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09.28.11

Links 28/9/2011: Linux 3.1 RC8, Gains for Android Tablets

Posted in News Roundup at 7:28 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open Source, Open Mind

    I’ve been a big advocate of open source software since I learned about the model of software licensing and development 10 years ago. I am a big believer that many minds produce great things, so the idea that a community of users would develop and improve software to the benefit of the community really appealed to me. Open source is often a great solution for cash-strapped libraries that can adopt tools like Open Office for free instead of paying for Microsoft Office licenses on all of their computers.

  • Luis Iván Cuende García demonstrates the power of Free Software and the determination of a fifteen year old

    A few months ago I went to Campus Party in Spain. I have blogged about Campus Party before, so I will not spend a lot of time and space here on that topic.

    I will tell you about a young man, Luis Iván Cuende García, who was fifteen years old when I met him but who had released his own distribution of Linux called “Asturix”. He, his father and his friend Ricardo had all traveled to Campus Party at the invitation of the Campus Party management.

  • FLOSS for Science Books August 2011

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS

    • Piston launches OpenStack cloud OS for private clouds

      Piston Cloud Computing came out of stealth mode today, launching an OpenStack-based cloud OS that allows enterprises to build private clouds that meet security and compliance requirements. Former NASA and Rackspace execs are leading the charge. The OS will be generally available Nov. 29.

    • Twitter Storm: Open Source Real-time Hadoop

      Twitter has open-sourced Storm, its distributed, fault-tolerant, real-time computation system, at GitHub under the Eclipse Public License 1.0. Storm is the real-time processing system developed by BackType, which is now under the Twitter umbrella. The latest package available from GitHub is Storm 0.5.2, and is mostly written in Clojure.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • A year after the fork: LibreOffice is growing and going strong

      Today marks the one-year anniversary of The Document Foundation (TDF) and the LibreOffice project, a promising community-driven fork of OpenOffice.org (OOo). The project has seen considerable growth during its first year of existence. TDF estimates that there are now 25 million LibreOffice users worldwide.

    • Will Oracle Turn MySQL Into ‘Crippleware?’

      Since Oracle obtained MySQL in the Sun takeover, many FOSS folks have been wary of Oracle’s plans for the open source database, a wariness that wasn’t eased by Oracle’s handling of the OpenOffice/LibreOffice split. When a couple of weeks ago we learned that Oracle has added three commercial extensions to MySQL, many figured that was the beginning of the end of MySQL as a free and open project.

    • September 28, 2011

      The Internet, September 28, 2011 – The Document Foundation (TDF) celebrates its first anniversary, one year after the unveiling of the project and the release of the first beta of LibreOffice. “What we have achieved in just twelve months is incredible,” says Charles Schulz, a member of the Steering Committee. “Let’s have a look at some numbers: we have 136 members who have been nominated for their contributions to the project; we have some 270 developers and 270 localizers (although we always want to attract more), many of whom are also members; we have over 100 mailing lists, with over 15,000 subscribers, half of whom receive all our announcements; and there have been thousands of articles in the media worldwide”.

  • BSD

    • What Can Your Team Learn from a Bike Shed?

      Because of his position in the FreeBSD project at that time, Kamp was particularly annoyed by the pattern he was seeing, which is why he sent his thoughts to the email list. “You see it in politics, from national to school board and boy scout meetings,” he says, adding, “You see it in pretty much any meeting in a corporate context where somebody has a ladder to climb.”

      Not that this would have any relevance in your life. Oh, no. I’m sure you’ve never seen any behavior like this at all. But play along, because a friend might have experienced “bike shed” moments. Right. A friend.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Project Releases

    • Airtime 1.9.4 released with .deb packages for Ubuntu & Debian

      Airtime 1.9.4 has been released with new DEB packages for Ubuntu and Debian that keep installations automatically updated with the latest version. Airtime 1.9.4 also includes the new file storage system with ‘watch’ folders, allowing stations to magically synchronise files and to easily browse their audio archives, as well as Shoutcast support, improved front-end widgets, and extensive bug-fixes.

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • Get Out Of Your Comfort Zone.

    A recent blog post dealt with my suggestion that PC users should switch to Linux and ditch Windows. Once they make the move to Linux, they’ll no longer need to pay for computer repairs (antivirus, spyware cleaning, etc.), especially those offered by online services are constantly advertised on cable television.

  • Science

  • Security

    • That Was the Breach That Was

      The attack on Kernel.org last month was “a big wake-up call,” according to Green Armor’s Joseph Steinberg. “This breach could have been astronomically worse. If the attack had been carried out with more sophistication, the attackers could have done a lot worse damage than they did. The gut feeling is that it is more of an accidental intrusion.”

  • Privacy

    • Facebook stores up to 800 pages of personal data per user account

      Facebook consistently reappears in the news with regards to privacy and the data it keeps on each of its users. For example, earlier this week an engineer working for the social network had to explain why Facebook tracks you even when you’re logged out.

    • sjvn01
      Facebook: The Spy in Your Network

      I used to like Facebook. Oh, its security and constantly changing privacy protection was a bad joke, but it was still the best way to find and keep in touch with old friends from high school (Hi Cathy!) and the like. That was then. This is now.

      It was bad enough that Facebook tries to harvest your phone number, in the new Facebook Open Graph platform you can share all kinds of usage data with your advertisers… uh friends. With the new Facebook, you can automatically share what movies you’re watching on Netflix, what music you’re listening to on Spotify, and what’s you’re reading on Flipboard.

  • Copyrights

    • Illegal download law fails [Ed: spot the mistake]

      Files containing movies and music are spread between different computers on the internet and bittorrent software is used to find the file parts and reassemble them. Some files, such as the open source Linux operating system, have no copyright, while files of music, movies and television shows belong to copyright holders.

Links, Facebook and Boot Aggression Round Up. Spectrum Shortage Lies.

Posted in Site News at 2:28 am by Guest Editorial Team

Reader’s Picks

  • Security

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Anti-Trust

    • Microsoft’s Non-Response to the Secure Boot Problem

      Microsoft has provided a very detailed explanation of what UEFI secure boot is, and what its benefits are. What Microsoft hasn’t done is to actually respond to concerns raised by Matthew Garrett about its secure boot policies. … policies do not require that users be able to turn the feature off. As Garrett says, “end user is no longer in control of their PC.”

      Garrett’s collection of facts

    • Microsoft to stop Linux, older Windows, from running on Windows 8 PCs

      I wonder though if what Microsoft really wants is to avoid a repeat of the Vista fiasco by making sure OEMs and end-users can’t go back to Windows 7 or XP. As Windows 7′s slow adoption and Vista’s flop has shown, users really haven’t been that interested in moving off Windows XP. Since Windows 8′s Metro interface adds an entirely new level of complications … As it stands now Microsoft is saying OEMs don’t have to do it. They just have to do it if they want to sell PCs with Windows on them. Paging the anti-trust lawyers …

      SVJN was fooling himself and ignoring attacks on Android, Google, Yahoo and others if he thought there was a “new Microsoft”

    • Linux users threaten Microsoft with ACCC (Australia)

      Linux Australia president John Ferlito told ZDNet Australia today that the council will be meeting on Thursday night to determine whether it will take up a campaign against Microsoft’s secure boot practices.

      ZDNet is so twisted. Demanding that government protect people from Microsoft aggression is hardly a case of “threaten Microsoft”.

  • Privacy

    • Media UK dumps Facebook
    • I Made The Wrong Choice With Facebook

      Using Media UK, I could flag up “xxxxxx is using Media UK”, “xxxxxx is using the job section of Media UK”, “xxxxxx is reading a job vacancy on Media UK” – which would flagrantly abuse privacy of my users. I won’t do that; but I worry that, if The Guardian does it, it’ll be seen as “normal”.

    • Facebook’s OpenGraph: Time to get out

      The result Zuckerberg is hoping for is that people will leave a detailed record of every aspect of their lives on Facebook’s servers. Sure, you will be sharing those details with your “friends”; but in the end, it will always be Facebook that determines who can see those details. … Facebook decides who you can talk to, and what you can say … in effect, Facebook will be acting as its own private Internet.

      See also, Not F’d by the FSF

    • Logging out of Facebook is not enough

      Even if you are logged out, Facebook still knows and can track every page you visit. The only solution is to delete every Facebook cookie in your browser, or to use a separate browser for Facebook interactions.

      The separate browser advice may not work on Windows, where Microsoft already spies on users and has data sharing agreements with Facebook.

    • Facebook scares Dave Winer, Scripting News

      I had somehow given access to my Facebook account to ReadWriteWeb. That’s puzzling because I have no memory of having done that. And when I went to see what other organizations I had given access to my graph, there were lots of surprises. I think there’s a good chance that by visiting a site you are now giving them access to lots more info about you.

    • Facebook confesses to some tracking practices and promises to fix them.

      PJ notes,

      ‘m not sure trust is still on the table. Thank you, Nik Cubrilovic, for telling us the truth about Facebook.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • US Monopolists sit on spectrum and use the results to get exemptions to network neutrality regulations.

      538 MHz of wireless spectrum has been allocated to U.S. firms, though some 192 MHz is actually in use. And according to their calculation, at least 90% of that amount is used for … [older protocols with] transmission speeds of less than 1 megabit per second (Mbps) during peak usage hours.

      The analysts at Citi who did this study did not mention Open Spectrum, which is a real end to the problem but bad for their investments. Policies undermining network neutrality over spectrum shortages are based on a lie.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

09.27.11

Links 27/9/2011:Tinycore 4.0, Android Most Popular

Posted in News Roundup at 7:11 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux users, start your engines

    Unless you’re a motorhead to a varying degree — and an older one at that — you probably don’t know who John Cooper is. His contributions in racing circles — putting the engine behind the driver in his Cooper Formula 1 cars in the late 1950s — would normally cement his place in automotive history, but he didn’t stop there.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

    • Kernel.org Still Struggles To Return

      Accessing Kernel.org will simply result in a “Down for maintenance” message. It’s also in a similar manner for Linux.com, which was exploited earlier this month. LinuxFoundation.org is at least back online.

    • Linus Torvalds’s Lessons on Software Development Management

      If anyone knows the joys and sorrows of managing software development projects, it would be Linus Torvalds, creator of the world’s most popular open-source software program: the Linux operating system. For more than 20 years, Torvalds has been directing thousands of developers to improve the open source OS. He and I sat down to talk about effective techniques in running large-scale distributed programming teams – and the things that don’t work, too.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • Fighting the Schism of Free Software

      Over a decade ago an event happened which is still influencing our life in free software. Instead of one, two projects emerged to bring a fully free desktop to Linux based systems. Back then we failed to see the advantages of having multiple available desktop environments and we basically created a schism between the KDE and the GNOME world.

      The Schism is still in place!

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • Still hating Kde4/cups

        Overall KDE4 doesn’t limit my working overly compared to KDE 3.5 (although, so far as I can remember, it doesn’t improve it). One area where it particularly falls down is in printing. I have remarked earlier on the absence of kprinter.

      • KDE’s Infrastructure.

        During KDE’s (one of the largest open source communities around, with about 2500 active developer accounts with direct write access to many millions of lines of code across dozens of products, and large numbers of external contributors) ongoing migration from SVN to Git, GitHub was never considered as an option because the community considers it unacceptable for an open source community to throw their weight behind a proprietary solution.

      • [Artwork]: 10 Ksplash Screen Themes For KDE 4.x

        A great Ksplash theme collection for KDE 4.x featuring many Linux distributions. Innovative themes designed to be suitable to many users who would like to customize the default Ksplash theme.

    • GNOME Desktop

  • Distributions

    • Hello again, Chakra

      Given the short time that has gone by since I last tried Chakra, I’m impressed with its progress.

    • The Air Force’s secure Linux distribution

      Outside of the U.S., there are several “national” Linux distributions. These include China’s Red Flag Linux; Turkey’s Pardus, and the Philippines’ Bayahnian. Other countries, like Russia, are on their way to moving their entire IT infrastructure to Linux and open-source software. In the U.S., the government, especially the military, makes use of Linux all the time. Indeed, Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux), the most popular software set for hardening Linux against Linux is sponsored by the National Security Agency. But, there hasn’t been a national American Linux desktop distribution… until now.

    • New Releases

      • A Bundle of Updates Give 10 Linux Distributions a Boost

        With so many Linux distributions to choose from, it can be difficult to keep tabs on them all. Over the past few weeks I’ve written about Bodhi Linux–a lesser-known but nice (and increasingly popular) flavor of Linux–as well as Arch Linux and Mandriva. But today I’d like to round up other distributions of the free and open source operating system that have released key updates recently.

      • Tinycore 4.0 released

        Yesterday has been released the version 4.0 of Tinycore linux, one of the smallest linux distribution around.
        You can find the detailed changelog in their official forum, among many updates some are:

        * Updated kernel to 3.0.3
        * Updated udev to 173
        * Updated glibc to eglibc-2.13
        * Updated e2fsprogs base libs to 1.41.14
        * Updated gcc base libs to 4.6.1
        * Updated util-linux base libs to 2.19.1
        * Updated eglibc for 486/586 support.
        * Updated base Xlibs (microcore users need to get new Xlibs.tcz)
        * Updated all the custom core utilities to use the new repository area.
        * New loadcpufreq to handle module loading.

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • Red Hat Family

      • Fedora

        • Anaconda Whiteboards

          David Lehman and Will Woods are in the Boston area this week so along with Chris Lumens, Peter Jones, and David Cantrell we’ve all been whiteboarding away, planning and refinement on the upcoming Anaconda UI redesign that is scheduled to land in Fedora 17.

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu 11.04 Gets Positive Review On Indian News Station CNN-IBN

            Ubuntu bagged itself some mainstream media exposure this weekend when it was reviewed on Indian news channel ‘CNN-IBN’.

            As part of the stations 25 minute technology segment, ‘Tech Toyz‘, the English language news network featured a short review of Ubuntu 11.04.

          • Ubuntu Tweak 0.6 Beta Released | Introduce Plugin Management System

            Ubuntu Tweak 0.6 has been released. Ubuntu Tweak 0.6 will introduce some new features and new user interface design kinda looks suitable to the upcoming release Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot. Now it’s available to install for tester and developer through Launchpad PPA.

          • Five topnotch replacements for GNOME 3 or Ubuntu Unity

            You’ve heard the talk, the complaints, and the scathing reviews. Both GNOME 3 and Ubuntu Unity have been met with a hailstorm of bad publicity — so much so that people are turning away from adopting Linux — at least Linux that uses either of these two desktops. So if you want to switch to Linux but you don’t want to use either of these desktops, what can you do? Well, I’ll give you five what-to-do’s that will ease the troubled Linux desktop selection.

          • Ubuntu Development Update

            Sticking exactly to the plan, we are quickly moving towards the release of 11.10, and it’s only three weeks until then. If you like partying, start organising your local release party soon! Beta 2 was released yesterday, so give it all the testing love you can. You won’t be disappointed, there’s something great and new in there for everybody.

          • A Tale of Two Betas (almost)

            I don’t often write about pre-release versions of Linux distributions any more – I did for a while, but the amount of negative feedback I got compared to the benefit I felt it was providing became too great. I’ve decided to make an exception this time, though, because there are two particularly interesting new releases coming up – Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot, and openSuSE 12.1. I was thinking that I would have the added incentive of both Beta releases coming out on the same day, but openSuSE decided to push theirs back because they are still working on some difficult conversions to systemd, so I just downloaded Daily Build 301 instead of the actual Beta release. They say that the final release date (10 Nov) will not be changed as a result of this delay, though. The screen shot below was made on my HP dm1-3105ez, after installing Ubuntu 11.10 Beta-2.

          • Series: Introduction to Ubuntu Development – Part 6

            This is the sixth article in a series to explain the basics of Ubuntu Development in a way that does not require huge amounts of background and goes through concepts, tools, processes and infrastructure step by step. If you like the article or have questions or found bugs, please leave a comment.

          • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 234

            Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #234 for the week September 19 – 25, 2011, and the full version is available here.

          • Ubuntu 11.04 vs. Ubuntu 11.10 Benchmarks

            At the request of many Phoronix readers, here are some benchmarks comparing the 64-bit performance of Ubuntu 11.04 versus a recent development build of Ubuntu 11.10. Six different systems were benchmarked for this comparison.

          • Announcing the Ubuntu App Developer site

            I’m thrilled to announce the launch of a significant milestone in the ongoing effort of making Ubuntu a target for app developers: the new Ubuntu App Developer site.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Linux Mint Computer Case Stickers… For Europe?

              Linux Mint is said to be gaining ground on Ubuntu’s popularity dominance lately. This means more folks are using Linux Mint than ever before. These users are bound to be distributed throughout the world – granted with a large concentration in Europe. But there are sure to be users in the USA, Asia, Australia, and South America too.

            • AriOS 3.0 – Not as good as its predecessor

              Now, AriOS 3.0 is out there. As a potential candidate to becoming a complete, truly successful Ubuntu derivative, an accolade which has so far been reserved to only Linux Mint, I took the distro for a spin, with high spirits and higher expectations. Tested: the 32-bit version, on my T60p experimentation rig. There’s a 64-bit version, too.

            • Why I chose Zorin OS 5 Ultimate as my go-to distribution

              I changed my Ubuntu workstation from an Ubuntu Ultimate Edition distro to Zorin OS 5 Core. After a week or so I liked it so much I upgraded to Zorin OS 5 Ultimate and installed Zorin Core (the free version) on my other machines. The reason for the changes was quite simple. Zorin OS 5 Ultimate gave my workstation the baseline Ubuntu 11.04 plus the Gnome desktop with features that keep the UI very straightforward and clean. The other machines are kept busy doing distributed processing work for BOINC projects like SETI, Einstein and LHC so their OS and UI needs are minimal. Zorin Core provides the same UI but the distro installs with fewer extra programs to update and maintain.

            • Muon Package Management Suite

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Android

        • Samsung signals HD smartphones with supersize screens

          Samsung had its hands full today, launching several phones, including this refreshed Galaxy S II with a large HD screen.

          The Samsung Galaxy S II HD LTE – which was announced in Korean this morning – sports a 4.65in OLED display with a resolution of 1280 x 720. The handset is apparently the first with an OLED display to feature a higher pixel density than 300ppi, rocking in at 316 pixels per inch.

          Other features include 16GB of storage, an 8Mp camera with 1080p video recording, NFC support and a large, 1850mAh battery.

        • Android ‘most popular’ with smartphone buyers
        • Survey says: Innovators prefer Android

          About 40 percent of U.S. mobile phone users over age 18 now have smartphones, and Google’s Android OS runs on over 40 percent of them, says Nielsen.

Free Software/Open Source

  • How open source got its groove back

    Portland’s lure lost some luster when the Great Recession hit.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Does Mozilla’s Response to Enterprises Focused on Firefox Go Far Enough?

        As we reported back in June, while many users applaud the rapid release cycle that Mozilla announced for the Firefox browser back in February, not all IT administrators are among the fans. It’s easy for consumers to forget that businesses have much more stringent requirements for accepting new applications of all sorts, including browsers, into mainstream use. There are security concerns, compatibility concerns, and more. Mozilla officials have already announced that they take the protests from the IT community seriously, and have a working group focused on delivering Extended Support Releases (ESRs) specifically for businesses that want to use Firefox. Do these efforts from Mozilla go far enough, though?

      • Mozilla Addresses Problems with Add-Ons and Firefox Releases
      • Mozilla Firefox 7 Released

        With the rapid release cycle and all, we are seeing more releases of the Firefox browser than before. Mozilla just pushed Firefox 7 to the official ftp server to prepare for today’s release of the browser. Firefox 7 is actually the first version of the rapid release cycle that is showing big improvements over previous versions.

      • Firefox Memory Leaks Once Again Causing Frustrations

        Three and a half years after developers plugged “hundreds” of memory leaks in the Firefox browser that had slowed many PCs to a halt, memory leaks in Firefox 6.0.2 are apparently once again frustrating users.

        In a number of issues posted on Mozilla’s support message board over the past several weeks, users report repeated instances of Firefox eating more than 1 GB of memory during basic tasks. Some memory leaks have been tied to browser plug-ins, while other users insist they are doing nothing exotic to cause such significant memory use.

  • Databases

    • Oracle’s Commercial Moves with MySQL are Drawing Scrutiny

      When Oracle announced its intent to acquire Sun Microsystems, the very first question we asked was what would become of the open source MySQL database and Sun’s record of openness with it. The general concensus around Oracle’s plans was that the database giant would position MySQL as a way to onboard users to its commercial offerings. (Oracle offers an Enterprise edition.) There is now debate about the extent to which that is happening, especially because Oracle has just released three commercial extensions for MySQL.

    • MySQL at the core of commercial open source

      Oracle last week quietely announced the addition of new extended capabilities in MySQL Enterprise Edition, confirming the adoption of the open core licensing strategy, as we reported last November.

    • MySQL.com Hacked to Serve Malware

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

Leftovers

  • Finance

    • Solyndra Failure Hits Goldman’s Reputation: William D. Cohan

      Since the financial crisis hit, investment banks have been rightly criticized for their tendency to be more concerned with their own trading profits than the well-being of their customers. Sometimes, however, an investment bank can take the whole client service thing a bit too far.

      Take, for instance, the case of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and its client Solyndra LLC, the California-based solar-panel maker that filed for bankruptcy protection on Sept. 6 and dismissed its 1,100 employees.

    • 80 ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Protesters Arrested

      Dozens of demonstrators who have vowed to “occupy” Wall Street were arrested Saturday on the seventh day of a social media-fueled protest against U.S. banking institutions, according to protest organizers.

    • Is the Eurozone Market About to Collapse?

      That’s what Wall Street trader Alessio Rastani says in this extraordinarily candid interview on the BBC. “This economic crisis is like a cancer,” he tells the host. “If you just wait and wait hoping it is going to go away, just like a cancer it is going to grow and it will be too late.”

Promoting TechBytes

Posted in Site News at 2:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Increasing TechBytes’ visibility in Techrights

ONE listener of TechBytes suggested that we make the audiocast more easily accessible, so we have changed the layout of the site a bit and this is what changed (click image for full-sized and non-lossy version).

After Sidebar Shuffle and Before Banner Change:

Old site layout

After All Changes (Individual Post):

New site layout

We hope that these changes do not frustrate anyone. The blog is likely to become a little less active as I take a research fellowship next month. More volunteers are needed. █

Legal Action Against Microsoft the Last of Novell’s Relevance

Posted in Law at 11:00 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Novell is like Sun

Sun held

Summary: After Novell lost its business and its soul to Microsoft all that remains is the WordPerfect case

THE ROTTING of Novell at Attachmate is reminiscent of Sun’s fate inside Oracle.

Dave Kearns looks back at this history lesson, writing: “He then goes on to tell about the great Novell-Microsoft networking rivalry in the 1990s — when Novell released NetWare Directory Services (NDS) in 1994, Microsoft vowed to have its own directory service in Windows NT 5 (later released as Windows 2000). Kemp relates that Novell countered again saying that not only does a NOS need a directory today, but it needs one that is cross-platform.”

“SUSE is considered a separate entity and it is now sponsored by Microsoft.”Novell used to be a massive company. Now it is not even a company. Some other companies are hiring former Novellers at all levels because there is not much left in Novell and Tom Harvey, who has covered Novell very extensively over the years, writes: “After six years in an out-of-state jurisdiction, a lawsuit by Provo’s Novell that accuses Microsoft of anti-trust violations involving WordPerfect has returned home to Utah, and with it a bygone era of technology history is about to come back into view.”

Maybe that’s the only thing left of Novell now that SCO’s case seems to be over. SUSE is considered a separate entity and it is now sponsored by Microsoft. █

Attachmate Too Passive as Novell Products Dissolve

Posted in Novell at 10:39 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Novell products slaughtered in Attachmate

Crhomaic abstraction

Summary: A look at Attachmate news from the past fortnight, highlighting the lack of activity in this private company

IT IS not so often that we see Attachmate mentioned in the context of Linux, but it does happen sometimes.

By putting SUSE back in Germany Attachmate has distanced itself completely from Open Source software. “The various Novell assets have been redistributed across four companies in the Attachmate Group, with the management assets being assimilated under the NetIQ brand. While a full merger of the NetIQ and Novell assets will take at least a year, the (now) NetIQ team has moved with impressive speed to launch its initial consolidated families,” says this new article.

Another article says:

The Attachmate Group is hammering out a strategy for bringing products to the New Zealand market, but it’s a work in progress that has only just begun, according to the company’s first New Zealand country manager.

Martin Mooney, who was appointed to his role in August, says that Attachmate places importance on selling direct and through channel partners, but it sees new opportunities for resellers.

“A lot of this is driven by customers,” Mooney says. “We need to be guided by what their requirements are. A lot of the channel can bring resources around implementation and support, and that’s very important to our business also. It’s just getting that happy medium. There’s value in it all.”

Attachmate completed its acquisition of Novell in April, whose end-user products — including Zenworks, Groupwise and Open Enterprise Server — comprise one of four business units. The other business units are Suse, the open source OS; the NetIQ family of systems management tools; and Attachmate’s terminal emulation, legacy modernisation and enterprise fraud management solutions.

Not much has been done with SUSE though. In fact, not much has been done with anything. No new releases (almost), no marketing, just deals with Microsoft and layoffs.

It turns out that McGlynn was leaving Attachmate a while back, based on this press release which we found in some places a few days ago. To quote:

Mr. Andrews also held positions at NetIQ Corporation for nearly five years. He initially managed the EMEA region and was later promoted to chief operating officer, where he facilitated the sale of the company to Attachmate WRQ in June 2006.

How has NetIQ been doing since that sale? News suggests that Attachmate actually has some clients, but this is the only article in about a month that suggests so. It does not seem as though Attachmate does anything substantial, except when Novell-paid ‘studies’ are getting painted as Attachmate’s or Mark Benoit makes yet another appearance. Where is Attachmate going and what is it actually doing? It is a private company, so it is not so easy to tell. The financing of the Novell purchase sure was suspicious. █

GroupWise is Doomed

Posted in Mail, Novell at 10:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Fire burst

Summary: The decline of GroupWise is made apparent by more departures from it, even self-professed analysts who point out the obvious

IT HAS BEEN quite a long time since the last GroupWise release. GroupWise is not cared for all that much anymore. It still has some legacy userbase, but that too is forever eroding.

The firm known as Gartner (which sells bias or points out the obvious) mentions the obvious decline of Novell in E-mail. It doesn’t take analysts to see this, but the news sites do like to reprint Gartner ‘research’ (which it does for paying customers to advance their objectives, not with objective analysis).

There were many ways to redress this so-called ‘study’, e.g. promoting Gmail, but nobody could deny the fall of GroupWise.

Moving on to another new article:

Following a regular IT product selection process, Schelp says a decision was reached whereby SBS would migrate off its existing Novell GroupWise e-mail and groupware suite to Microsoft’s Office 365 Cloud service for some 1300 user accounts.

Here is another one: “That was more or less how things shook out at Lincoln Property Co., said CIO Jay Kenney about the Dallas-based management company’s switching in 2010 from an in-house Novell GroupWise email system to Google Apps for its 4,000 employees.”

And another new story: “Brisbane City Council has undertaken a major project to migrate up to 8,500 desktop users off its Novell GroupWise email system to Microsoft Exchange.”

More on Bisbane from other sources (“Brisbane City Council culls GroupWise”): “Gartner suggests that Novell’s GroupWise and IBM’s Lotus Notes have lost momentum in the enterprise market in recent years, and this has made room for Google to prosper.”

There is a lot of evidence that makes Gartner’s so-called ‘research’ less than insightful and as another article puts it:

In a statement, the analyst house says classic stalwarts like Novell and IBM with its Lotus Notes have “lost market momentum”, while Cisco shut its effort down.

GWAVACon will carry on despite the fall of GroupWise, but how long for? They have a special speaker: “Flynn was appointed President and General Manager of Novell. He has worked for over 30 years in the IT industry, spending the past 13 years with the Attachmate Group.”

How come Attachmate does almost nothing to improve GroupWise? It is not even trying. █

Novell/Attachmate Emphasises Fog Computing/Hypervisors Rather Than Open Source

Posted in Novell, Servers at 10:00 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Microsoft’s little baby

Baby love

Summary: A quick walk through the news shows that “cloud” hype — not business freedom — is what Novell still offers to prospective customers

THE NOVELL of 2008-2010 was not the same as the older Novell, which still marketed “Open Source” rather than “Cloud Computing”.

Somewhere along the line Novell decided to de-emphasise its original selling point. This let Red Hat claim the higher moral ground, not just because it was not paying Microsoft for GNU/Linux. In this month’s news we are reminded of SUSE’s history: “The past few years have seen many open source companies being bought by proprietary ones. Back in 2003, Novell bought German Linux maker SuSE. A few years ago, Sun Microsystems bought database maker MySQL in a landmark $1 billion deal, and then last year, Sun Microsystems was itself snapped up by Oracle. One of the more recent deals is VMWare’s acquisition of Zimbra.”

Over time Novell made SUSE more and more proprietary, to the point where it is marketed as “cloud” OS, its source code is hard to obtain, and there is a shady patent deal elevating its cost.

Novelldemo has just uploaded about 10 more videos like this one video about a dead product, Vibe. Why bother? Maybe a marketing leftover. Either way, this too is an example of proprietary software from Novell, based on open source from another company (Google). It got marketed as “cloud” and failed to gain traction. Attachmate pulled the plug.

Another new article from the same source says: “”We built the platform ourselves, but adopted the Novell cloud manager. Business people provision resources on the fly,” says Richard Vester, head of hosted services at Vodacom Business.”

“Another similar product from Novell is just the repackaging of Red Hat’s product.”Cloud manager, eh? Be sure to check where it came from [1, 2]. Another similar product from Novell is just the repackaging of Red Hat’s product.

An additional new article states: “However the technology is used, shopping in a few years may not look much like shopping today.

““We hope so,” said Wilson, who worked for IT firm Novell for 21 years. “We’re counting on it.””

To be fair, the decisions at Novell came from managers consulted by marketing people, it is not the developers down the food chain who should be blamed. Developers often prefer to share their code, making it a source of pride, too.

Another article quotes Randy Hugie (program manager, certification and skills assessment at Novell) as saying: “Using the cloud, we implemented a 14-week, wide-scale partner academy.”

More cloud hype then. This other article which mentioned PlateSpin still plays along with those ideas. Novell bought some “cloud” stuff rather than vendors of Free/Open Source software. All that is left from Novell is legal mess, as we shall show later. █

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