Bonum Certa Men Certa

“Things Are Going Downhill at Novell These Days”

Summary: Novell deceives the press just as the company is imploding, as well as getting much smaller

NOVELL is falling apart as a company and as a brand. Quite symbolically (of Novell's bleeding to death), one person has just uploaded a video titled: "Novell Provo Campus Building H Water Leak"

The description of the video goes like this: "Things are going downhill at Novell these days. There was a massive water leak and huge amounts of damage done to the Lobby of Building H. Novell Provo Campus Lobby Water Leak"

[an error occurred while processing this directive]





Direct link



Novell's much bigger internal issues are actually a lot less visible than the above. Novell is currently trying to 'dress up' the real news about the management exodus that we covered last night. The press is catching up very quickly, but the company's press release [1, 2, 3, 4] tries hard to spin, spin, spin. That's what PR is all about: defensible omission, distraction, selectivity, and reasonable distortion.

“They announce the departure of many executives (as a bundle) and then treat such big departures as minor, describing the whole move as "reorg", which is a vague concept.”Novell's PR Director, Ian Bruce, completely ignores the departures and pretends that the decoy of "reorg" is all there is to talk about. This is an old trick devised also by Microsoft. They announce the departure of many executives (as a bundle) and then treat such big departures as minor, describing the whole move as "reorg", which is a vague concept. It is ambiguous as this can be interpreted as either bad news or good news. They sort of "package together" (or group) a lot of bad news that must reach shareholders and mix it with something that's positive or only seemingly positive in order to just bury the bad news and be done it.

Many news sites have fallen into this PR trap, which was set up by Novell's marketing/management people, no doubt. Those who were docile and gullible only/mostly spoke about "reorg", just as Novell had hoped. Examples:

1. Novell announce a reorganisation

2. Novell reorganizes business and management

3. Novell Corporate Restructure

4. Novell reorg aims at solution sales

In this reorganization, three current units—identity and security management (ISM); systems and resource management (SRM); and open platform solutions (OPS) will meld into one security, management and operating platforms business unit headed by senior vice president Jim Ebzery.


Well done, Novell. You lied to journalists and here they are rewriting your press release (more or less). It's a disgrace to both Novell and to the practice of professional journalism.

There are exceptions however. The very prominent (as in widely-syndicated) Associated Press came out with a more appropriate headline, but it leaves out major news about major departures. Apart from the raw article there were copies in news sites such as ABC, BusinessWeek, the Washington Post and the New York Times. Only one publication (as far as one can tell) has modified the Associated Press headline to add: "[Novell] says 2 executives to leave"

That's the main news. It is about Novell shrinking and losing key suits (managers). It is very bad news, it's not just a "reorg". To quote from another news source:

On an interim basis, Jeff Jaffe, who has served for the last four years as CTO and executive vice president of the business units, has agreed to report to Hovsepian as a strategic advisor. He will be leaving the company this February. Senior Vice President of Strategic Development Roger Levy will also be leaving Novell.


J.P. Morgan's response? "Change Does Not Always Make it Different" sums it up.

Manek, a British consultant who writes at ZDNet UK, has just published this short article about Novell. The headline says: "Whither Novell?"

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Novell still doesn't know what it's for. Recent news that the company has once again re-organised itself, following a fairly abysmal set of financial results, smacks slightly of desperation.

[...]

What's depressing is that I seem to have been making the same or similar comments every few years about Novell, ever since the company went bonkers buying Unix, WordPerfect and a whole host of other bits and pieces as it looked to replace its failing NetWare business.


Boycott Novell is linked there among the comments, in relation to Mono. In other news this week, Miguel de Icaza is still looking appease Microsoft. Perhaps that's all Novell has left, namely fusion with Microsoft.

"Now [Novell is] little better than a branch of Microsoft"

--LinuxToday Managing Editor



Recent Techrights' Posts

Datamation, Where I Used to Publish Articles, Appears to Have Been Sold to TechnologyAdvice Only to Become a Slopfarm
I'd prefer to not associate with that site anymore
 
How Software Patents Were Viewed or Their General Status Changed Over Time
A rough summary
We Are Turning 19 in One Month, FSF Turns 40 in 3 Hours (CET)
For our anniversary next month we still have no concrete plans
Patent Docs (or PatentDocs) Learned the Wrong Lessons From the Death of TypePad
Had they gone ahead with an SSG, they'd become a lot more future-proof
USPTO Patent Bubble Already Imploding, After Decades of Artificial Inflation, Entire Offices Close for Good
we can deduce that financial pressures (lack of "demand" for monopolies) play a role
TikTok is Not Harmless (Being CheeTok in the US Will Advance Orange Agenda)
Social control media isn't "fun and games"; it's a digital weapon that lets hostile groups or nations infiltrate others, then turn them against themselves
Andy Farnell and Helen Plews Explain What "Modern" Tech Does to Old People
Imposing terrible tech "religion" on people is not helping them
Tomorrow the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 and Its Web Site is Still Slow Due to DDoS by LLM Slop Bots
For an advocacy group, uptime is important (for its message to remain accessible)
Slopwatch: Google News as a Firehose of LLM Slop About "Linux"
Google News is really bad
Links 03/10/2025: "NPR’s Economics Lessons Come With Neoliberal Spin" and Canada Post at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/10/2025: Panic Attacks and Food Adulteration
Links for the day
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims of says can be trusted
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Plagiarism, Fake Articles, and FUD About Linux
not a day goes by without Google News feeding FUD from slopfarms
Gemini Links 01/10/2025: Chat Control and End of Life
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: Long Covid Risk Reiterated, "Bitcoin Queen" Caught
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: EA $55 Billion Deal is Debt and Slop "Raises Vishing Risks"
Links for the day
Bluewashing at Red Hat Means Redundancies
The man who sold Red Hat to IBM meanwhile became a Microsoft Mono booster
After Killing OpenSource.com, IBM ('Red Hat') and OSI Told Us OpenSource.net Would Replace It (But That Didn't Happen)
Now it's time to move on, perhaps tarnishing the "Open Source" label some more (for whatever sponsor wants this)
Linux is Not a Community Project, It's a Wall Street Product
The core goal should be freedom
Bad Actors Abusing the Free Software Community, Vandalising It Using Rogue Politics and Old Tactics
Oil giants have long attempted to do this; now, the digital equivalent of Big Oil does this in technology
Social Control Media Isn't the Future, The Federation or Fediverse Isn't Growing, People's Accounts Vanish for Good
users' accounts will get deleted, not just become inactive
IBM is Failing, This Helps Show Wall Street is Entirely Detached From Actual Commercial Performance
IBM is unable to grow, it's just constantly shrinking
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 30, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Clerical Aspects of Publishing and Development
In Free software, the management aspects are considerably reduced
Slopwatch: Fake Articles and Google News Promoting "Linux" Spam or Bot-Generated Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
These slopfarms help misplace blame
Third Wave of Microsoft Layoffs in September, This Time Many in Liverpool Affected
Be ready for more waves of layoffs ahead of the so-called "results" in late October