Bonum Certa Men Certa

Novell News Summary - Part III: Pulse Again, SCO's Jeff Hunsaker is Out, GroupWise Items

Zion National Park



Summary: A bundle of news about Novell Pulse, SCO-Novell news, and various other items

With OpenSUSE being the main item this week, not much else could be said about Novell. We wrote about Pulse last week and it is still the most unique item of Novell news.



Pulse



One of our readers, who spotted the noise from Novell's marketing people, argues that Novell still has a pulse -- for now.

Many people think that Novell is controlled directly from Redmond (or certainly sits and gives a paw on command of its Microsoft master). It matters not, the damage “the deal” did to the public perception of Novell IMO shows how insidious a Microsoft relationship can be.


Here is another newer article about Pulse.

Novell has announced the first real-time collaboration platform for the enterprise, Novell Pulse. In addition, Novell stated it is working with Google to enable Novell Pulse users and Google Wave users to seamlessly work together across both systems.


Pulse was also covered or mentioned indirectly under:

i. Thunderbird 3, Raindrop and the Future of Mozilla Messaging

After meeting Ascher in San Francisco and having recently covered both Wave and Novell Pulse-related stories, ReadWriteWeb's first question was obvious: Would Mozilla be merging Thunderbird and Raindrop for a Google Wave-like experience?


ii. ThoughtWorks Studios 'Mingles' with Google Wave

ThoughtWorks Studios was one of three companies demoing software integrations with Google Wave at the conference: Novell showed off a real-time, enterprise collaboration platform called "Pulse," which it plans to integrate with Google Wave; and SAP demoed an application called "Gravity," through which users collaborate on creating and modeling business processes.


iii. Summit: Dealing with communications overload

When you look at some of the tools becoming available, Novell's recent Pulse announcement and Google Wave are examples, you can combine the transient messages around something with something which is persistent through which you can refer to it and which many people can work on.


SCO



Jeff Hunsaker is out! Groklaw writes:

Here's an interview with CEO Shawn Jenkins, to give you the flavor of what they do. It's a software company. I understand it's a company that uses Linux to some degree, actually. I'm sure the techies there are simply thrilled to have Young in their midst. Note his bio leaves the SCO job off the list, which is the same pattern we noticed when he joined SCO in 2004. It must be hard to be an ex-SCO person. Or maybe it's just because he is stressing other skill sets now, like the ability to "handle rapid growth", not something he needed at SCO.

And I notice that the company is hiring, even looking for a general counsel, who will report to Young. They need a Senior Software Engineer (EDI and Java or .NET) too.

So, where did Darl McBride land, I wonder? I haven't heard anything yet. Maybe NASA could send him to the moon. I hear they found water there, so maybe he could bottle it and sell Moon Water from his Harley?


For what it's worth, we have mentioned Jeff Hunsaker in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. Here is another important development:

SUSE Moves to Lift Stay on Arbitration; Novell Asks to Consolidate with IBM Litigation or Have Both Cases Assigned to That Judge



Novell has made two moves. In bankruptcy court, SUSE asks that the stay be lifted so the arbitration can go forward. And in Utah, Novell has filed a Notice of Related Proceeding, asking that the SCO v. Novell and SCO v. IBM litigations either be consolidated with SCO v. IBM or at least be assigned to the same judge, Tena Campbell.


Past Software



Certified Novell engineers are mentioned in relation to the impact of an Oracle/Novell takeover.

Radical mergers such as the Oracle/Sun combo could revolutionise and shake up IT. Conversely, Oracle would do well to remember what happens to companies which either overstretch themselves and/or become entrenched in fighting yesterday's wars and settling old scores. Novell became unstuck doing both - remember CNE?


Novell applications are being replaced in North Georgia College & State University, according to this press release

Matrix42 Empirum v12 Suite of Management Products Will Replace Outdated Combination of Manual Processes, Scripts and Novell Applications


Novell support (including Netware) is mentioned in another release and the effect of Novell on 3Com is mentioned following the acquisition announcement (by HP).

1990 – Facing stiff competition from Microsoft and Novell, 3Com gets out of the network operating system business.


GroupWise



GroupWise support in the BlackBerry gets Novell some attention and GroupWise love from Messaging Architects is noted in the following press release:

Messaging Architects and Omni Deliver Innovative Compliance Management for Exchange 2010 and GroupWise 8



Messaging Architects and Omni, recognized leaders in email management products and services, today announced that Omni’s eControl console will support natively Messaging Architects' Email Risk Management and Compliance products. The enhancement will benefit M+Archive and M+Guardian customers with simplified administration management, provisioning and delegation of routine tasks.


There are other new examples of GroupWise support:

...Novell€® GroupWise are supported.


Some BlackBerry support again:

Magticom is offering BlackBerry Enterprise Server for corporate clients, a solution that tightly integrates with IBM Lotus Domino, Microsoft Exchange and Novell GroupWise and works with existing enterprise systems to enable secure, push-based wireless access to email and other corporate data. BlackBerry services also allow consumers and business users to manage up to ten supported email accounts (including most popular ISP email accounts) from their BlackBerry smartphone.


The defeat of GroupWise is still being debated, even in the 'Microsoft press'.

What technology was the city using for e-mail? The primary e-mail system that the city was using was the Novell one, and I think they also had some instances of Microsoft Exchange as well.


More GroupWise in government:

The departments and agencies whose users will be migrated onto the centralised email platform are already using Exchange, but some installations of IBM's Lotus Notes/Domino and Novell's GroupWise platforms remain throughout the state government.


The National Kidney Foundation has found something to complement GroupWise:

The foundation turned to email archiving as a less labor-intensive means of cutting down on the size of its two GroupWise Post Offices than trying to get stricter about mailbox quotas. Given that GroupWise is not as widely used as Microsoft's Exchange, finding an email archiving vendor that supports it was a tricky and expensive project.


Identity Management



Except for some minor items there was only this press release, but that too is nothing major.

Smart card management solution involving integration with Novell Identity Manager


Security/Recovery



Novell is still capitalising on threat (or perceived threat) and data recovery is said to be assisted by Novell Cluster Services.

Now, all these servers are virtualized and run from a cluster, using Novell Cluster Services . So when a physical machine goes down, the virtual server can be moved to another location with very little downtime. Moving to virtualization also saved in hardware costs. Since newly purchased servers would no longer require hard drives for storage, it could save $7,000 to $8,000 per server, according to the city.


People



Novell has undergone some shuffles at the top.

Mr Poole takes over for acting senior vice president of human resources Scott Semel. Mr Semel continues his role as senior vice president and general counsel at Novell.


To use Novell's explanation:

Novell today announced that Russell Poole, former vice president and senior HR partner, has been named senior vice president, Human Resources, effective immediately. Poole will be based out of Novell’s headquarters in Waltham, Mass., and will report directly to President and CEO Ron Hovsepian. Poole takes over for acting Senior Vice President of Human Resources Scott Semel. Semel continues his role as senior vice president and general counsel at Novell.


There is more to be found here and maybe here.

Former Novell software engineer Verdon Walker has run the race three times with the corporate team "2 Slow 2 Win 2 Dumb 2 Quit."


Partners



The following new press release identifies NDS8 as a Novell partner.

NDS8 (www.nds8.co.uk) is a Novell Platinum Partner and Astaro Preferred Partner, focused on maximising the functionality and reliability of Novell and SuSE applications.


Novell was mentioned in some other press releases, mostly in the footers.

A community college seems to be giving this technical advice about Novell in a new video that it has just uploaded.

Recent Techrights' Posts

European Patent Office Strikes Intensify Tomorrow, Huge Strikes Planned for June, 10,000 Strike Participations Registered
Campinos may well be ousted soon
SLAPP Censorship - Part 93 Out of 200: A Blueprint of Reckless Lawfare in the UK, Waged and Funded by Americans (in Another Continent)
Lawfare powered by slop companies (including Microsoft) from America, targetting British people who consistently oppose slop because it's objectively terrible
Links 31/05/2026: Watershed Moment, Traveller RPG Book Binding, and GUI Annoyances
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, May 30, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, May 30, 2026
IBM CEO Can Become a Billionaire by Laying Off Tens of Thousands of Workers (or Buying Companies Using Borrowed Money, Only to Lay off Thousands in Them)
Like he did Confluent recently
Reminder That Linuxiac is a Slopfarm or Hybrid of Bobby and His LLMs
LLM fetishist that claims to cover Linux
BetaNews is Still Publishing Fake Articles, Sometimes Fake News, or LLM Slop Disguised as 'Journalism'
Slop isn't yet a thing of the past, but hopefully we'll get close to that by the end of this year
Gemini Links 30/05/2026: Writer's Block, Evil GAFAM (Google), and Scepticism of Slop
Links for the day
Links 30/05/2026: Fairphone 6, China’s Rise in Drug Development, Slop Wastes Money Without Delivering Value
Links for the day
Links 30/05/2026: Alarm Over Large Companies Cancelling Slop Contracts, Ozzy Osbourne Resurrection as Slop Draws Ire
Links for the day
Red Hat Exodus or RAs (or PIPs) in 2026 Not Limited to China, IBM is Doing Well at Hiding Layoffs
All we need to know is, does IBM hand out lots of PIPs?
SLAPP Censorship - Part 92 Out of 200: A Spouse Cannot be Turned "On" and "Off" Like a Faucet
Today's part will be very short because we keep the parts shorter in weekends and summer is officially around the corner (June on Monday)
The Register MS Has Just Published Fake Article That Mentions "AI" 23 Times. "Sponsored by Arm." It Does This Every Day.
A lot of the time we see this term everywhere in "the news" simply because slop pushers are paying for it
SQLite Under DDoS Attack by Slop Reports or Fake 'Bugs' (Just Like cURL and Many Other Projects)
Even Linus Torvalds is starting to talk about this
IBM: The B Turns From "Business" to "Bailouts" to "Buybacks" ("IBM is the Next Intel")
Trying to shore up the falling share price/stocks while veteran workers and Vice President (with high salaries) are cut off
Links 30/05/2026: More GAFAM (Amazon) Mass Layoffs, Peter Schiff Warns of Trillion-Dollar Slop Bubble Waiting to Implode
Links for the day
Slop is Plagiarism
Trillions of dollars down the drain, invested in a dud
Gemini Links 30/05/2026: Rehabilitation and Taming Emacs Cache and Temporary Files
Links for the day
Richard Stallman (RMS) Talks and Secure Transmission of Private Communications in Formats Everybody Can Access With Free Software
Maybe the FSF should step up a bit the campaign to use Free software to communicate with one another
General Consultative Committee (GCC) Discusses Working Conditions of Employees of the European Patent Office (EPO)
On the agenda: Salary Erosion Procedure, Breastfeeding Policy, New Amicale Framework, Public Holidays 2027
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, May 29, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, May 29, 2026
It's Friday Night Again, So Microsoft is Again Shelving (Under Weekend Lull) Nightmare News for XBox Staff
It did the same thing when the chiefs of XBox got canned
Links 29/05/2026: "Spyware Economy" and Cuba's Energy Crisis
Links for the day
Gemini Links 29/05/2026: Rap Rant and LLMs Criticised
Links for the day
Akira Urushibata on Misleading Numbers From Anthropic's Project Glasswing (False Marketing by FUD Tactics)
Posted yesterday and approved a short while ago
Censorship of Information Unflattering to IBM (or GAFAM)
Years ago we gave a platform to a censored Microsoft whistleblower
Silent Layoffs at Microsoft in 2026
Time will tell is there are investigative journalists out there who will quit parroting Microsoft (e.g. false layoff figures) and relying on LLMs controlled by Microsoft to spew out false "facts" for them
SLAPP Censorship - Part 91 Out of 200: Legal Aid in Support of Freedom of the Press and British Women (Attacked by Americans)
bolstered by prominent counsels
Codecs and Software Patents - Part XII - GNU's Web Site Will Soon Have Many Recent Talks by Chief GNUisance Richard Stallman (RMS)
GNU videos being transcoded or converted into AV1
[Video] Richard Stallman's Rapperswil (Switzerland) Talk Online
accessible without proprietary software
Trusting Trust is an Old Issue, Predating Rust and LLM Slop by Over Half a Century
Microsoft Lunduke wants to make a case against Rust and slop (LLMs), but the issues he addresses aren't exactly new or unique
California Should Have Abandoned So-called 'Age‑Verification Laws', Not Make Exemptions (for Now)
This has nothing to do with 1) children 2) safety 3) safety of children
Links 29/05/2026: Cory Doctorow on Why the Internet Feels So Broken, American Pope on Defederation
Links for the day
Techrights Does Not Censor Information About IBM, It Platforms and Retains Suppressed Voices From Inside IBM
They don't like it when people criticise the management [...] panic attacks mentioned
Bob (Robert) Cringely Devoted Three Years of His Life Trying to Profit From LLM Slop and Now He Sounds Off, It's Just Not Working and It Can Crash the Economy Soon
"The labs raising money at valuations with too many zeros are happy"
Techrights After About 60,000 Articles in 20 Years
Sites fail if they don't offer anything new or if they wrongly believe that adopting slop to parrot other sites will give them exposure
Organised Plunder or Robbery: GAFAM and Hardware Companies Rely on Media Bribery to Perpetuate False Narratives and to "Drive Sales" (and Drive Prices Upwards)
The price-fixing seems plausible and, if so, we need to demand action
Linux Foundation Destroys the Identity and History of Linux
Groklaw's PJ was thorn on the side of LF sponsors
The Problem of Microsoft Crimes
Opposing crime isn't "hatred"
The Fall of Slop (Even Microsoft Admits There's a Problem)
If Microsoft admits that slop is too expensive and is for "entertainment purposes" because it cannot be relied upon, why would anyone other than the pushers and profiteers still insist that slop bears potential?
Red Hat Will Die Inside a Dying IBM
IBM isn't where Red Hat came to thrive but where it came to die
Very Large Strike at the European Patent Office Today, "Production" Sank a Huge Deal
At this pace, we might be looking at tens of thousands fewer European Patents being granted this year
Gemini Links 29/05/2026: Leadership and Religion, the Board Game (Second Edition)
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 28, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, May 28, 2026