Bonum Certa Men Certa

Novell Tumbles, But Not the 'Novellsoft' Part of the Company

Novellsoft

Ducks kiss
Killing them (Micro)Softly



NOVELL is expected to announce layoffs very shortly and OS News remarks on the news that some employees have already been notified.

Novell has already announced a number of lay offs, and the openSUSE Linux division has not been spared.


The comments there are quite interesting. One person rightly points out that Novell's disregard for its GNU/Linux engineers is a bad sign.

If they are laying off 100 out of their 4200 employees, I'm wondering why they are targeting OpenSUSE developers. You'd think that among those 4200 there is a fair share of "fat" that could be cut (middle managers, old-time hangabouts), instead of getting rid of developers in the first place.


As pointed out before, Novell is demoting anything but the Microsoft-esque components of SUSE (and sales). One person writes:

I think you will find that the article does not say that OpenSUSE has been targeted, just that it has not been spared. What is more troubling is that while they are laying off openSUSE folks, they are brining on .NET developers to help with MONO. Novell is becoming too good friends with Microsoft as far as I can tell...


And in reply:

That's ironic. I'm typing this on OpenSuSE 11.1 x64 and the one thing that's wobbly is Mono. In fact one flagship Mono app doesn't work at all and I be surprised if it ever has since it seems OpenSuSE haven't yet got around to updating it to a newer, patched version. Another flagship mono app causes freezing and general weird behaviour. Hmmn ...


Another person echoes the argument from Linux Today, where it was said that "Novell is Bleeding to Death."

Novell is Bleeding to Death



Like most declines like this it is a long and slow process, but it's yet another nail in the coffin. Novell have been laying a lot of workers off over the past few years and it has made no real difference, so in the current climate the squeeze will get even tighter. There are even a lot of rumours that there are more layoffs being covered up within the company.


While Novell's real GNU/Linux engineers (not those mimicking Microsoft technologies) are clearly being shafted, Miguel and his friends get the red(mond) carpet. Yesterday from de Icaza's blog:

My friend تلة جوزيف (Youssef) and myself will be heading out to Redmond for the ALT.NET Seattle event this weekend.


What's it all for? To reference CMS Wire, it's for making GNU/Linux a third-class citizen [1, 2, 3, 4] (after Mac OS X and Windows). Microsoft deliberately excluded GNU/Linux under the premise that Novell would do this job poorly.

Is Moonlight A Day Late and an App Short?



[...]

While Moonlight provides Linux users with the ability to access, view and develop Silverlight applications and Silverlight is already available for Mac OS X, Adobe has been cross-platform for years now.

So the question presents itself, is Moonlight too far behind the widely praised and widely used Adobe Flash set to be a viable competitor?


So at the end of the day, Novell has GNU/Linux striving to become something it cannot ever be. As Stephen O'Grady pointed out 2 years ago, GNU/Linux must not become a cheap(er) copy of something from Microsoft. It needs to compete based on its own merits.

MonoDevelop is a similar example of this. The Microsoft-friendly Gavin Clarke has just published this article to say that Microsoft wants FOSS developers to use Visual Studio. It would be easier for Microsoft to achieve this goal had GNU/Linux users and developers been addicted to Mono and MonoDevelop from Novell, respectively.

Microsoft has invited the open-source community to build plug-ins for Visual Studio 2010, and has improved database support to help build partner backing for its planned integrated development environment (IDE).


There is one goal here: make developers dependent on Microsoft, no matter what platforms they focus on. When Microsoft offered SourceForge its sponsorship it also used SourceForge as a platform to promote the proprietary Visual Studio for FOSS developers [1, 2, 3, 4]. It's an embrace-and-extend-type strategy, which is assisted by Novell's misguided endeavors. The Provo-based David Canar is meanwhile creating Qt4 .NET bridges which bring back concerns about Mono in KDE [1, 2, 3, 4].

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Nat Friedman Had Left Microsoft GitHub Exactly One Week Before Matthew Garrett Sent His First SLAPP (Which Was an Empty Threat, He Was Abusing the Legal System of Another Continent to Terrorise Critics Who Had Just Unearthed Major Microsoft Scandals)
And it was likely talked about by his lawyers around the exact same time Nat Friedman was packing up
 
Extortion is a Crime, Even If You're Based in Another Continent and Work for Microsoft
reported to British authorities
We're in 6/6 Now, Almost Halfway in 2025
2025 was probably the best year for us
South Americans Are Saying Goodbye to Microsoft
We're hardly even "Cherry-Picking" or conveniently singling out one South American nation
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part III: Data Protection Failures, Just Like at the European Patent Office (EPO)
Just less than a decade ago we showed that the EPO had illegally shared staff data with third parties
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, June 05, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, June 05, 2025
Pushing Microsoft's Proprietary Trash/Trap as "Open" and "Linux" (Windows is 'Linux' Now?)
Maybe it's time to just stop saying "FOSS". The people who use that term are promoting Microsoft.
Slopwatch: Comparing Linux to Vermin, Attacking BSD With LLM Slop, and Helping Microsoft Demonise Linux/OpenBSD/SSH Over Weak User Passwords
Microsoft must be laughing its arse off, seeing how a bunch of Serial Sloppers (no skills, no comprehension, no integrity, no creativity) and slopfarms use Microsoft LLM to flood the Web with anti-Linux FUD
Links 05/06/2025: US Poised for Another $2.4 Trillion to Debt, Cops Want GAFAM Kill Switches
Links for the day
Links 05/06/2025: First US Spacewalk 60 Years Ago, GNU Octave 10.2.0 is Out
Links for the day
Scandinavia Saying Goodbye to Microsoft
The Danes have had enough of Microsoft
GNU/Linux Measured at 6% in Bangladesh, According to statCounter
Windows isn't growing, it's going away
Gemini Links 05/06/2025: Loop Earplugs Review and ANS Forth
Links for the day
Armenian Adoption of GNU/Linux
Russian influence in Armenian must be worrying to Microsoft
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part II: Turning a Once-Respected Patent Office Into a Circus and Laughing Stock
It's not legal, but administrators who don't care about the law and don't fear the law would just go ahead and turn things to junk
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, June 04, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, June 04, 2025
Slopwatch: Mindless Slop Pieces, Fake Images and Text, Linux FUD on the Cheap
spewed out by Microsoft-controlled LLMs
Links 04/06/2025: Workers' Strikes, Sudan Exodus
Links for the day
Links 04/06/2025: Linux Foundation PR Spam and Lee Jae-myung Wins Election
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/06/2025: Future Leaders of the World and Platforming Jordan Peterson
Links for the day
Links 04/06/2025: WSL Backfiring on Microsoft and "Disney, Microsoft Announce Massive Layoffs"
Links for the day
Our Case is a Very Easy Win, the SLAPPs From Microsofters Were a Grave Error, and Censoring Information Won't Work (It'll Only Ever Backfire)
Censoring is what people do when they lose the argument
Say the Truth, the Rest Will Follow
There's no guarantee that writing the truth will result in an audience (or readership), but over time - in the long run - people generally gravitate towards what they know or feel to be crude truth, not just what's comforting (albeit false or self-deluding, usually groupthink dictated from above)
How to Expose High-Level Corruption Without Getting in (Too Much) Trouble
Democracy depends on free press and freedom of the press depends on being able to safely publish (and keep available) material that bad people don't want to be known to anybody
In-Depth EPO Coverage at Techrights Turns Eleven
11 years is a very long time
Windows Measured Below 10% in Afghanistan, GNU/Linux Gaining a Lot
about 80% are Android (Linux) users, compared to only about 10% for Windows
Poland's Political Predicament and Social Control Media
Democracy and fake "tech" don't mix well; the latter tends to interfere with the former and that's why we get more "Putins" out there
EPO: Taking Away From the Staff to Give More to the Rich
The Central Staff Committee (CSC) wrote to EPO staff earlier this week
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, June 03, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, June 03, 2025
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part I: It's a Lot Like the EPO
we can commence a series soon
Gemini Links 04/06/2025: Inescapable Questions and Quitting All "Oligarch Tech"
Links for the day