Bonum Certa Men Certa

Novell News Summary - Part III: SCO/UNIX to Conclude in March, eDirectory Patched

Capitol reef



Summary: News ranging from SCO to former Novell staff and some security setbacks

NOVELL'S biggest news from the past week would have to be the financial results. The next post will deal with these separately. We'll start with news about the SCO case.



SCO



The main Web site that covered this was Groklaw of course. Here is SCO's motion against Novell:

SCO has responded [PDF] to Novell's Notice just filed in Utah District Court. Novell is asking that court to assign both the Novell case and the IBM case to the same judge or to consolidate the two cases. SCO's Chapter 11 Trustee, Edward Cahn, also submits a statement in support of SCO's position, which is basically that it needs to hurry up and finish the Novell trial. It's running out of money. It doesn't want to detour to decide the SUSE arbitration first, which Novell also is requesting, and it sees consolidation with IBM to be not only not necessary but something that will drag things out.

Granting the Novell request for the same judge to be assigned to both cases surely wouldn't slow down the Novell case at all, but it would help the new judge having to suddenly deal with these complicated and interwoven cases to at least comprehend how they interact, particularly with respect to the GPL.


Novell has also responded.

Novell has filed its Reply [PDF] to SCO's Response Concerning Novell's Notice of Related Proceeding, which asks the new judge now assigned to the Novell case in Utah, Hon. Ted Stewart, to consolidate the two cases, SCO v. IBM and SCO v. Novell, or in the alternative to at least assign the same judge to both, which SCO opposes. Novell's position is that the two cases were assigned to the same judge before, and for some very good reasons they should still be with one judge.


Many reports from Utah surfaced in Groklaw, which writes:

I just received our first word on the hearing in Utah on SCO v. Novell from one of our reporters. "looking for a march 8th trial date, to run 3 weeks" is the report. I'm sure there will be more info on the way as soon as they can type it up. We had several eyewitnesses in attendance. So stay tuned for updates.


That would be March, indeed. Well, that's confirmed by the local press too.

A federal judge has scheduled a trial that will pit the Lindon-based SCO Group against Novell Inc. over the question of which owns the Unix computer operating system.


Finally, there is this update about AutoZone.

ZENWorks and eDirectory



ZENWorks certification was listed in this occasional roundup from a Web site whose focus is certification.

New ZENworks Certification from Novell Starting this month, individuals can earn Certified Novell ZENworks Administrator (CNZA) certification. This is a 1 test certification that covers ZENWorks configuration management including remote management, personality migration, asset management, and optimized application delivery, among numerous other topics. The exam contains 60 items and has a time limit of 55 minutes. A full list of objectives can be found on Novell's website.


Novell and Windows find love, as Novell's marketing people are showing:

This week ZENworks Patch Management won silver in the Best Patch Management category of the 2009 Windows IT Pro Editors’ Best and Community Choice Awards.


Here is a widely-distributed press release about eDirectory and iBoss (also in here, in here, and in here). From PRNewsWire:

Phantom Technologies is excited to announce that it has expanded the authentication capabilities of its iBoss Enterprise Web Filter to fully integrate with Novell eDirectory multiplatform environments.


Mail/Pulse



It is mostly about GWAVACon and GroupWise this time around. Here is a new video.



Pulse was finally mentioned by Jeff Jaffe and even SAP is entering this space with a proprietary product. A comparison is made again to Google Wave, which is expected to become Free software (not yet).

Security



eDirectory has suffered a security flaw, which was patched by Novell.

Novell has released a security update for its eDirectory server to remedy a heap overflow vulnerability. Attackers can remotely exploit the flaw to crash or penetrate a server. The vendor says that the vulnerability can be exploited with a specially crafted NDS Service Request.


From Heise (the H):

Novell has released a security update for its eDirectory server to remedy a heap overflow. Attackers can remotely exploit the flaw to crash or penetrate a server. The vendor says that the vulnerability can be exploited with a specially crafted NDS Service Request.


There are other noteworthy flaws and patches, e.g. [1, 2].

People



A person with past Novell association is becoming the Chief Technology Officer of Religare Enterprises Limited (REL).

Prior to his stint at Reliance Money, Mr. Nagaraj has also been associated with organizations like Reliance Capital, Novell India Pvt. Ltd., ICICI Bank, HDFC Ltd.


The position of executive vice president of operations at dataguise goes to another person with Novell association.

His previous companies include Trend Micro (IPO), IntruVert Networks (acquired by McAfee), Senforce Technologies, (acquired by Novell) and Reconnex Corporation (acquired by McAfee).


From a "press trip with Novell", Stones moves on to quitting her job in journalism.

One of the country’s leading technology journalists has resigned from her job. Business Day IT editor Lesley Stones said on Wednesday morning that she had tendered her resignation and would go freelance in the new year.

[...]

After she’d visited SA on a press trip with Novell, she fell in love with the country. “I brought my CV with me and I went back with a job.”

Stones, who studied journalism in the UK, left Computing SA after six months to take up the post at Business Day.


Another Novell connection, however loose:

Currently a general partner of Wheatley Partners, Barry Rubenstein has been investing in technology companies for 35 years and was a founder or founding consultant to several successful ventures, including Applied Digital Data Systems, Safeguard Scientifics, Novell, and Cheyenne Software, where he served as chairman and CEO. Rubenstein serves or has served on the boards of USWeb, Picazo Communications, CosmoCom, FatWire, CertPoint Systems, Seniors 4 Living and other technology companies.


Virtualisation



Stephen Pollack quit Novell after his company, PlateSpin, had been bought by Novell. Now he joins the advisory board of VM6 Software.

He most recently was founder and CEO of PlateSpin, a leading solutions provider in the virtualization space where he grew the company into one of North America's fastest growing high tech companies which was sold to Novell in 2008.


More on PlateSpin from the news:

Donovan said all PlateSpin partners had also now been integrated into PartnerNet under the datacentre tier and could access the same channel levels and benefits. Novell acquired the virtualisation vendor in April 2009 for $US205 million.


There's this bit about Novell's backing of Xen:

Although x64 hypervisors are heading for commoditisation, they are not there yet. Even when they reach that stage, there is no guarantee that customers will be able to switch from one to the other easily. That raises an important question about the future of the open source Xen hypervisor and the virtualisation platforms built on it by Xen’s three main backers, Citrix, Oracle and Novell.


Marketing



Novell is sharing more "success stories" in YouTube and there is this new promotion of BrainShare 2010. "It might be cancelled like last year's (or downsized, like Novell)," I argued. In response I got: "Cost effectiveness has a price, are they really downsizing ? or are they simply trying to be more efficient in difficult financial times. Ms is downsizing big time to, Dell the same, all those massive American corporation can no longer waste money as they have done up to now"

Novell was also mentioned amongst others in lists of vendors, including in press releases. For example we have:

The report lists a large number of vendors who are potentially affected, although only Cisco, Juniper, SafeNet and SonicWall having so far been confirmed as being vulnerable to this problem. Vendors who are not affected include Extreme Networks, Kerio, McAfee and Novell.


In general, few articles or press releases actually focus on Novell. There is not much going on there and as the next post will show, the financial results are accordingly made worse.

Recent Techrights' Posts

The End of Red Hat
expect many more layoffs soon
Only Hours Into the New Year People Already Discuss the Next Round of Layoffs at Red Hat/IBM
2026 will be another tough year for Red Hat and IBM
Recruiters Don't Use Microsoft LinkedIn, Spammers Use LinkedIn
One of my best friends, a university professor, lost all of his life's savings due to Microsoft LinkedIn
You've Only Wasted Your Life in Social Control Networks
In a sense, social control media is a giant delusion
2025 Was a Very Bad Year for Social Control Media
statCounter sees a gradual demise in Social Control Media access
Don't "Go Paperless", Go Paperful [sic] (for What Really Matters)
Why should we favour paper use sometimes? Well, many reasons.
 
IBM’s and Red Hat’s "Operation Evolution initiative" Just Long, Fancy Term for Bluewashing, Redundancies, Layoffs
Gerstner is still alive, but he's shorter and more arrogant
Designing a Better Mousetrap or Tools for the SSG
Static Site Generators (SSGs) - unlike all modern Content Management Systems (CMSs) - are so simple that extending them is easy
Links 01/01/2026: 1930 Works in the Public Domain, Electricity Pricing 'a Mystery'
Links for the day
Firefox is Toast Because It Got Toasted by Mozilla
Firefox cannot keep above 2% and hasn't been able to for quite some time
Ignore the LLM Slop and the Noise, Microsoft is in a Death Spiral
So what does Microsoft have left to sell?
Red Hat is Vanishing Before Our Eyes
With some Red Hat staff "transitioning" we wonder if it's an HR hack, wherein they "reset the clock" on employment duration so as to lessen severance obligations
In 2025 Microsoft Lost Palau
Palau now has GNU/Linux at steadily high levels
Microsoft Mocked UNIX/Linux for Not Handling Dates After 2038, Microsoft Breaks Down on 2026!
Only a truly moronic company would design it that way
Another New Year's Resolution: Public Domain Sources, Credits
In addition to our first one
Combatting Slop Images (and ClownFlare)
we won't use or reuse slop images
A New Year's Resolution: Maximal Transparency
We'll do our very best to be transparent about everything that's going on, even legal matters
Gemini Links 01/01/2026: 2025 Comes to a Close and Capsular Gemlog Manager
Links for the day
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Raised About 1.3 Million Dollars in the Past Couple of Months!
the FSF's Board now has 10 people in it
2026 IBM Phaseout of Red Hat
Red Hat won't fare any better than most IBM acquisitions
Microsoft Budget Issues, XBox Thrown Under the Bus
They're cutting budget. Soon they'll cut the staff.
EPO People Power - Part XXI - Europe's Second-Largest Institution Became a Corrupt For-Profit Company Run by Drug Addicts
it'll be the demise of the Rule of Law in Europe and maybe a death blow to the EU (eventually), not just the EPO
Another Very Productive Year Commences
"a total of over 17,000 pages in a year"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, December 31, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, December 31, 2025
Fiji: GNU/Linux Has Risen From Almost Nothing to Almost 5% in Recent Years
It's not as small as people are led to believe
Gemini Links 31/12/2025: Blogosphere is Growing and New Year Begins
Links for the day
Complexity Considered Harmful: We Used to Run an Operating System on 64KB of RAM, Not 64GB of RAM (a Million Times More)
"Initially confined to single-tasking on 8-bit processors and no more than 64 kilobytes of memory"
The Slop Industry is Failing So Badly (Mountains of Debt, Losses) That It's Merging With the SPAM Industry
we reckon that Google will eventually delist all slopfarms, recognising they're just a form of SPAM
Links 31/12/2025: Cheeto Pushing for More Wars, ‘Security is a Shared Responsibility’
Links for the day
Enshittification of Postal Services Isn't Technological Advancement
Societies that say the aim is to "go digital" and eliminate paper trail aren't advanced; they're moving backwards
IBM Starts 2026 a Much Smaller Company (Not Homage to Gerstner)
People who get bluewashed out of their job (or bluewashed into unemployment) are gagged by NDAs
XBox is Likely Dead Already, But the Threat It Posed to Us All for Two Decades Isn't Over
"the Xbox was never about gaming and merely served as a test bed for DRM in commodity systems."
Ahead of 2026 Mass Layoffs at Microsoft the Tree Gets Shaken to See Who 'Falls' (Resigns/Retires)
"We had a quiet meeting last week about budget realignment. No one said layoffs, but it’s clear where the focus is shifting."
Almost 6,5000 Pages in 2025, Aiming Higher in 2026
if we can keep focused, then quantity will increase
Microsoft XBox Having a "Dog Ate My Homework" Moment: No New Console Until 3 Years From Now... Because "RAM Prices"
Who will ever remember this in 2028? Nobody.
Gemini End of Year Capsules Tally (Based on Lupa) Shows About 10% Growth
What a difference a year makes
Gemini Links 31/12/2025: New Resolution, Reverse Hexdump, and Programming Languages
Links for the day
Dr. Andy Farnell Explains Why Chatbots Became Dishonesty on Top of Dishonesty (Hiding Usage of Dishonest Salads of Words)
new article from CyberShow
Links 31/12/2025: Nvidia Faces Bubble-Bursting Moment, Saudi Oil Money Pumped Into Chatbots to Keep the Energy Waste Going (Circular Financing Again)
Links for the day
Richard Stallman's First Talk in a U.S. College Since 2018
Greetings from Georgia Tech!
EPO People Power - Part XX - Why António Campinos Chose to Put His Cokehead Friend on 'Sick Leave'
EPO Cocainegate will be covered for months to come
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, December 30, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, December 30, 2025
Gemini Links 30/12/2025: FreeBSD, Gemlogs, and Xobaque
Links for the day
Get Ready for Gigantic XBox Layoffs at Microsoft (Much Bigger Than in 2025)
he unionisation drive is a sign workers already expect this
Concern Trolls: Stop Criticising Poor Gerstner Because Now He's Dead. Reality Check: Gerstner Has Found a Trick for Dodging Tax on His Hundreds of Millions in Wealth.
Maybe even billions in wealth
Samoa: GNU/Linux and ChromeOS Rose to Around 11%
based on Web access data from Samoa
DnD: Debian and Drugs
There will soon be some interesting new information about Debian
A Conundrum of Privacy/Surveillance: Will You Give Them a Stool Sample to "Feel Humane"?
What if skinnerboxes in South Korea also required that people provide urine and stool samples?
Nope, There's No Twitter "Successor"
There's a lot of horrible abuse going on in social control media
A Calm Year in IRC is a Good Year for IRC
Next year IRC will turn 38 (in August) and in 2028 it'll turn 40, just like the FSF did a couple of months ago
Slopfarms Covering Up for "Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella" After a Terrible Performance and a Terrible Year at Microsoft
How to cause many to resign/retire, hence not be counted as "layoffs"
IBM Was Never Saved, It Has Been a Downhill Journey for Decades Already
Gerstner wasn't a tech person but a fiscal butcher
Some GNU Joiners in Geminispace
Jose E. Marchesi (known for GNU poke and a bunch of other things) adopted Gemini Protocol
Jean-Slop Van Damme and the Art of Bull--- Code
it's saving neither time nor money
IBM Seems to be Doing to HashiCorp What It Did to Red Hat (Many Key People Leaving)
"Today marks my last day at HashiCorp, wrapping up an incredibly rewarding 5-year journey"
State of the Slop, Day 364
How does Phoronix feel about Google promoting slopfarms that 'rewrite' its stories and slap slop images on top?
Links 30/12/2025: "Durian Tsunami" and "Unneeded Surgeries"
Links for the day
Links 30/12/2025: Social Control Media Detox, Rage Against Slop Wasting People's Productive Capacities
Links for the day
Reality Check About IBM's Louis Grestner, Slopfarms Say He Was IBM CEO for 30 Years!
It is "hallucinating" (lying)
Debt as the New Currency?
Rich people get richer because they take money from the rest of us, if not directly then by compelling us (collectively) to borrow money at a national level, then "invest" in them
EPO People Power - Part XIX - "Berenguer Has Known of Campinos' Substance Abuse First Hand For a Long Time"
"You rightfully claimed that Berenguer is Campinos' protegee"
Gemini Links 30/12/2025: Quitting Coffee, Apartment by the Beach, and Strange Retail Ethics
Links for the day
Nintendo and Sony Outsold Microsoft XBox by 15:1!
The mass layoffs indicate Microsoft is aware of this
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, December 29, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, December 29, 2025