Summary: Novell’s proprietary software as seen in the eyes of the past week’s news
THIS is the last “Novell News Summary”; the delivery format is about to change for the first time in years. Today we’ll address several areas in turn.
Pulse
Pulse enjoyed some video promotion in Brainshare 2010 — promotion that has just been uploaded again because it’s a nice video (someone has also uploaded old Novell adverts [1, 2, 3]). Pulse has pretty much been forgotten about, perhaps except for this one sentence in an article about Wave.
Novell are working on Pulse, a collaboration tool that used to be separate, but after we announced Wave they started working to allow compatibility across product boundaries.
Novell is betting on piggybacking Google. It’s absent from the mainstream media for the time being.
The SCO bankruptcy hearing on the sale of the Java patent will be on April 20. That’s this proposed sale to Liberty Lane for $100,000, and that’s an LLC affiliated with Allied Security Trust, the anti-patent-trolls company, if you’ve dropped a stitch and can’t keep up as SCO’s assets get sold off bit by bit. If anyone else has bid, other than Liberty Lane, then there would be an auction on the 19th, but SCO told the court they don’t expect that to happen.
This Java patent was not a done deal yet. Here is another update from Groklaw which talks about the patent being sold.
Bankruptcy court gets more and more weird. Today’s scheduled hearing in SCO’s bankruptcy was cancelled at the last minute. No one told the U.S. Trustee’s Office, I gather, since our reporter showed up and so did that office’s representative. Meanwhile, the order approving the sale of the patent was approved and signed by the judge.
Groklaw then explains“What the Judge Still Has to Decide in SCO v. Novell”
We know that the jury in SCO v. Novell decided that SCO didn’t get the copyrights in 1995 under the APA or by Amendment 2 or any fusion thereof. That killed SCO’s slander of title claim as well. But that isn’t the end. There were some issues the parties agreed before the trial which would be decided by Judge Ted Stewart. That has yet to happen.
The most important remaining issue is SCO’s claim for specific performance. SCO’s alternative claim, should it fail to win on the copyright issue, was that even if it were decided that it doesn’t get the copyrights to date, under the APA Novell is obligated to turn them over now. I’ve seen some comments wondering if there will be another trial of these issues left for the judge to decide. The answer is no, I don’t think so. It was all tried together. The jury rendered its verdict, and next comes the judge’s. I don’t know of any time frame.
Novell has filed its Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law in SCO v. Novell, one of the two documents that the judge has been waiting for prior to reaching his decision on the issues he was to decide after the jury reached its verdict on copyright ownership…
It seems like it never ends. Novell’s stock is still steady ahead of what seems like a takeover. This could certainly disrupt the case against SCO.
Old Products
iPrint adds some drivers and Netware continues to receive support from Arkeia [1, 2]. This was mentioned before; Netware has no real future, but it still has many users.
Virtualisation
Red Hat has just officially dumped Xen (based on a beta of RHEL), but Novell keeps closer to Citrix, as expected.
While The Planet uses KVM running on Ubuntu, IBM adopted the Red Hat-branded version of KVM. Red Hat and KVM seem to have won another endorsement from Novell, which said it will support KVM in version 11 of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.
But Novell still supports Xen, of course, and Citrix CTO Simon Crosby writes in his blog that Novell’s support of KVM is to be expected because KVM comes with the mainline Linux kernel.
Here is a lame new video about IWM, which is just a load of jargon and marketing hype for the movement of processes or VMs between servers.
• I almost feel bad stating the obvious, but it needs to be said: Let’s switch to Gmail already. In four years, I’ve heard nothing but disdain for Novell Web Access’ micro-sized inboxes and, as one former student and computer whiz told me, “a user interface that’s so counter-intuitive it’s not even funny.” USGA already passed a resolution advocating the switch, and could potentially engage a massive segment of disgruntled students with the proper outreach. Rally the troops, Tony Catalano, and make this one happen. We’re behind you.
GWAVA is pleased to announce the release of version 1.8 of Retain for GroupWise®. Retain archives GroupWise messages in a secure and accessible format so that restoration is simple. By archiving older messages, data integrity is still maintained while storage costs are significantly decreased. Archiving with Retain protects organizations from costly litigation or liability issues.
GroupWise is mentioned very briefly in a few other new pages [1, 2] and also in this announcement from SKyPRO (mirrored here).
SKyPRO is releasing a public beta version of GWTalk, their Soft Phone Client developed specifically for the Novell GroupWise user communities.
GWTalk is a free soft phone client that integrates with Novell GroupWise. GWTalk connects all users to the GWTalk Network allowing them to make calls and IM each other for free.
SKyPRO was involved with Novell last year [1, 2, 3].
Human error is being blamed for the action as the author used the auto-complete function in Novell’s email software to include the journalist’s address, along with those of five Gwent Police officials in the ‘CC’ field of the message.
This is also a security hazard.
Security
A promotional piece from the Indian press presents the words of Naresh Shah, the director of Novell India Development Center. He speaks about fluffy notions such as “cloud computing”.
IWM strategy combines identity and security, systems management, and OS technology to manage workloads more securely and efficiently across physical, virtual and cloud computing environments. Novell places its IWM products into four different categories: build, where it has SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, SUSE Studio, SUSE Appliance Toolkit and ZENworks configuration management; secure, where we find Identity and Access Manager, governance and login; manage, consisting of Novell’s acquired PlateSpin management software and more ZENworks; and measure, where it has Novell myCMDBTM and business-service measurement and management tools.
Novell has made very little out of PlateSpin. In fact, PlateSpin executives fled Novell.
People
Former Novell executives are reaching some other companies, with new examples that include:
Many of those new-wave storage products are called SSDs, for solid-state drives, and are designed to fit in the same slots in the front of servers that house conventional drives. Fusion-io takes a different approach, offering devices that fit inside servers in slots that are typically used for graphics chips. “We get much higher performance,” says David Bradford, the onetime general counsel for software company Novell who was named Fusion-io’s CEO last year.
According to ContentWatch, Warner replaces Jack Sunderlage, who is leaving the firm after a transition period. Warner was previously VP of Global Sales for Alianza, and also served at Altiris/Symantec and Novell.
Carter understands it all too well, having risen to a leadership position with Novell at the age of 22, having run her own consulting business for the past decade, and having had to face tough budget and spending decisions on more than one occasion.
Partners
Pan Communications, which we mentioned last week, mentions its relationship with Novell and Novell is also mentioned in coverage and press releases of other companies [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. With the exception of SUSE Studio partners, Novell does not connect with many companies anymore.
Marketing/PR
Novell’s latest marketing message has no real meaning. There are no real announcements to make, either. So Novell just brags about a CRN award in its PR blog and even issues a press release about it [1, 2, 3]. These prizes are easy to just buy and they have little significance, except for on paper. It’s even less reliable (more corruptible) than an analyst’s “recommendation” — any analyst with whom one can sign a contract in exchange for influence. It’s not hard to find press coverage that mostly quotes Novell on the subject. It’s all marketing from channel chiefs who are also CMOs.
Summary: People leave and come to OpenSUSE, which has no news of great significance to tell this week
THIS WEEK will be the last week that we post news summaries regarding Novell simply because there’s too little significant news about Novell. In recent months we occasionally posted such summaries just once in a fortnight because the amount of news was not sufficient to merit a post. Novell may be sold within weeks or months, so we do expect less — not more — news about Novell products.
This first summary is all about OpenSUSE, which is a shadow of its former self. The “People of OpenSUSE” series used to come on a weekly basis, but its key maintainer has moved on. This series is back, perhaps momentarily. This time it’s about Andrew Wafaa and there are signs that new people still join the project sometimes.
Summary: New graphics for the most part, affecting different parts of Techrights
THE site is changing its focus somewhat and its new description was partly a suggestion from Richard Stallman. it says: “Free Software Sentry – watching and reporting maneuvers of those threatened by software freedom”.
Here is a screenshot of our old header.
Old search header:
This becomes:
We also have a new favicon which is very simple. The old favicon (over 3 years old and obnoxious to many because it’s animated) is the following thing: . █
“Microsoft is giving expensive presents to some of these people to encourage (reward for) this type of behaviour.”Microsoft’s bad behaviour on the Web is being exposed even further and this post ought to explain why Microsoft should be held liable, based on the laws of the United States*. It’s one thing when Microsoft encourages its trolls to abuse people in their personal Web sites, but it’s entirely another when Microsoft sends employees in disguise to do this.
As we explained before, Microsoft is giving expensive presents to some of these people to encourage (reward for) this type of behaviour. To become a Microsoft MVP one needn’t actually promote Microsoft APIs like Miguel de Icaza; MVP awards fly off Microsoft’s shelves even if one is a successful Internet troll, as demonstrated by Andre Da Costa, who keeps nymshifting, most recently morphing into names of females too. For those who have not heard of Da Costa, here are some previous posts on the subject:
In his latest appearance, Microsoft MVP Andre is spreading libel about me, even though I never speak to him. I was never banned from sites, nor was I ever nymshifting as he claims. Andre perhaps relies on libelous sources, so his libel might not be intentional; anyway, the record needed to be set straight. A full-time Microsoft employee/AstroTurfer [1, 2, 3, 4] named Jonathan Wong once did something similar and it’s documented in:
Perhaps it’s time for victims to sue Microsoft for running this type of AstroTurf operation and witch hunts that are carried out by its compensated fiends. We have already complained to the FTC and received a response. But until enough people complain about what Microsoft is doing, the FTC will choose dough nuts over enforcement (they work based on bulk of complaints, not separable incidents and reports, at least based on their letter to us).
Microsoft should not be allowed to get away with these dubious practices that actually do hurt people. There is nothing professional about Microsoft, no matter how much it spends on PR. “Microsoft is sponsoring the History Channel now,” told us our reader Ryan just 20 minutes ago. “This program brought to you by Windows 7,” says the channel. Should Microsoft also be allowed to have a say on history? It’s bad enough as it is. █
___ * Microsoft uses tricks here, by sending its AstroTurfers overseas or hiring them indirectly, via PR agencies.
Summary: The heartwarming story of Ecuador, the political opposition to software patents in New Zealand, and areas where patents stomp on people’s lives
Free software and intellectual monopolies are closely related subjects. We typically write about the latter only in our daily links though, because it is not the main focus of this Web site.
IP Watch has a decent new article about how “Free Software [Is] Used To Fight Piracy, Broaden Knowledge Access In Ecuador”
A joint project being launched by a regional non-profit group along with the Ecuador’s intellectual property office (IEPI) aims to reduce software piracy by offering a free software alternative through public libraries. The initiative is meant to encourage the use of legal software and thereby lower the piracy rate.
For the “Free Library” project, the Latin American Center for Intellectual Property Research for Development – known as Corporación Innovarte – has signed an agreement with the national IP office (IEPI), the Free Software Foundation of Ecuador and the associations of libraries. Corporación Innovarte aims to promote access to knowledge, innovation, and culture as tools for development.
The project is meant to use libraries as a vector to build a distribution channel for free software available to users. Free software will be offered as part of the usual library collections. The initiative will disseminate free software among the population, serving two goals: offering people different options while supporting the “spread of educational and research possibilities,” and contributing to the limitation of illegal software use.
Ecuador has already embraced ODF and it’s a solid breeding ground for software freedom, i.e. independence. Glyn Moody, who linked to the above article, has said that Microsoft won’t be happy. We have already shown how Microsoft responds to or retaliates against countries in south America if they ‘dare’ to deviate from Microsoft. A recent example, Argentina, may already be suing Microsoft for damages.
“We have already shown how Microsoft responds to or retaliates against countries in south America if they ‘dare’ to deviate from Microsoft.”Latin America is a victim not just of Microsoft; it has suffered a lot in recent decades, mostly because of imperialists, but we won’t go further into the subject because it’s politically charged.
Speaking of politics, it sure is nice when political parties take a stance specifically on software patents. There is a hot debate about it down under and the Labour party in New Zealand openly opposes software patents, based on NZOSS.
“The issue of who controls software that New Zealanders have developed is an important one. Copyright allows the developer to control the terms under which software is released. Patents remove that right and hand it over to a third party. Basically, software patents create a lottery around control of your own efforts.
“We are pleased that Commerce Minister Simon Power has said that the Government would support a select committee recommendation that the Intellectual Property Office develop guidelines for inventions that involve ‘embedded software’ – software that is built into a physical
device.
“Software will still be protected by copyright, which prevents outright copying. We believe this to be sensible and the right decision,” Clare Curran said.
The ‘embedded software’ trick deserves great scrutiny.
Beyond Software
We recently discussed gene patents (ownership of life’s secrets), which are probably declared void by precedence [1, 2]. Here is a timely new item from The Atlantic:
When Patents Kill Innovation
[...]
Michelle Geis points to a new report in Genetics in Medicine suggesting that “exclusive licensing of gene patents does more to block competition and decrease patients’ access to testing than it does to spur innovation.”
The Havasupai settlement appears to be the first payment to individuals who said their DNA was misused, several legal experts said, and came after the university spent $1.7 million fighting lawsuits by tribe members.
This story has more to do with invasion, not monopolisation. But either way, DNA patents belong to an area where patents mean death, in the form of TRIPS [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. This relates to ACTA provisions [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14], whose impact on software freedom we wrote about earlier in the week and so did swpat.org. ACTA is disgracing developing countries, probably increasing deaths for the sake of profit, and it is all about intellectual monopoly. Do individual nations have the power to reject ACTA without being cornered and sanctioned against? It’s a rhetorical question. █
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