06.18.08
Posted in Deals, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft, Novell, Xen at 12:53 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Why compete when you can buy the competition?
An article with the headline “Third Brigade buys open-source rival” truly stood out from the headlines yesterday. Why would a company acquire its rival, let alone an open source rival? Why would this be approved? Would consumers benefit from less competition? This had shades of XenSource.
Third Brigade has bought OSSEC, an open-source competitor to its host intrusion detection and prevention system.
Ottawa-based Third Brigade said it had bought the OSSEC project and related trademarks, as well as copyrights held by the project’s creator and primary developer, Daniel Cid, and the OSSEC.net domain, website and website content.
[...]
No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.
The press release announcing it is here. It seems like a case of stifling competition by simply buying it. The Microsoft-Novell deal too was a sort of non-compete agreement. Novell got paid handsomely for it. █
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Posted in Deception, Finance, Microsoft, Novell at 12:40 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“Yes, it’s a major blow, but…”
The following press release was produced by Novell and published just hours ago:
Novell today announced that Thomas M. Francese, executive vice president of worldwide sales, will leave the Company, effective July 31, 2008.
This seems like a preemptive strike. It’s likely that Novell did not want such news to ‘leak’ and be interpreted nagatively.
Thomas Francese’s departure is very near. It will be joining other major departures like that of Joseph LaSala and Bruce Lowry. Recently, it even turned out that Novell’s SUSE evangelist had left the company because of the secrecy around the Microsoft deal. There seems to be somewhat of a stampede, and at least one documented exodus. Perhaps the smart ones see what's coming.
Here is a short article covering this latest departure.
Novell Inc. revealed the resignation of Thomas Francese as executive vice president of worldwide sales, effective July 31, 2008.
Now comes damage control.
Less than one hour later (maybe simultaneously even) came this:
Novell (NOVL) Reaffirms FY08 Outlook
Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL) reiterated its previously issued FY08 guidance of sales in the range of $940-$970 million, versus the consensus of $ million. Non-GAAP operating margins are expected to be 7-9%, excluding all acquisition-related intangible asset amortization.
Here is the press release.
Business software maker Novell Inc. on Tuesday reiterated its outlook for fiscal 2008 revenue between $940 million and $970 million.
Did that stunt eventually work? Were investors excited by this non-news (merely a reiteration)? Apparently not.
Shares of the company fell more than 2 percent to $6.21 in trading after the bell. They closed at $6.36 in regular trade Tuesday on Nasdaq.
After the company’s very recent financial woes (disguised though), Novell ought to worry about disintegrating in the hands of its main rival, with which it chose to liaise. █
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06.17.08
Posted in News Roundup at 12:30 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
GNU/Linux
- Korea’s HaanSoft to promote Asianux in RP
Asianux, a version of the Linux operating system, was developed by China’s Red Flag Software and has since been locally deployed and distributed by Japan’s Miracle Linux and HaanSoft, forming a regional open-source consortium.
- ArtistX 0.5 – A Complete Multimedia Studio on a Live DVD – Create music and edit videos right from the Live DVD
ArtistX 0.5, a Debian-based Live DVD Linux distribution, was announced a few days ago by Marco Ghirlanda. This distro is full of applications for audio, video and graphics creation & editing. It uses the Linux kernel 2.6.25, KDE 3.5 as desktop manager and, as a bonus, you get Compiz 0.7.7 (from Debian unstable) for more eye-candy.
- VectorLinux 5.9 SOHO Deluxe Edition
The VectorLinux team is pleased to announce the availability of the latest SOHO Edition to our CD store. This is a wonderful chance to support Vector and get a rock solid, full featured productive Linux Desktop.
- Is Linux about to displace Windows Mobile?
Each one is different in the types of services it provides “out of the box” and in the types of interfaces these services have. Android, as an example, has a Java based UI, while MontaVista comes with nothing that is handset-specific. MobileCrunch posted a good comparison between LiMo and Android – I suggest reading it.
- Linux Mint 5 Elyssa
The arguments that it may be too simple, not complicated enough, dumbed down Linux, Ubuntu copy, not-a-real-distribution, Windows lookalike etc, really belong in the past when developers were Hackers and Users were Geeks. The age of a real, usable Linux system for normal people has been born, thanks in part to Microsoft, and the desire of people like Clement Lefebvre to bring Linux to the masses means that there will have to be a special distribution arrive to prize Mint off my main Desktop PC any time soon. The bar has been raised, the gauntlet has been thrown down.
- Compiz Fusion, Mandriva 2008.1 on AMD Phenom Quad-core PC with Demo
- Running With Forks
- Interview with Clint Savage, Fedora Ambassador
KDE
F/OSS
Leftovers
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Posted in Site News at 10:09 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
To those who are IRC regulars: if you wish to add your favourite avatar — to be displayed adjacent to your messages in the logs — please mail it to me ( roy at schestowitz dot com ) or post below as a comment the URL containing the image. sed makes it all this simple to achieve. To those who are not in IRC, come and join us any time at #boycottnovell (FreeNode). █
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Posted in GNU/Linux, OLPC at 8:54 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Universality contradicts objectiveness
The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project — which aimed to give underprivileged children around the world a better chance at modern education — may have been stifled though a combination of disinformation and other coordinated efforts by hardware and software monopolies that wanted to stop it.
Read on
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Posted in GNU/Linux, GPL, Linspire, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Patents, SCO, Xandros at 12:01 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Occasionally it seems useful to show that we are not along when it comes to criticising Novell. There is this tendency — wishful thinking for some — to say that this Web site is biased against Novell as a matter of principle and blind goals, as opposed to a well-calculated rationale. But this is totally untrue. While Novell does contribute to many projects and is rightly credited for it, the company operates upon selfish interests at the end. Novell is far from a Free software company [1, 2, 3 5]. It’s a lot more like Microsoft.
Have a look at this new press release.
Novell(R) announced today it is the first Linux* vendor to appear on the U.S. Department of Defense Unified Capabilities Approved Products List (APL), as SUSE(R) Linux Enterprise Server 10 Service Pack 2 (SP2) has received the Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) Special Interoperability Certification from the department’s Defense Information System Agency. With this certification, Novell customers, including government agencies, can rely on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server to support present and future networking standards, offering peace of mind for long-term use.
The APL list is expected to become a Department of Defense and U.S. federal government equipment purchase requirement.
Referring to this portion of the text, Groklaw opines: “This little nugget clariifies for me the sudden Microsoft interest in interoperability and the whole Microsoft-Novell deal.” Earning of a place inside the US government, which traditionally moves some of its operations to Red Hat, is what Microsoft might wish to influence here. It wishes to tax for the use of GNU/Linux and potentially run it under (or alongside) Windows. It’s all about control.
“In many ways, Novell became Microsoft’s ‘GPL factory’, which produces whatever ‘poison’ (legal obligations) or ‘features’ (Windows/Office/.NET hooks) Microsoft wants its competition to contain and bring upstream.”The criticism above is a tad subtle. Novell played an important role in squashing the action brought against Linux by SCO, so it would be hard for Groklaw to be overly critical of Novell, especially amid those final stages of the trial.
Nevertheless, it seems clear that Novell’s role in damaging Free software (using software patents) is precisely what the company might do. Mono, Moonlight, OOXML and some other hostile technologies appear to be among the key outputs of Novell.
The export of such unnecessary software seems to only promote Microsoft’s agenda. In many ways, Novell became Microsoft’s 'GPL factory', which produces whatever ‘poison’ (legal obligations) or ‘features’ (Windows/Office/.NET hooks) Microsoft wants its competition to contain and bring upstream.
Even Matt Hartley, who obviously likes Linspire and Xandros, it finally taking this small shot at Novell: [emphasis is ours]
What About Red Hat, Novell and Canonical? On the distribution development side of things, all three of these companies (excluding Novell’s selling out to Redmond), are on the right path with their own visions for desktop Linux.
BoycottNovell is not the only critic of Novell. It just happens to be a site whose name reflects on these convictions and biases. █
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