12.21.11
Posted in Antitrust, Microsoft, Novell at 10:43 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The Novell vs. Microsoft case in a nutshell
THE NOVELL of Noorda claims that Microsoft misled and still pursues in damages just about as much as the ‘new’ Novell is worth, based on this article which says:
Microsoft deliberately misled Novell in a bid to steal a march on the company with Windows 95, according to lawyers pursuing a $1 billion lawsuit against the Redmond-based software giant.
This trial is also covered by Groklaw, which says that:
Microsoft and Novell each summed up its case for the jury yesterday in Utah, in the antitrust trial Novell brought against it regarding WordPerfect and Quattro Pro. Yes, it’s almost over. We had a reporter there for part of Microsoft’s closing statement today, and Bloomberg fills in the rest, along with the Salt Lake Tribune. TechFlash has coverage as well. And we also have most of the latest documents for you.
Since we last looked in, Microsoft’s motion for judgment as a matter of law was denied, but Novell’s motion to reopen the case to present more evidence was denied. I confess I have been disturbed by reports of this judge’s conduct at this trial, but the thing about juries is that they are not predictable. So, we’ll see. Maybe they feel the same way I do about the judge. But one thing is for sure, whoever loses will almost certainly appeal.
This ended up as a mistrial with a hung jury, but Pamela Jones had claimed that the “Holdout Juror Was Convinced Microsoft Was Guilty of Anticompetitive Behavior”. To quote:
The one holdout juror, Corbyn Alvey, in the Novell v. Microsoft antitrust trial over WordPerfect and Quattro Pro has now spoken. And it’s extraordinary. In an interview by KSL-TV, he says that he was convinced that Microsoft was guilty of anticompetitive behavior. His doubt was whether Novell was damaged by it, so he voted no on the marketplace issue, but yes on the allegation of anticompetitive behavior.
Wow. That means that all 12 jurors found Microsoft guilty of anticompetitive behavior. The video is extraordinary. Alvey even says that, while he’d not wish to call Bill Gates a liar, he certainly saw that his testimony on the stand did not match up with his emails from the 90s that Novell presented.
The case was eventually dismissed and the Microsoft booster spoke of retrial:
Novell’s reanimated antitrust case against Microsoft’s Word is reported to have hit “hopeless” deadlock, with Novell pushing for a fresh trial.
A jury in Salt Lake City hearing the $1bn case can’t make up its mind whether Microsoft broke the law, according to The Wall St Journal.
According to the WSJ, after a brief examination of the case the jury became quickly and “hopelessly” deadlocked. Jurors received the case Wednesday and on Friday morning told Judge J Frederick Motz they were deadlocked.
According to the VAR Guy, “Microsoft, Novell [may be] Negotiating WordPerfect Settlement” because according to sources:
Attorneys for Microsoft and Novell apparently are trying to negotiate a settlement to address Novell’s $1 billion lawsuit against Microsoft. The negotiations started after Novell’s case against Microsoft ended in a mistrial/hung jury. The big question: Will Microsoft write a big settlement check to Novell, or will Novell seek a retrial?
For the time being, there is only a mistrial:
A seven-year-old antitrust case brought by Novell against Microsoft has ended in a mistrial after jurors were unable to reach a unanimous verdict.
The unfortunate thing is that no matter what happens, by breaking the law Microsoft repeatedly crushed competition and by the time there was a trial and even a settlement Microsoft had already established a position that abuses customers (e.g. overprices and under-delivers), destroys many jobs (so money goes to very few people), and demonstrates to us that crime pays off. █
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12.18.11
Posted in Microsoft, Novell, OpenSUSE, Patents, Turbolinux at 11:32 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Bits of news about Microsoft helpers who put a patent tax on Free software
THE state of Novell continues to be tracked and will be caught up with later this month.
One of Novell’s products, Vibe/Pulse, was declared dead earlier this year, but Novell keeps uploading videos about it [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. It is probably not a marketing spillover because there are signs that Novell refuses to let this project go. Mixed messages for sure.
Disdain of Novell is a defence of the interests of FOSS because Novell forms a bridge for Microsoft to charge a tax/toll on FOSS. There is this new product coming from another company that does this. It is called Tuxera and it helps Microsoft tax file systems in Linux (and Android). We sometimes aptly call it “taxera”.
There is not much news from Novell, but those who try to keep abreast of things scrape some material that we will cover later this month. Novell won’t be named for much longer because it was bought. Then there is the story of Linspire/Xandros and Turbolinux, whose staff we find in new places:
Prior to Lyris, Luis oversaw global business development and sales at Turbolinux, where he led the launch of international subsidiaries in Argentina, Australia, Germany and the UK. Rivera also led international sales at IMSI, a publicly traded software publishing company, and business development at @Road, a mobile resource management solution provider.
In other news that we shall cover more thoroughly later this month, OpenSUSE (Attachmate) plans to have presence at FOSDEM despite the fact that SUSE is a bit of a pariah. To quote:
FOSDEM is the biggest event organized by and for the Free and Open Source (FOSS) community. Its goal is to provide developers a place to meet, come together and share and discuss ideas. The event happens 4-5 February 2012 in Brussels, Belgium. And there will again be a cross-distribution mini conference at FOSDEM this year. By organizing a mini conference where all distributions participate in we foster collaboration and cross pollination. You are hereby invited to hold a session.
This is actually quite harmless because it does not involve any of Microsoft’s trojan horses that Novell/SUSE is used for (e.g. Mono, Microsoft kernel drivers, OOXML). Let us know of any Novell news we might have missed (in comments/IRC). █
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12.15.11
Posted in Novell at 7:22 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
The scraps of Novell make small moves
Summary: The latest news from Xamarin and from Novell, which have totally lost their way by now
THE company known as Xamarin is a proprietary software powerhouse with emphasis on .NET. Its CTO does not use GNU/Linux at work. See the comments here and mind the headline which says the opposite of the real news (that Miguel de Icaza moved away from Linux).
Xamarin has a new proprietary (open ‘core’) product which is based on “an open-source version of Microsoft’s .Net technology for programming in Microsoft’s C# language.” The article continues: “With the newest version of Mono for Android, C# programmers can produce software that will run natively on both Android 4.0, aka Ice Cream Sandwich, and on Android tablets including Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, Xamarin said yesterday.”
As we explained in the past, this is a sort of embrace-and-extend of Android. From Java/Dalvik to Microsoft’s turf? Does anyone really need that? A few sites gave that coverage, but all in all, things were quiet. One article says:
“The big component is that we’ve caught up for Google,” Miguel de Icaza, CTO of Xamarin, told InternetNews.com.
Google does not need .NET on its phones, so once again Mono is a solution in search of a problem (which does not exist). Novell in general offers a distribution that addresses a need nobody really has. The whole “IP peace of mind” line is just pure FUD and amid security issues and some blurbs about OpenSUSE we find this announcement of a product that arrives very late given the age of SLE* 11. To quote:
Novell and SUSE Linux may technically be separate companies, but they are owned by the same Attachmate conglomerate and they still have to work together on specific products, such as Open Enterprise Server, which bolts NetWare print and file services to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.
“OES is Novell’s operating system product that helps to provide a bridge to its legacy NetWare customers. The OES product line first debuted in 2005. With the new OES 11 release, Novell is basing the server on the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP1 release, that debuted back in May 2010,” as this article put it. What took it so long? The official word does not provide an answer and new material about SLE* is equally out of date. It is quite possible that turmoil inside Novell led to this procrastination. █
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12.14.11
Posted in GNU/Linux, Marketing, Microsoft, Novell, OpenSUSE at 10:43 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A critical assessment of where SUSE stands at the end of 2011 and how this interacts with the release of OpenSUSE
THE past year has been good for GNU/Linux. On the server, for instance, it carried on gaining.
According to some figures, Red Hat keeps beating Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Linux (SUSE), and Solaris. This is not especially surprising given the recent results and upgrade of Red Hat (c/f our daily links). SUSE can see the growth of GNU/Linux, but it cannot quite steal Red Hat’s thunder, not even with Microsoft’s assistance. From the news: “Even as the Linux Foundation reports on Linux jobs in the U.S., the global picture seems to be even more encouraging.”
Over in New Zealand, SUSE is looking to “re-open Linux conversation” — whatever that actually means. They cannot even get the name right. The news site says: “Suse has informed us the official pronunciation is written soo-sah – check out this YouTube video if you’re still not sure.”
At SUSE there used to be a lot of buzz over “IP peace of mind” (Microsoft FUD) and right now there is more and more of the Fog Computing (“cloud”) hype. We gave many examples over the past couple of years. Consider this new Q&A from Australia:
There are two types of Cloud — public and private, and there is also the hybrid Cloud that’s a combination of both. We’re already in the Cloud business. You can use SUSE through a number of public Cloud providers, and we use Telstra locally. We also work with IBM and Intel, Rackspace and we’ve got some more global announcements coming up shortly about this.
Joe Brockmeier, formerly of Novell/SUSE, also pumps in that type of hype:
SUSE announced its commitment to OpenStack in October, along with a development preview available via SUSE Studio. This includes the three major components in the Diablo release (Nova, Glance, and Keystone). Brauckmann wasn’t sure about specific contributions that SUSE would be making to OpenStack, but did say that the company plans to follow up with a second technology preview in Q2 of 2012. (The “Essex” release of OpenStack will come out in late Q1 if it sticks to schedule.)
At SUSE, it is no longer important to encourage software freedom; patents and decoupling one from his/her data is now a priority. On the purely proprietary side there is also IDM which Novell spreads to keep track of people. Novell’s account in YouTube promotes the proprietary Vibe [1, 2] (based on open source but proprietary) and some other proprietary software stuff that can be found in other new files like this one. The only thing which remained somewhat open is OpenSUSE, but this is a promotional move/tool for SLE*. The so-called ‘community’ is being approached for free artwork [1, 2] while others provide documentation and reviews. OpenSUSE is not unique, but this one review says: “when I read about some of the features in OpenSuse 12.1, I couldn’t resist giving it a try.”
All those features are available elsewhere. What YaST has should have equivalents elsewhere too. There is of course also the volunteer composition of weekly reports [1, 2], putting aside the OpenSUSE project site itself [1, 2] or those who took it for a spin for comparative purposes.
The bottom line is, SUSE lost to Red Hat and it is not promoting Open Source at all. OpenSUSE is being used to add the “open” angle to SUSE marketing. Nobody really needs either of those. Smart folks simply see what else is out there and let SUSE dry up inside Microsoft’s wallet. The boycott was not in vain, and it has been very effective. █
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12.12.11
Posted in Novell, OpenSUSE at 9:05 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
[written in 05/12/2011]
Summary: A week old summary of SUSE news and why OpenSUSE support is insufficient
WITH further posts about OpenSUSE [1, 2, 3] and even some additional reviews we are seeing reversals in assessment. But the key point remains that SUSE provides nothing that cannot be found in other distributions (or comparable tools).
Among some reviews we also find evidence that things are getting worse as we argued before. “Even Worse” is the title of the review from Dedimedo, who probably produces some of the most detailed GNU/Linux reviews and articles out there. It is an underrated site in general.
“For that reason, Debian and LTS releases of Ubuntu are still well ahead.”The world of SUSE intends to swap some people in the board, but the core of the project is still run by people who are paid by SUSE, which is in turn dependent on Microsoft and therefore cannot be trusted, never mind the nature of the anticompetitive patent deal.
Over the past few years we have seen the SUSE project transitioning into a short span of times, with a broadened lifecycle or release cycle that nevertheless left product support too short for practicality. For that reason, Debian and LTS releases of Ubuntu are still well ahead. Like Fedora, SUSE is not useful in the face of Novell’s security issues, which are abundant when it comes to proprietary software for Windows. There is a lot of Novell software for Microsoft Windows, such as this new example.
When software gets maintained over the short run, it is not surprising that it has rough edges even in the eyes of its makers and given that OpenSUSE 11.3 is a month away from dying, it is no wonder that SUSE can no longer be viewed as a leading option among distributions. There are those who use a long-supported version of KDE that could in theory breathe life into very old distributions. “As KDE3 is again part of the official openSUSE 12.1 repositories,” says one post, “I took the chance to create an installable livecd. Besides a preconfigured KDE3 desktop, it contains additional software like Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird and LibreOffice.”
The problem is, not so long from now there will be no more updates in the repository. The bottom line is, support for OpenSUSE is lacking (too short), the quality is low (even SUSE people complain), and there is the deal with Microsoft that gives little or no reason to approach SUSE. █
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11.29.11
Posted in Novell, OpenSUSE, SLES/SLED at 3:39 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
From leader to loser in 5 years?
Summary: Why SUSE should be avoided, not just for helping Microsoft but also for technical reasons
FIVE years ago SUSE could almost be viewed as a victim of Novell’s decisions. But a few months ago SUSE sold out not via Novell and this is when we called for a boycott of SUSE and not Novell (which no longer existed per se).
Now that the Weekly News posts seem quite vacant (compared to years ago) we are left just seeing some OpenSUSE posts like impressions and various reviews. The score for OpenSUSE is not so high, so it is clearly not a leader. It arguably was the leader before Microsoft turned it into a ‘Microsoft Linux’. As one review summarised it: “I would say that it’s still a good distribution, but it’s not quite as awesome as version 11.4, so I would recommend it, but not as much as version 11.4.”
So it is arguably getting worse. People who speak about DistroWatch rankings for OpenSUSE conceal the fact that the recent release provides a temporary boost.█
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11.28.11
Posted in Novell at 9:53 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Following layoffs and a quiet period of transition there are no signs of Attachmate doing something substantial with Novell’s products
Attachmate was seen mentioning some products recently. This is rare. It also spoke about jobs in Australia [1, 2, 3], but there is no indication that this has anything to do with Novell products. Attachmate laid off almost 1,000 Novell employees.
In general, Attachmate only seems to speak about releases of its own products, e.g.:
Attachmate Corporation offers the second release of its next-generation product for the X Server market. Attachmate Reflection Suite for X 2011 R2 lets Windows users securely access text- and graphics-based applications on Unix and Linux systems, as well as applications on IBM System z and System i. The software’s inclusion of the latest X Server technologies, next-generation terminal emulation software, and a secure file transfer client in a single deployment package lets enterprises seamlessly meet their host access needs during a Windows 7 migration.
Windows, that’s right. There is more about this sort of stuff here. What about Novell’s products? As this new article explains: “Questions remain what Attachmate will do with the IDM products it acquired through Novell. That leaves IBM, Hitachi and CA as the major IDM players. Additionally, CA is now an authentication player in another sparsely populated segment. Since Symantec bought VeriSigns’ certificates business, the market has coalesced around RSA, Symantec and CA.”
The words from Attachmate regarding Novell are hardly reassuring. To quote:
By returning its umbrella companies to their roots, the Attachmate Group hopes to reinvigorate its business strengths, according to the keynote addresses at the organisation’s Powerful Connection event in Sydney.
Very vague and no commitment expressed for Novell as a whole. There are some other talks from the company, but they hardly mention anything about Novell (the “N” word) [1, 2, 3]. To quote one article:
Speaking at Attachmate’s A Powerful Connection conference in Sydney, Gallo said more than 70 per cent of company fraud in Australia is committed by staff members.
When all the stuff from Attachmate is about its old staff and products (e.g. this announcement), then Novell is clearly doomed with the products it created. We provided more examples of this before. Not much has changed except some lip service at Brainshare. █
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Posted in Novell at 9:39 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A news roundup of the Novell that crumbles rapidly, with evidence backing the claim
FROM the ashes of Novell came some talented people who are not obligated to serve Microsoft’s vassal anymore.
One former Novell employee made the news for the following story that says:
Nufer, a laid-off employee at Novell, decided to add a competitive element to the puzzle with a game called Tangram Fury. Using two large triangles, one medium right triangle, two small right triangles, a square and a parallelogram, players race to recreate images from a deck of cards.
Twitter is now expanding in Europe and a first employee in Dublin has Novell background. To quote: “Twitter, which is locating its international operations in Dublin, has appointed Laurence O’Brien as financial controller for its EMEA operations, Siliconrepublic.com has learned. O’Brien previously worked for enterprise software player Novell and Dublin tech start-up Prime Carrier.”
This was also covered here and here. The latter says:
Twitter, which is locating its international operations in Dublin, has appointed Laurence O’Brien as financial controller for its EMEA operations, Siliconrepublic.com has learned. O’Brien previously worked for enterprise software player Novell and Dublin tech start-up Prime Carrier.
Former executives from Novell also find themselves moving. One new example involves Michelle Duffy:
Ms Duffy has been successful in building strategic relationships with various channel partners prior to joining Acronis, working for companies such as Dimension Data, Citrix (through itX Group), M86 Security and Novell.
Another source says that “Disaster recovery and data protection provider Acronis has appointed experienced partner manager Michelle Duffy to the role of ANZ channels business development manager.”
Another man who worked for Novell goes Savi (not savvy). “Before joining Novell, Juliano held senior executive positions with Symbol Technologies, IBM, and several global advertising agencies, including Ogilvy & Mather.”
And the last one says about Nussbickel that: “He brings more than 10 years of finance leadership and C-level experience with him, having worked as (regional) CFO with various high-tech and software multinational enterprises, among them Oracle and SuSE Linux AG (today part of Novell).”
Novell is no more though. It is a historical entity. And finally: “Avaya’s big bet on Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) technology will define its future, said Avaya President and CEO Kevin Kennedy, who on Tuesday argued that customer embrace of SIP in this decade is a story playing out much like how the growth of TCP/IP boxed out proprietary networking protocols like AppleTalk and Novell IPX in the 1990s. ”
That is all the remains of Novell’s glory.
Moving on to another example of moves away from Novell:
Bradford also has been senior vice president and general counsel of Novell Inc.
The general trend seems clear. Novell’s executives were made redundant and even lower-level staff found other occupations. Novell’s old products are generally being dropped in favour of products from Google, IBM, and Microsoft in the case of mail. Amid migrations we see this news about “Google is paying for the LAPD to keep using Novell Groupwise.”
That won’t last for long. Here is an example of more defections away from Groupwise or rejections of it. In the article “Students frustrated with new email” it says that “The committee entertained options from Gmail, Novell Canada, Lotus, and Landisk, but eventually decided to switch to Microsoft.”
Novell is mentioned in Campus Technology in the following context:
The organization also added Novell’s Compliance Management Platform, which includes a number of security products, including Novell Sentinel for security and event monitoring; and Identity Manager for user provisioning, password management, and access control. In April 2011 Novell was acquired by NetIQ, which now owns and operates the Compliance Management Platform as well as the Sentinel and Identity Manager product lines.
In another new article Novell gets mentioned for the following:
The first step was to replace its existing outdated e-mail system, Novell GroupWise, with Gmail. Handling the GroupWise licenses was a huge challenge; throughout much of the year, TIFF operates with a staff of about 250, but leading up to the festival it ramps up to 600 or 700 people. Also, many employees are mobile, so they required VPN access to check their e-mail.
It seems like proprietary lock-in keeps Groupwise alive for a while longer in some places. But how long will it last now that even this products leadership is in a shaky state?
The same goes for Novell’s old network framework, which is being shaken much to Microsoft’s delight:
8. Active Directory will continue to dominate, and the IAM framework market will see modest growth. Active Directory is the identity management platform of choice for enterprises, and Quest Software expects this dominance to increase slightly as some of the remaining users of Novell eDirectory shift to Active Directory. Given Active Directory’s market acceptance, Microsoft’s aggressive Enterprise Agreement sales and the TEC for Directory & Identity focus, it is not surprising that usage of Microsoft’s Forefront Identity Manager (FIM) easily exceeds the usage of competing IAM frameworks such as IBM Tivoli Identity Manager, Oracle Identity Manager, CA Identity Manager and Novell Identity Manager. Quest Software expects modest growth in both Microsoft and non-Microsoft framework categories over the next year.
Passiveness from Attachmate serves Microsoft well here and businesses develop around the urge to quit Novell (this one if a new press release). Here is the only exception that we found. It basically says that a Novell product gets increased support from a third party, but such news is rare. Many would be wise to assume that Novell is dead man walking. █
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