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

Give Me Your "Dumbest" (Devices)
Why can't people accept that a "modern "smart" "phone" isn't necessary to check the time (overkill) and playing social control media "on the go" is far from necessary?
Car Companies Fail Because They Don't Manufacture What Costumers Actually Want
They try to impose their dumb vision on purchasers
 
PIPs Are Shrinking IBM and "IBM is Managing Decline, Not Building Growth"
IBM is going down the drain
IBM is Killing the Fedora Community, Replacing It With LLM Slop From IBM Staff
Krishna buys companies only to gut them. They've all learned this from experience.
Earlier This Year Dan Williams Prepared for Scenario Where Linus Torvalds Dies
He had only just started a job at NVIDIA
Links 25/07/2026: Data Breaches Abundant and Attribution Imperiled in the Age of Slop Hype
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/07/2026: Poetry and Plaintext Pages
Links for the day
What is Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
In many cases, the acronym became a misnomer
IBM PIPs Continue Until Morale Improves, Silent or Quiet Firings at IBM Explained
IBM is a dying company
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 24, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, July 24, 2026
Gemini Links 24/07/2026: Animal Friendship, Squirrels, and Lagrange
Links for the day
Links 24/07/2026: IOC Drops Russia Ban, New Internationalist Raises Money
Links for the day
Poor Piece From Valnet: Microsoft Keeps Sabotaging GNU/Linux, So You Should Quit Using GNU/Linux
Really awful take
We Need More Encryption, Not Less of It
Use Free software and use encryption to ensure sources are fully protected
At 3PM on a Friday The Register MS Collects Some 'Pyramid Scheme' Money From Communist China (ZTE)
This won't age well for The Register MS
What Freedom Does Not Mean
Tell Warren Buffett to go skiing; he'll soon understand how much freedom he truly has
Linuxiac is Plagiarism
We won't link to it, we're done [...] If you wish to support journalism about GNU/Linux, do not visit or link to slop
Verizon is Over 200 Billion Dollars in Debt (US Telecoms Collapsing, Wrapping Up the Failure in "Hey Hi" Clothing)
They will tell us this is "innovation", not a failure, and that only "Luddites" would oppose this
You've Been Conned If You Ever Believed That MElon (MUSK, Elon) Was a Trillionaire
Connected to corrupt officials
The People Who Tried to 'Cancel' (or Deplatform/Censor) Daniel Pocock Are Annoyed That He's Mentioned in Dozens of Press Articles
If Pocock's words did not matter, there would not be such a huge effort to silence him
Cybershow Explains Why Only Sociopaths Gravitate Towards Leadership Position in 'Tech'
The general thesis is a familiar one
Speeding Up 'Down Under': Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania...
As things stand, the best we can do is let people retrieve pages within less than 0.1 seconds since a request is received
Google's Debt Trebled in Only 9 Months and It's Not Even the Full Picture (There's Secret Debt, Too)
No wonder there are so many layoffs and workers try to unionise
Links 24/07/2026: Mass Layoffs at Patreon, Netflix Deemed Bad for People's Brains
Links for the day
Microsoft Layoffs in India
it's about cost-cutting
Deregulation is Blowing Up the Economy, Which Has Become a Multi-Level Scheme or Pyramid Scheme
Why did only Japanese media call out the BS; is that so hard to figure out and properly report on?
Google Spreads Misinformation, Google's Slop Makes Stuff Up and Calls That "Intelligence"
Google very well understands (and even publicly admits so, albeit only for legal reasons) that the slop does not work
Daniel Pocock Proves Wikipedia is for Rich People or People Who Work for Very Rich People (the True Owners of Wikipedia)
It's for billionaires and their faithful boot lickers
GNOME: Your Personal Opinions Must Overlap GAFAM's (Otherwise Those Opinions Are Impermissible)
Get well soon, GNOME
Making Excuses for Stressful, Unrewarding, and Immoral Jobs
excuses for difficult and/or barely-rewarding jobs. [...] People in tech must not be evaluated (or have their "worth" assessed) based on remuneration
US is Insolvent, GAFAM is Buying Time by Hiding (Not Disclosing) Its True Debt Which Explains Never-ending Layoffs (Unrelated to Slop or "Efficiency Drives")
Five Tech Giants are Hiding $1.65tn in AI Debt, Using the Trick that Toppled Enron
Almost 5 Years Without Social Control Media ('Mind Prison')
Life is too short to be stuck inside a skinnerbox
Linux Must be About People (Humans), Not Bribery From Slop Companies Trillions of Dollars in Debt and in Pursuit of Positive Press
We've lost Williams
John Dvorak Understood That "MSM" Was a Vehicle of Censorship
Independent publishing, which obviates the need to censor (influenced by existing advertisers or lookout for prospective advertisers), is the only credibly thing out there
To Understand Why Linus Torvalds Became a Boot-Licking Booster of Slop Look at Another Operative of 'Linux' Foundation, the "Mentor" of Clickfraud SPAMnil (According to SPAMnil Himself)
it seems like SJVN does not give a full disclosure
Blaming "Computers" Instead of Blaming Microsoft
Blaming Microsoft is "hate"
"Online We Are All Refugees" and Slop Pushers Are the Oppressors
They basically resort to nationalism and racism to distract from their commercial failure and fraud (pyramid scheme)
PIP Apocalypse (PIPocalypse) at IBM, CEO Promotes Vapouware (Lying to Shareholders)
Companies get to shrink while lying about it to the public, even to shareholders
GNU/Linux Soaring in Antigua And Barbuda
GNU/Linux is internationally approaching 8%
Calling Out the Worst Culprits in "Linux" Slop (Slopfarms That Manipulate Information and Engage in Plagiarism)
Once they're gone (offline), the slopfarms cannot carry on for much longer
Defying Discrimination
Rianne's birthday is exactly a month away
Dan Williams Represented Real Diversity in Linux
Williams probably understood based on personal experience what it was like to be marginalised and discriminated against
The First Point About Software Freedom is, You Must Understand What It Really Means (Not "Open Source")
Forty Three Years of Commitment to Software Freedom [...] Educating people about what Software Freedom actually means
Gemini Links 24/07/2026: Recovering From Broken Shoulders, Loss of Passion, and "True Hacker Versus Growth Hacker"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 23, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, July 23, 2026
Gemini Links 23/07/2026: Databases, TLGS, and RSS Feeds
Links for the day
Links 23/07/2026: Science, Censorship, and Territorial Overreach by China
Links for the day
The State of Google Security: Blocking competition
GMail is the best!
What Happens When Windows Becomes as 'Niche' as GNU/Linux on Desktops and Laptops
Android enjoys a near-monopoly and GNU/Linux isn't far behind Windows.
IBM Cash "Down $6.3 Billion From Year-end 2025." Total Debt/Equity 188.97%. (Debt Can Exceed the Company's Real Value)
the CEO alone can make well over $0.7 billion in 5 years of salaries and bonuses
Wave of PIPs Allegedly Coming to Microsoft, Managers Trained to Terminate Employees Without Paying Severance (and Without Calling it Layoffs)
They count and cut the losses
This Looks Like the End of XBox, the Console
Sharma has become the "fall man" of Microsoft
European Patent Office (EPO) Series: A Consummate Master of the "Rigged Game"
"single-candidate shortlist"
Attempts to Change Focus and Change the Subject as IBM Shares Dwindle. Buying Revenue to Mask the Rapid Decline One More Time.
IBM used to be good at engineering, not financial engineering
Down 848% Year-on-year, Negative Cash Flow, Growing Debt (Richest Man on the Planet or Shrewd Scammer?)
The latest for Tesla is more of the same
IBM Falls Below $200, Expect $199 or Less Today (Panic Threshold)
Will this be enough to topple the managers?
Gemini Links 23/07/2026: SharePoint Rants and “Junk DNA” in Commented-Out Code
Links for the day
Links 23/07/2026: RIP John C. Dvorak, Organisation Weaponised Against J.K. Rowling
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 22, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, July 22, 2026
Freexian & Debian: antitrust, unfair competition against joint authors and volunteers
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock