ello viene a ser un instrumento de dominación. El Colonialismo Digital, del que debemos romper cadenas AHORA para bienestar de las nuestro y las fúturas generaciones.
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Posted in Boycott Novell, Site News at 2:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
It’s an umbrella site of Boycott Novell
Summary: An explanation of the relationship between the names “Techrights” and “Boycott Novell”
THERE IS a common misconception spread mostly by detractors of this site and there is also a famous saying that if lies are repeated unchallenged, they will eventually stick, so Techrights should state for the record yet again that Techrights is not a rename of Boycott Novell. It is a new name, but not a rename. Essentially, one is an ‘umbrella’ to the latter, intended to make the name better suit the expanded scope of the site (including the daily links). █
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Posted in Intellectual Monopoly, Novell, OpenSUSE at 1:19 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Some cryptic development within the OpenSUSE community shows continued unrest and Pascal Bleser is out of the board
THE OPENSUSE community is in a bit of a state of disarray. Amid Novell’s plan to be sold to AttachMSFT (not finalised yet and there are objections), members of OpenSUSE are uncertain about commitments, as we explained the other day.
OpenSUSE’s fairly new community manager, Jos Poortvliet [1, 2], came at the time that some key people were leaving. He says that the community wants an OpenSUSE foundation.
The openSUSE Linux version is going to a foundation because users demanded it, says Novell’s community manager Jos Poortvliet
But here comes the interesting part from the press around that area:
The openSUSE Board elections process, which began in December last year, has now moved into the election phase and the final results will announced on January 26, 2010.
The board has 2 seats open for this election as Pascal Bleser and Henne Vogelsang terms are expiring.
Pascal is a longtime prominent member and he is quite vocal. He now explains why he is “not running for the openSUSE Board”:
The reason is simple: I have been elected on the two previous Board instances, and have also been part of the initial “bootstrap Board” (as I like to call it) where there were no elections (chicken/egg) and where our primary mission was to set up an election process.
This claim is conflicted somewhat by this one from Susan:
Today Pascal Bleser, openSUSE packager and Board member, posted a message to the openSUSE Project mailing list announcing the decision of the openSUSE Board to “revoke an individual’s membership as well as his access to the openSUSE infrastructure.” The only explanation given was that this member had repeatedly violated the Guiding Principals and rejected any attempts for intervention. The message was so cryptic and secretive that it actually provoked more questions than it originally had intended to answer.
That sounds rather different, does it not? There is even a reference to Pascal (not by name) in this message which got pinned at LWN:
As you probably all know by now, the openSUSE Board recently revoked an individual’s membership as well as his access to the openSUSE infrastructure.
Pascal’s absence is rather striking because he used to win the elections very easily. The candidates now are:
* Chuck “PUP” Payne, ambassador from the US (blog) Platform
* sebas, open-slx user experience expert (blog) Platform
* Kostas Koudaras, ambassador from greece (blog) Platform
* Peter Linnell aka mrdocs, OSS It consultant Platform
* Henne Vogelsang, Booster, currently Board Member, Novell (blog) Platform
* Sankar P, Programmer, Hacker, FOSS Enthusiast, Novell (blog) Platform
* Nelson Marques, Contributor (blog) Platform
In other news about the project (there is not much [1, 2, 3]), members still insist on getting more power as the project is dominated by Novell.
The ballots are open and now the power is in the hands of people of openSUSE to decide whom they want to have on the board for the next year. The openSUSE community is a true democratic community so the elections procedure for it, is a celebration of ideas. All the candidates have proved our love for what we do and we are all devoted to the openSUSE project and its community.
For Novell, one of the first steps towards assuring that the community has some control is to review the trademark guidelines or simply annual them.
In 2009, a set of trademark guidelines were created to help define how the community and beyond could use the openSUSE logo and related trademarks in their own products and services. Along with this, Novell granted powers to the openSUSE Board to be the guardians of the openSUSE trademarks. This included ensuring that proper usage followed the guidelines as well as giving the Board the ability to review special use cases
This seems like an improvement, but the OpenSUSE Board still has Novell employees in it. Does anybody know what Pascal did to get treated as he is alleged to have been treated? █
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Posted in Microsoft, Mono, Novell at 12:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Mono/.NET boosters have initiated another wave of ruthless personal attacks to defend the indefensible
AS many people can tell, Techrights has been getting a lot of flak from the Mono community over the past week or so. Whether it’s in blogs, in IRC, microblogging or whatever, the Mono community is scrambling to respond to the latest PR problem that they have. Always ask yourself though, are they actually addressing the criticisms? Or are they attacking people and their respective platform? If it’s the latter (which it overwhelming is), then it means they have no counter argument and they resort to the lowest from of defence. While it is true that some sites still cover Mono applications (but not as many sites as there used to be), there is usually a warning about the nature of Mono and that's important progress. Mono boosters spin it. They are still in denial over the FSF's stance for example. It’s like the rejected boyfriend who keeps pretending his ex-girlfriend loves him. The truth of the matter is, more and more people are fed up with Mono and those many personal attacks on Mono critics (misquoting, out of context quoting, false associations, cheap smears, disinformation, etc.) are no longer effective. Their shelf life is due. To repeat the take-home message, when viewing a defence of Mono, check to see if it’s an attack on messengers or a real defence. Unpopular opinions are not incorrect opinions and they initially put the source at risk. █
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