Bonum Certa Men Certa

Novell Tumbles, But Not the 'Novellsoft' Part of the Company

Novellsoft

Ducks kiss
Killing them (Micro)Softly



NOVELL is expected to announce layoffs very shortly and OS News remarks on the news that some employees have already been notified.

Novell has already announced a number of lay offs, and the openSUSE Linux division has not been spared.


The comments there are quite interesting. One person rightly points out that Novell's disregard for its GNU/Linux engineers is a bad sign.

If they are laying off 100 out of their 4200 employees, I'm wondering why they are targeting OpenSUSE developers. You'd think that among those 4200 there is a fair share of "fat" that could be cut (middle managers, old-time hangabouts), instead of getting rid of developers in the first place.


As pointed out before, Novell is demoting anything but the Microsoft-esque components of SUSE (and sales). One person writes:

I think you will find that the article does not say that OpenSUSE has been targeted, just that it has not been spared. What is more troubling is that while they are laying off openSUSE folks, they are brining on .NET developers to help with MONO. Novell is becoming too good friends with Microsoft as far as I can tell...


And in reply:

That's ironic. I'm typing this on OpenSuSE 11.1 x64 and the one thing that's wobbly is Mono. In fact one flagship Mono app doesn't work at all and I be surprised if it ever has since it seems OpenSuSE haven't yet got around to updating it to a newer, patched version. Another flagship mono app causes freezing and general weird behaviour. Hmmn ...


Another person echoes the argument from Linux Today, where it was said that "Novell is Bleeding to Death."

Novell is Bleeding to Death



Like most declines like this it is a long and slow process, but it's yet another nail in the coffin. Novell have been laying a lot of workers off over the past few years and it has made no real difference, so in the current climate the squeeze will get even tighter. There are even a lot of rumours that there are more layoffs being covered up within the company.


While Novell's real GNU/Linux engineers (not those mimicking Microsoft technologies) are clearly being shafted, Miguel and his friends get the red(mond) carpet. Yesterday from de Icaza's blog:

My friend تلة جوزيف (Youssef) and myself will be heading out to Redmond for the ALT.NET Seattle event this weekend.


What's it all for? To reference CMS Wire, it's for making GNU/Linux a third-class citizen [1, 2, 3, 4] (after Mac OS X and Windows). Microsoft deliberately excluded GNU/Linux under the premise that Novell would do this job poorly.

Is Moonlight A Day Late and an App Short?



[...]

While Moonlight provides Linux users with the ability to access, view and develop Silverlight applications and Silverlight is already available for Mac OS X, Adobe has been cross-platform for years now.

So the question presents itself, is Moonlight too far behind the widely praised and widely used Adobe Flash set to be a viable competitor?


So at the end of the day, Novell has GNU/Linux striving to become something it cannot ever be. As Stephen O'Grady pointed out 2 years ago, GNU/Linux must not become a cheap(er) copy of something from Microsoft. It needs to compete based on its own merits.

MonoDevelop is a similar example of this. The Microsoft-friendly Gavin Clarke has just published this article to say that Microsoft wants FOSS developers to use Visual Studio. It would be easier for Microsoft to achieve this goal had GNU/Linux users and developers been addicted to Mono and MonoDevelop from Novell, respectively.

Microsoft has invited the open-source community to build plug-ins for Visual Studio 2010, and has improved database support to help build partner backing for its planned integrated development environment (IDE).


There is one goal here: make developers dependent on Microsoft, no matter what platforms they focus on. When Microsoft offered SourceForge its sponsorship it also used SourceForge as a platform to promote the proprietary Visual Studio for FOSS developers [1, 2, 3, 4]. It's an embrace-and-extend-type strategy, which is assisted by Novell's misguided endeavors. The Provo-based David Canar is meanwhile creating Qt4 .NET bridges which bring back concerns about Mono in KDE [1, 2, 3, 4].

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

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"
 
Links 28/07/2025: COVID-19 Sped up Brain Aging, "Circumvention is More Popular Than Compliance"
Links for the day
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
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
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
Links 26/07/2025: Amazon Shutdown in China, Russian Economy Slows
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/07/2025: History of Time (1988) and Gemini Games
Links for the day
Links 26/07/2025: 50 Percent Tariffs in Amazon, Dying Intel Offloads Network and Edge Group (NEX)
Links for the day
Doing My Share to Tackle Online Slop and SPAM
Trying my best to 'fix' the Web
Blaming Programming Languages for Users' and Developers' Bad Practices
That's like blaming cars for drivers who crash into things
Slopwatch: Fakes, FUD, Duplicates, and Charlatans Galore
The Web as we once know it is collapsing. Some opportunists try to replace it with low-quality slop.
The Register UK Seems to Have Become American and Management is Changing (Microsofter as Editor in Chief)
The Register 'UK' is now controlled by the Directions on Microsoft guy
Many People Still Read Techrights Because It Says the Truth, Produces Evidence, and Does Not Self-Censor
Unlike so many other sites
The Register is Desperate for Money, According to The Register
I decided to check how they're doing as a business
Microsoft Finally Finds a Use Case for Slop?
Create low-quality chaff to shift the media's attention?
Microsoft Windows Lost 400 Million Users in a Few Years, Why Does The Register Double Down on Windows With New US Editor?
days ago they hired a new US editor
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 25, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, July 25, 2025
For Libel Reform One Must First Bring (or Raise) Awareness to the Issues and Their Magnitude
I myself know, from personal experience
Links 26/07/2025: Rationed Meals in the US and TikTok Repels Investments (Too Toxic)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/07/2025: "Bloody Google" and New People in Geminispace
Links for the day
Response to Solderpunk (Father of Gemini Protocol) About the Gemini Community
Solderpunk responds to non-sequitur
HTML and the Web Used to be Something a Child Could Learn, "Modern" Web is a Puzzle of Frameworks, Bloat, and Worse
When the Web was more like Gemini Protocol