Bonum Certa Men Certa

Attachmate's Novell Strategy So Far: Kill Mono, Keep SUSE, Maybe Antitrust Against Microsoft

Trash sign with Mono



Summary: AttachMSFT, a liquidator, has not made very harmful decisions (so far); it remains to be seen if an appeal in a Microsoft case will be carried forward

NOVELL is in the headlines because of layoffs which are the doom of Mono. AttachMSFT will continue to support the Microsoft-taxed SUSE in Germany, apparently as a separate entity. Sam Varghese says that the "SUSE business will be headquartered in Nuremberg, its original home before Novell bought the company in 2003."



We are not sure what this means for OpenSUSE, which is not the same as SLE*. It is hard to say if it will survive because AttachMSFT invariantly speaks about "SUSE" and not OpenSUSE. Well, here is a new review of the latest release, which suggests that OpenSUSE is well built:

Unlike Ubuntu, Peppermint or Fedora, openSUSE is a fully-fledged KDE distribution, and offers the most integrated experience of all the distributions we've looked at.

With openSUSE, this approach stretches to non-KDE applications too. For example, despite using GTK+ for its widget toolset, Firefox is skinned to look like a native KDE application. That includes the toolbar icons, framing and file requesters, and even functions like mailing a link will use KDE's mail application rather than the default.


The problem we have had with OpenSUSE is that it helps promote the Microsoft-taxed SUSE, which can in turn help Microsoft and software patents.

According to other reports [1, 2], "Novell wins appeal in Microsoft antitrust lawsuit" and AttachMSFT will hopefully capitalise on this. A reader mailed us the Reuters report, which says:

Software maker Novell Inc can proceed with a long-running antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft Corp after an appeals court reversed a lower court's summary judgment in favor of Microsoft.

Novell, which was bought by Attachmate Corp earlier this year, claimed that its operating system products and several of its software applications were unfairly squeezed out of the market by Microsoft in the 1990s.


Let's see what AttachMSFT does with the SCO case and the Microsoft case. It will hopefully carry on and fight these battles. If not, more critics will come out of the woodwork.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Nonfree Software in My Bank, by Richard Stallman
Updated 8 hours ago
Richard Stallman is Usually Right Because He Thinks "Outside the Box"
he is able to observe society (mores and norms) as somewhat of an outsider
 
This Monday WebProNews Absolutely Flooded the Web With Fake (LLM Slop) 'Articles' About "Linux", Google News Promoted Them as Legitimate
All of the following are fake articles attributed to pseudonyms or authors that don't exist; the images are also slop. Why does Google promote these?
Linuxiac is Not a Slopfarm, But at Least Some of Its Articles Are Machine-Generated Fakes
what we said about it was correct
Expect More Microsoft Layoffs
"Are more job cuts coming?"
Microsoft Behaving Like It's Running Out of Money to Pay Salaries
Does that seem like the behaviour expected from a company which claims it is "worth" trillions?
LWN Downtime Due to Linode, Not LLM Bots
"I’ve received an email letting me know that there is a potential for data loss."
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 28, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 28, 2025
Links 28/07/2025: Science, Health, and Conflicts
Links for the day
Gemini Links 28/07/2025: Healthy Self-Image With Autism and a "New Life"
Links for the day
Links 28/07/2025: COVID-19 Sped up Brain Aging, "Circumvention is More Popular Than Compliance"
Links for the day
LWN Has Been Down for a Long Time, Another Casualty of LLM Bots?
Time will tell. How much time though?
Slopfarms Versus 'Linux' (and Against People Who Write Real Articles About GNU/Linux)
LLM slop in slopfarms by Brian Fagioli and Redazione RHC
Gemini Links 28/07/2025: Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray and Running pkgsrc in a FreeBSD Jail
Links for the day
Microsoft Turns News Sites Into Spamfarms
Is the site The Register MS the next IDG?
The Register MS/The Register US
On Saturday I contacted them for a comment (before issuing criticism)
Hacking revelations at Vatican Jubilee of Digital Missionaries
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 27, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, July 27, 2025
The Week to Come
Planning ahead
LLM Slop Has Only Been a Boon for Misinformation Online
The very same companies that were supposed to maintain quality (again, not limited to Google with PageRank) are now actively participating in generating and spreading slop
When They Tell You It's Free, Does That Mean No Charges (If So, Who's Paying and Why)?
there's "no free lunch"
We're Going to Focus Less on the Molotov Cocktail-Throwing Microsofters and More on Patents
We can get back to focusing on what we wanted to focus on all along
Just Trying to Keep Web Sites Honest (Journalistic Integrity)
the latest articles in LinuxIac are real
Links 27/07/2025: Political Affairs, Data Breaches, Attacks on Freedom of the Press
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/07/2025: Hot in Japan and Terminal Escape Codes
Links for the day
Links 27/07/2025: More Microsoft Layoffs Coming, Science and Hardware News
Links for the day
Links 27/07/2025: FSF Hackathon and "Hulk Hogan Was a Very Bad Man"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/07/2025: DAW Mixer Chains and Simple Software
Links for the day
The Register MS is Inventing or Giving Air Time to New Conspiracy Theories so as to Distort the Narrative As High-Profile Agencies Fall Prey to Microsoft Holes
But the problem is holes, i.e. Microsoft making bad products; the problem is Microsoft
Most Editors at The Register Are American, Including the Editor in Chief, a Decade-Long Microsoft Stenographer (Writing Prose to Sell Microsoft)
It's not easy to tell where the site is based (we tried) because it's hiding behind ClownFlare and CrimeFlare hasn't been well lately
Pushers of systemd Rewrite History (Richard Stallman Said UNIX "Was Portable and Seemed Fairly Clean")
Unlike systemd
"New Techrights" Soon Turns 2 (A Few Days Before the FSF Turns 40)
We have a lot more to say about LLM bots
When Silence Says So Much
Garrett, a 'secure' boot pusher, will need to defend himself in the UK High Court
The Register in Trouble
There is not much that can be done at this point
Trajectory of The Register: From News Site/s Into "B2B"... and Into Microsoft Salespeople
Something isn't right at The Register
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 26, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, July 26, 2025
Misinformation in Social Control Media
Social control media passes around all sorts of tropes
Slopwatch: Fake Linux 'Articles' and Slopfarms With "Linux" in Their Names/Domains
throwing bots at "Linux" to make some fake articles