That's what partners are for

Novell's business is in a sad situation. Its legacy component gets devoured more quickly than the minuscule new components grow. Like many other companies, Novell appears to be cutting down its workforce or moving overseas by announcing layoffs, to be followed by recruitment somewhere cheaper.

Almost the only person who benefits seems to be the CEO. Is it a reward for failing to reverse the trend? Darl McBride too received a pay rise after he had filed for bankruptcy (and possibly yet to face criminal charges).

One of the culprits in Novell's demise is, ironically enough, also its exploitative partner. It's a one-way relationship and here is the latest example.

National operations technology manager Ian Kirby says Novell's GroupWise didn't offer the necessary integration with the company's document management software.

"When you've got an explosion in the volume of email, it's a lot easier and quicker to drag and drop emails into a matter-centric folder, so each client is represented by a folder in the document management system and each matter is a sub-folder of that," Kirby says.

So they move to Microsoft.

“IBM, like Microsoft, is a believer in intellectual monopolies and holder of even more.”To put things in perspective, whenever Novell is 'permitted' to deploy SUSE Linux for a customer, it must pay Microsoft for the privilege. When Microsoft grabs Novell territories, Novell receives not even a dime. It's an abusive relationship that Ron Hovsepian entered willfully.

While on this subject of patent relationships, it's worth bringing up another article from the news. Hovsepian's 'mother ship', IBM, which may or may not have been a backer and pusher for the deal with Microsoft, continues to deploy the Microsoft-taxed SUSE in its mainframes.

Cognos, which IBM bought for $4.9 billion last November, bypassed three IBM operating systems (z/OS, z/VM and z/VSE) and instead chose IBM System z for Linux and Novell's SUSE for its entrée into the mainframe market. An IBM mainframe version for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is also in the works.

We previously wrote about the situation with Red Hat [1, 2]. It seems possible that the Novell/IBM relationship runs deeper. IBM, like Microsoft, is a believer in intellectual monopolies and holder of even more.

Had IBM rejected Microsoft's ludicrous claims against GNU/Linux, then it would also steer away from Novell, which feeds its predatory rival (giving it both money and legal ammunition). ⬆