Summary: An overview of recent Novell news, of which there is a good deal about proprietary software, Red Hat leeching, LibreOffice/OpenOffice leeching, etc.

NOVELL has been a wasteland of news recently (OpenSUSE being the exception), especially now that the acquisition is put on hold amidst investigation. It leads to paralysis. To quote Redmonk's "State of Novell" post:

My own is that SUSE faces some fundamental challenges.

Linux foes like Microsoft would love to ensure that it carries on because Microsoft is paid for SLE* sales, unlike RHEL sales. But Red Hat is still the market leader, despite Microsoft's continued efforts to change that. In general, there is not much to say about Novell these days. News about the company is banal, but it sure seems like they still want Red Hat's business based on statements by Michael Applebaum, who takes advantage of the patches controversy/blunder:

From a maintenance perspective, Novell doesn't face any problem in providing regular kernel updates for RHEL.

On another front, Novell promotes proprietary GroupWise and abend.org keeps track of that when it reposts (it also covers new flaws [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]):

Novell today announced new partner solutions to meet the growing demands of its GroupWise(R) customer base and address the changing collaboration landscape. Within the past two months, Novell partners, including GWAVA, Notify Technology and SEP, unveiled eight new products which provide GroupWise customers with advanced security, compliance and mobile management features. Combined with more than 1,200 active GroupWise solution providers in 2010, the Novell ecosystem of ISVs and channel partners has driven more than 70 percent of GroupWise sales over the past year and continues to gain momentum.

"We have come to rely on GWAVA and Novell GroupWise as critical solutions to our overall messaging infrastructure," said Andrew Simpson, head of ITT at Public and Commercial Services Union. "Having two partners work so well together gives us confidence into the future."

This is just proprietary software, akin to this type of stuff which Novell PR people are pushing. Go-OO development has been moving resources to LibreOffice, which Novell tries to monetise using support, just like SUSE which Novell's PR people carry on promoting [1, 2]. Meike Chabowski, the product marketing manager for Enterprise Linux Servers at Novell, is pushing SUSE content into ZDNet to strengthen SUSE in mainframes.

With funds from dubious sources and despite bankruptcy [1, 2], SCO or UnXis [1, 2, 3] wish to carry on threatening Linux with a tax. Groklaw pointed out that Novell would file for an appeal against SCO's latest move.

I expect Novell will immediately appeal. You will notice that on page 11 of the Order there is a 14-day waiting period, so it can do so, something Novell requested at the hearing. When the judge said he'd have to make sure Novell had that time, I knew how he would rule.

At the end of the day, an insolvent Novell which will probably be forgotten a few years down the line, just like SCO. Both companies are no longer seen as creating much at all. Their virtual assets are being passed around. ⬆