Ashlee Vance: “And top of all this, we have Novell just today when we were recording the broadcast they had to lay their 4th quarter earnings because of a SEC probe.”
”…I can tell you absolutely for a verifiable fact for that Novell does do that, but then again everybody does that. So… I’ve.. I’ve got the sales guys at Novell telling me that, that they do this…“Matt Asay: “Well, I doubt, I tend… I don’t know who reported on that, but I saw something where they say, you know, this probably isn’t due to Novell massaging its numbers around Linux, which is what Dana Blakenhorn at ZDNet had claimed, I mean, I can tell you absolutely for a verifiable fact for that Novell does do that, but then again everybody does that. So… I’ve.. I’ve got the sales guys at Novell telling me that, that they do this, but it just doesn’t matter, I… I suspect that this is a tech… like a technicality that Novell has run afoul of and not a big deal, but maybe I’ll.. maybe we’ll be wrong, maybe I’ll be wrong, we should see.”
Ashlee Vance: “So you think people fudge the shipping numbers or they’re fudging revenue numbers, I mean, reve..?”
Matt Asay: “No…no… no… no not… just saying that they are putting it into different buckets. Ummm…like, some of that Linux revenue that Novell reports, based on what I’ve heard from Linux inside the company, is not Linux revenue by… by.., what are… reasonably prudently outside observer and what they would say.” █
”…I kept getting calls from people in the company [Novell] begg… asking me to be nice. “Matt Asay: “Yeah, you notice that I’ve been really nice about Novell lately. It’s… it’s because I kept getting calls from people in the company [Novell] begg… asking me to be nice. Hmmm…No… I mean, so Novell had a few things. They’ve gone through a major reorg… hmmm… they are aligning their sales force with individual business units and as a result there are a lot of good people that have been let go and… there are other good people that want to … let… let go. I’ve had, from people whom I would consider the top 5% of the company, I’ve had, I dunno… hmmm… maybe 10 of them last… 2 months that have E-mailed me their resume, so I… it doesn’t bode well for Novell on that score.
”…I’m not a big optimist that this is all gonna save the Novell world and life will be grand.“Now, on the other hand, if you talk with Bruce Lowry or people in their PR department, they’ll tell you — maybe… maybe rightly so — that these aren’t… these aren’t signs of desperation… signs of intelligent recrafting of the company. I’ve worked not that long at Novell… just 3 years, but I saw quite a bit of intelligent recrafting while I was there, so I’m not a big optimist that this is all gonna save the Novell world and life will be grand.” █
The Open Season show is proof of the fact that we’re not alone when it comes to criticising Novell.
The usual crew – me, Matt Asay and Dave Rosenberg – went after Novell in Episode 7. Then we went after Novell some more. And finished off the Novell bashing with some Novell bashing.
There will always be a strange and uncomfortable dilemma when someone who is not your friend offers you gift (not even on Christmas day). Just a few days after the beta of CNR debuted on the Web, Ubuntu Forums went abuzz. Some people do not want anything to do with Linspire software.
The folks at NoOOXML refuse to buy the arguments made jointly by Jeff Waugh and Miguel de Icaza in the recent podcast. Consider this:
A statement as clear as “MS delivered OOXML to ECMA as-is MS make the decisions about changing it we’re drilling for docs” was missed which lead to a lot of confusion in the Gnome user community. According to some unconfirmed rumours a popular SCO case blogger was so pissed that the person considered to switch from Gnome to another Desktop environment. I find it nice that the Gnome Foundation “drilled” Microsoft for more documentation. But maybe that was soo wrong, too? What if the amount of documentation helped them to sell their “standard” to ISO?
There remains a difference between OOXML and CNR. While OOXML is Microsoft’s property which serves its own purposes, CNR is not and does not. However, as one vocal Linspire opposer said, anything that supports Linspire and serves a lifeline/dependency needs to be avoided. It keeps Linspire going for longer and — by association — its ties with Microsoft alive. With these controversial ties come all sorts of damaging ‘liabilities’ and patent ammunition. This helps create a flock situation where Microsoft is is able to gather GNU/Linux users under a single 'umbrella' which is destructible. █
Posted in Courtroom, GPL, Law at 10:31 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
A few weeks ago we explained and showed why GPL is a licence that had already been tested in court. It may not have gotten a victory (nor a loss) in all the courts around the world, but so far it has a flawless track record where people comply rather than complain. The big news today is SFLC’s lawsuit against a company as large as Verizon, which only recently joined Google’s Android embracers. Android is a phone stack that contains the Linux kernel and Java, both of which are GPLv2-licensed.
Groklaw has the text of the filing (PDF) transformed into plain text.
The same two principal developers already successfully sued Monsoon Media, and they have litigation pending against Xterasys Corporation and High-Gain Antennas, LLC. Here is the press release from the Software Freedom Law Center on the Verizon suit, followed by the complaint as text.
This ought to be an interesting case to watch. Many routers in many homes contain GPL-licensed code where Verizon infringements were involved. Who will be compensated, how much, and what will be the impact on the perception and uptake of the licence? It remains to be seen. █
China, Europe express and show intent to ‘clean up’ the mess
Wise men once argued that a lot of inventions worth patenting had already been patented. They insisted that there is little room for more great ‘innovations’. This report from China appears to confirm this.
On November 27, 2007, the Innovative National Construction and Intellectual Property Symposium was held in Beijing. Representatives from a variety of industries spoke at the event; most of them expressed their worries and frustrations with China’s IPR protection framework. Mr. Fu Shaoming, head of the IPR unit from Foxconn, China’s largest electronics OEM firm, claimed in his speech that 90% of China’s new and practical patents are de facto garbage and should be discarded.
Amazon doesn’t appear to be learning a lesson in patent tactlessness. It carries on filing so-called ‘junk patents’, which are fortunately getting revoked, at least by the EPO. Check out this description of the following revoked patent.
The so-called “Gift Order Patent” has been revoked by the EPO in an opposition proceeding today after a hearing involving three opposing parties and the patent proprietor, Amazon Inc. The patent relates to a method for purchasing goods over the Internet to be sent as gifts.
Here is a little update on our favourite patent trolls, Ray Niro and Acacia. Of interest:
Assuming it files one per month for the next 39 months until the patent expires, then what Acacia is really seeking is $600M from US industry for the JPEG-on-a-website patent. My guess is they’ll sue many more companies than that, and seek up to a billion dollars – which, assuming a 33% contingency fee (which is low, probably), amounts to a cool $100 million per year for the Niro firm.
And people wonder why he’d like to shut down websites critical of Acacia and other patent trolls. The real question is what does he want from you and me, for our photo blogs, our personal websites. His statements to IP Law 360 only referred to companies.
The other real question is how many companies will spend millions in attorneys fees to fight rather than pay the $500K or $1M or $2M that Acacia is demanding. That’s the sad state of patent litigation these days.
Thank you, TrollTracker, for documenting such valuable nonsense. █
The digest which was posted half an hour ago to cover OpenSUSE news did not contain negative reviews of OpenSUSE 10.3. However, as indicated therein, DistroWatch Weekly did not give OpenSUSE brilliant marks either. For what it’s worth, here are some of the less flattering new bits about OpenSUSE 10.3:
OpenSuse 10.3 certainly has plenty of enhancements like its more polished theme, faster boot time speed, and improved responsiveness. However, I think it fell a bit short on hardware support. In my friend’s computer, it worked like a charm. But in mine, its performance is very frustrating. The installation should also be improved, as not everyone has patience like mine.
OpenSuse still has enough room for improvement. I just hope that they will capitalize on their 10.3 achievements and learn from its blunder for their next major release, because definitely, I will give it another chance.
No operating system is perfect. Denying the flaws won’t make them magically disappear, either. Consider this a self-balancing post? I hate doing this, but this type of FUD against an open-source project seems unavoidable. It’s rarely done. As for Linpsire, Freespire, Xandros, and Turbolinux, they rarely get a mentioned anywhere. █
”…Novell received some positive press coverage as well.“The most major news, at least from Novell’s perspective for this week, is all to do with postponement of its financial report (due to a SEC probe). We covered this on Thursday after the Wednesday’s downtime (caused by heavy load). It was the same day that Novell received the grim news. However, Novell received some positive press coverage as well. Some of it is presented below.
Novell is scouting for sale and service partners to create better business opportunities and to provide wide range of business solutions in the Indian market.
There is one lucky partner. Novell grants a special honour to Novacoast, which is claimed “partner of the year”.
Novacoast, Inc., an IT professional services and product development firm, won Novell’s 2007 Solution Partner of the Year award for the Americas, seizing the top honor for the fifth time in the past six years. A Santa Barbara-based company, Novacoast continues to hold top partner status with Novell due to a strong customer focus, technology expertise, and a results-oriented approach. Novacoast has been a key partner in helping Novell expand its Linux and enterprise management offerings to new customers and new markets in 2007.
Just recently, government information technology vendor Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) announced that it, along with its team members, has been awarded a certificate of completion for its HSPD-12 vendor evaluation. Team members include Novell, Honeywell, ImageWare and ActivIdentity.
For future reference, Sequiam’s ties with Novell’s technology are worth taking note of. They are described in the following new press release.
Sequiam Corporation (OTCBB: SQUM), a leading provider of innovative consumer and commercial identity-management technologies and services, announced today that production is underway on several versions of the new biometric hardware kits for Fujitsu. These kits will be used in multiple applications, including Novell® eDirectory(TM), enabling NMAS Authentication for client and server login. They will also be used for secure access to www.annesdiary.com, the world’s first secure social networking site for children, which utilizes Novell eDirectory.
The hardware kits will be used by Fujitsu for multiple security access applications including Novell’s eDirectory and www.annesdiary.com, which Orlando-based Sequiam (OTCBB: SQUM) touts as the world’s first secure social networking site for children, particularly young girls. The site has 600,000 subscriptions around the world.
Novell Marketing
The following Novell commercial seems similar to a bunch of older ones. It may be just a part of them, but it might also be a new one based on the datestamp.
Novell’s PR blog reveals a migration from Windows to GNU/Linux where Novell’s SUSE was chosen.
Guangdong Mobile’s Windows environment couldn’t provide the stability and security the company needed, so after testing a variety of alternative solutions, Guangdong Mobile replaced its Windows with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.
ELCOT’s migration to SUSE Linux, which has been covered here several times before, makes the news again.
That day, Elcot’s managing director, C. Umashankar, walked into his office in Chennai, Tamil Nadu and was handed a brand new laptop. He recalls promptly giving it back to his PA. “I asked him to load Suse Linux on it. I guess he was surprised. But when the installation — complete with drivers and wireless networking — only took 45 minutes and very little external effort, there was a new confidence in my PA.” That confidence spread quickly. And with it came more penguins. Within weeks, the Rs 750-crore Elcot was undergoing a enterprise-wide migration to Suse Linux. A year later, Umashankar and his team had moved 30,000 computers and 1,880 severs belonging to some of the state’s schools to Linux — creating possibly the largest Linux rollout in India.
[...]
As users caught on with Umashankar’s infectious enthusiasm, they started getting more familiar with the features of their new OS. Soon a cycle of interest developed and users found new ways of switching mail clients to work on Suse Linux.
While Novell has its Novell Open Workgroup Suite Small Business Edition and Microsoft has its Small Business Server offerings, you have some research to do before deciding which way to go. And there are several open-source products that will probably work well for you as well.
A story that first made the news about 4 months ago has recently returned.
The judge’s approval of 200 hours of community service drew comments from law enforcement officials frustrated by an MIT professor who faked his own death.
[...]
Donovan is well-known and widely respected in the IT community because of his text books and inspirational speeches. A serial entrepreneur, he started several companies, the most famous of which was Cambridge Technology Partners, which was sold to Novell for $266 million in 2001. The Cambridge Technology Partners operation was recently spun off by Novell.
This story was not mentioned here before because it barely has anything to do with Novell. Being a large company with an even more glorious past, the number of people out there in industry who are also former Novell employees is quite vast. Eric Schmidt is doing well at Google and Matt Asay cannot help criticising Novell for its deal with Microsoft. Both of them are former Novell employees (among many more). █
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