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Novell Under Pressure From Investors
UltimaGuy writes "The pressure is growing on Novell Inc's management to make major strategic changes after a regulatory filing revealed a Novell shareholder has joined Credit Suisse First Boston in calling for change at the identity management and Linux vendor. The steps proposed by the investment firm include cutting costs by targeting Novell's two corporate jets, its 'overstaffed' R&D department, legacy products, and its 400 NetWare engineers, as well as selling non-core businesses to enable funds to be redeployed."
Maybe there's truth in the notion then that Sun might buy Novell. If it doesn't buy Red Hat first, as Mark Hinkle here seems to think it might.
I guess it just doesn't pay to do your own research these days.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Granted, if the firm discovered that 80% of the R&D staff isn't actually doing anything outside of playing QuakeIII or something, then yeah, they should be cut, a little...
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
This kind of stuff is why a lot of people tire of reading /.
Not funny, not a contribution to the discussion and pointless karma whoring.
I hope they don't keep the planes and fire the R&D people. But that's sort of what I expect they'll do.
that investment firms and R&D don't go together well......
I know that not everyone in R&D is a brilliant scientist, but in the long run, its the R&D that helps the industry move forward
On a side note however, anything worthwhile coming out of Novell's R&D these days ?
I don't know about Novell, so perhaps they do have too many people, but I must say I'm rather alarmed the article mentions R&D being overstaffed and no other department. Most companies don't go all out hiring R&D folks to begin with - that's one of the things that makes Google so unusual - so they don't tend to be overstocked in R&D in the first place. I wonder if this fits in with the recent trend in corporate America to view R&D as a luxury and money sinkhole. Since the benefits don't show up next quarter, chop them off to look better in short term costs. Never mind five or ten years down the road when you need new products to stay competitive and don't have any.
Does ANYBODY in the US think long term anymore and still have influence in corporate or government circles? Maybe they're all thinking that if everybody else is also dumping R&D, everyone will still be competitive, and it will only be the consumer that gets stuck with static technology and gradually decreasing quality. (Price wars with no quality differential do that, since consumers tend to be bad in the short term at distinguishing good products from bad.)
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
...news at eleven. I actually RTFA and yeah, there are some issues about management, but is more like communication problem between shareholders and management, and I guess it will be soon cleared out.
I repeat, it is NOT about finansial problems in Novell, they have some loss, but they are doing quite fine in large perspective.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
targeting Novell's two corporate jets, its "overstaffed" R&D department
I wonder by cutting its overstaffed R&D department if they really just mean move them all to China?
I guess the execs will need those corporate jets to fly back and forth to China in style so they can visit their lower-paid works occasionally.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
no, karma whoring is putting up something informative or interesting to improve my karma score, making a tacky crap joke may gain a few funny mods, but it usually ends up with a net loss of karma (due to the inevitable overrated mods).
I type whatever crap comes to mind at the time of reading, if others laugh or are informed, good, if not, then I don't care but I've at least contributed to the discussion in my own way.
liqbase
Novell is still in a changing state in finding itself again. Microsoft's taking over the server market has left Novell perpetually staggering. While Novell still has a server stake and their stake is being re-situated on a Linux base, they need to apply all they can on R&D in order to get themselves wedged into the desktop market. For shops that are already Novell, adopting a strong and maintainable desktop environment based on Linux would be less difficult that convincing an all-Microsoft shop. They have a foot in the door but they need to apply a lot more R&D to make another step.
These damned short-sighted share-holders, while on the short term build captial and value in a company, seem to be the long-term downfall of creativity and improvement. (Not to mention the driving influence in removing ethics from business practices to the point of criminal acts.)
I can't imagine two more disparate mindsets. There is no way Wall Street's greed and F/OSS's idealism can be simultaneously realized. If the managers at Novell had any spine, they'd tell Wall Street to take a hike, and instead worry about running the business. You can have a healthy profitable business without being obsessed with the cancer of promising ever-increasing returns to investers. If Novell wants to survive, they should go private, focus on making their customers happy, accept reasonable pay for their work, and not feel inadequate for lack of achieving world domination. Or they could do what every other Wall Street whore does, promise the impossible, sacrifice quality an people's lives in the process, build a lot of sand castles, and ultimately add nothing of permanant value to the world.
Since they're proposing to cut 400 guys, that must mean that the actual Netware development team is some number larger than 400. Why so many guys are still working on a dead-end product with no future is beyond me.
Just yesterday I was cycling through the KVM on a rack of machines in a server room, and one of the boxes, apparently untouched for over 3 three years, had puked just that morning (on a RAM hiccup, or something similar), and did the old Novell equivalent of a BSD. The funny thing (other than the timing) was that no one with any interest in the infrastructure could come up with the slightest idea what that machine was actually supposed to be doing. Right now the plan is to leave it off until some dev guy screams (or, payroll doesn't go through, or another equally dramatic land-mine type event).
But the point is, that machine would appear to have gone from Important To Somebody Who Really Liked Novell to, well, Complete Obscurity in a pretty short time. Not entirely representative of Novell's current corporate state of affairs, but in retrospect, the whole thing was sort of poetic. Plus, the users in question are now about to pay for an audit of what the hell actually is running in their server room.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The IIIs are (+) karma, and Flame/Troll/Red. are (-) karma. That is all.
The unofficial
Cut back the corporate trappings, strip down to a core offering and get ready for a sale. Stripping down R&D to just what the market wants will help with that as well.
IBM to buy Novell?
Sun to buy Novell?
Private Equity to buy Novell?
Or alternative, Novell to flounder as they loose sight of any strategic direction while they look for a market exit.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Before we go and fire off some letters to Congress, I would imagine it would be a good idea to have some proof of these misdeeds. Unless this is supposed to be sarcasm, and in that case, haha.
Freedom would be not to choose between black and white but to abjure such prescribed choices. -Theodor Adorno
It is about time to write to you Congress rep to asking that Congress demand that the Justice Department investigate this abuse of the courts to stiffle competition
Um... I don't think "pressure from investors" is quite the same as "abuse of the courts."
Since we (pretty much) know MS...
Yes, they were also behind the fake moon landings, and are really Halliburton's Seattle office. *sigh*
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I hope this doesn't harm the Mono project, which Novell has been a vital part of. I have great hope for this project. But I'm not sure how it helps Novell's bottom line, so it might be the kind of thing that goes on the chopping block.
Or at least, article summaries that completely miss the point about true R&D costs get a lot of screen time. When large companies engage in expensive R&D, they cover those costs by (gasp!) charging people for their products. True for new AMD chips, true for super-duper antibiotics, and true (however indirectly, and not obvious to a lot of people) for Google, too.
Does ANYBODY in the US think long term anymore and still have influence in corporate or government circles?
I think the better question is, do many companies still have the balls to explain to their customers why fancy new products cost what they cost? And, does the nitwitted consuming end of the culture, so saturated with the pernicious concept that every company charging them for a product or service is "evil," still have the intellectual honesty to look at the larger picture? Calling it like it is has become so unfashionable that we're just sinking in a swamp of mediocrity (or trying to, it seems) rather than teaching basic economics in grade school, where what's left of critical thinking might still be salvaged. By the time people become consumers and investors, they're so disconnected from causal relationships that they can't connect the dots between investment, innovation, time, risk, and cool new technologies.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
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""We are disappointed in not only your failure to consider our proposals but also at the clear lack of urgency in implementing a strategic plan,""
Gee maybe if they weren't busy trying to defend their business in frivolous lawsuits like sco then maybe they could concentrate and spend money on their actual business.
Sounds like to me just a blowhard that either sco or microsoft or sun got a hold of to distract the company from the issues at hand.
I fully support Novell in what they are they doing. Just because their busines model doesn't meet the standards of a convicted monopolist doesn't mean a thing. I got some of the longest uptimes on my servers from SUSE linux. To me that is what makes a business model. Fricken reliability - what a concept.
Their NDS still rocks and runs on any platform. It blows Microsoft AD crap away.
I am still waiting on sco's response to novell which I believe should be coming up real soon.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Is Novell making money? Ignore the stock price, that has little to nothing to do with if Novell operates at a profit or loss. If they are making money, tell the MBA's to go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut. See also: Costco.
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My first thought was to suggest you commit suicide, but then I realized that a weak willed loser like you might take the suggestion serriously instead of the joke it was meant as. So seriously, seek counseling. That help?
Ah, glad to see /. is keeping up with traditions as this one has been well covered on osnews.com for a day now.
I guess a few ghastly, greedy "investors" fronted by teenage analysts are now circling Novell, scenting blood and booty. My understanding is that Novell is nowhere near profitability and the gap between declining Netware revenue and new Linux revenue is alarming. But Novell does have quite a lot of cash in hand and is entangled with IBM via the SuSE acquisition. I'd guess some of the Wall Street greed merchants are hoping for a takeover or a dismemberment, with IBM being greenmailed into picking up a very large tab on the Linux side because losing SuSE would be too painful for them.
Of course, the little shits don't pitch it like that, just calling for better management.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
I can't agree that Netware is completly at a dead end. To be sure it isn't a rapidly growing market but it isn't shrinking so fast either, the last time I met my Novell salesperson he said they still had over 400 Million Netware user licences under maintenance. Even if they lose 10% per year that still deserves heavy R&D.
Novell has a clear strategy here, with the latest Netware you can run either the Netware or SuSE kernel. My guess is that eventually Netware will ship with a Linux core by default but a number of people will continue to buy it for all the value add features. Within 5 years you will then see a single core O/S sold and you will then be able to buy services such as eDirectory, file and print management, Zenworks etc. as the value add profitable services.
Novell simply can't move out of Netware quickly, many infrastructure systems rely on it (I know of one airline booking systems and 2 cash machine networks in the Uk which still rely on it and I'm sure there are many, many more).
IBM made a huge mistake in abandoning OS/2 with nowhere for its customers (especially embedded system / POS customers) to move to. Novell has proved once again the value of their maintenance contracts by fully supporting all their existing OS customers until they have a smooth migration plan to SuSE.
So you see if it makes a problem for someone to fix rather than ask first?
Please actually read all of the words in a comment before jumping to that conclusion. We asked. Everybody. No one knows what role the machine is playing. No one working there has any Novell experience, and can't imagine actually choosing that platform for anything.
And since the machine was crashy, we sure don't want to leave it cooking when it might be corrupting (or losing) data. Man you are the typical network admin
No, I'm there to clean up after the "typical network admin" who let that machine into the rack, undocumented, with no information about what it does, for whom, if anything. Better to let some dead-end machine, with an unknown security arrangement - possibly including credentials from long-gone employees, hum along on the network, crashing sometimes as it sees fit, just keep doing its mysterious thing? The end users had no idea that the machine was there or might need attention, and they hadn't budgeted for any forensics work along those lines. The consensus among the users of the network was to power the machine down until more became obvious or could be discovered in a round of calls/e-mails to now-absent users.
Nice smear, though! Did I really need to go into all of that just to make a point about creaky old Novell stuff lingering on a network? Have a swell day.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
This kind of stuff is why a lot of people tire of reading /. Not funny, not a contribution to the discussion and pointless karma whoring.
./ to read the non-funny, non-contributing bitching about about non-funny, non-contributing karma whoring :)
As opposed, of course, to the countless droves flocking to
Sounds like the investors want to run the company into the ground for short term profit.
Sadly this is typical of Anglo Saxon capitalism.
I think this probably highlights the fact that you need to document what every machine in the server room is actually supposed to be doing. Spending a bit of time setting up a wiki or something and just documenting stuff will save you all a big headache in the long run.
Jack Messman was CEO at the old Cambridge Technology Partners (CTP) before it merged with Novell. Somehow, he became CEO at Novell and has held the position for 5'ish years.
During his time on the board at CTP, then as its CEO and now as CEO at Novell, company value and performance has gone down. Way down.
I'm doubt his pay has. Though, his stock options must be underwater.
Somehow he weathers these storms as he drives these companies into the ground.
His previous experience was with Union Pacific Railroad, which seems quite different from these here technology companies. If he's in charge of a company then I'd short it. http://www.novell.com/company/bios/jmessman.html
Would you please bring it back online again? We're unable to browse your CEO's e-mail without it.
Yes, they were also behind the fake moon landings, and are really Halliburton's Seattle office.
We should call Congress immediately!!!
...sometimes, in order to hurt someone very badly, you have to tell that person terrible lies. - PA
Why the hell would they want to sell Zenworks? That's probably still the best mass software deployment engine out there and it has been for over 6 years. Likewise Groupwise is another product that has a huge base and cements a Novell presence in the workplace.
I'm all for doing more for Linux, etc. But Novell would be stupid to give up a couple of their secondary jewels. (The prime jewel being NDS of course...)
Acquiescence leads to obliteration
Everyone knows that there are still places out there with Novell 3.12 servers still in place and cranking away day after day. I do agree that 400(+/- a few) Netware Engineers is ridiculous. Keep about a dozen of the best you have to support your legacy systems from now till Hell Freezes over if that's what it takes but don't alienate and leave those that supported the companies beginnings high and dry of tech-support. They should at least offer the rest of those engineers re-training in Linux as apposed to just cutting the guilotine rope and letting it fall on them. Of course the shareholders are only interested in the green bottom line and re-training high dollar employees is much more expensive than hiring in entry level green meat. I think that companies should have a legal responsibility to those employees that stay with them for years through thick and thin. I've seen too many people pour their entire lives into a job/company for 30 years just to be cut loose at a moments notice without as much as an explanation and/or "thanks for your years of loyalty to us". I personally think that it should be a law that for every five years you work for a place they owe you 1 year of salary based on your yearly average over that 5 years. That way if they decide to dump you for no reason you have a year to recover mentally/emotionally/financially from the impact of what can be a very trying time in a persons life. I know we have unemployment but that's not the same, I'm not talking about a percentage paid to you by the company I mean that if I got fired today I would have the next 12 months pay come in just like normal and I could take my time planning my next career move. Oh well , nothing but a pipe dream I'm sure, dreaming isn't so bad a thing though :)
Jay Dale "If you're not living on the edge then you're taking up too much space!"
I've been wondering why my account there has been down.
"Current trends seem to indicate that R&D is best "procured" rather than done in-house. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways, but mostly, they just buy the small companies and individuals that make cool new stuff and call it their own."
Blender. OpenOffice.
The investors obviously looked at the "success" of HP's gutting their R&D Dept. and decided that Novell should emulate HP.
Methinks it's time for more companies to consider going back to being privately held (as Corel did), so as not to be at the mercy of investors who can't see beyond today's bottom line.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I just love baiting the slashbots and bashing janitors.
"The letter coincided with a call from financial analyst house Credit Suisse First Boston for Novell to improve its vision, strategy, and execution in order to become a more profitable business."
OK, let's go through these one by one.
How does a company improve its 'vision'? We've all seen these lofty vision statements which mean nothing when put to the test.
I'll give you the second one. Any business deserves a strategy or a plan.
The final lofty goal, Novell should 'improve its execution'. I wonder who they will kill next?
This, ladies and gentlemen, is what happens when the world is run by accountants and MBAs.
Ed Almos
Budapest, Hungary
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. - Tacitus, 56-120 A.D.
If I had a dollar every time someone typed the phrase, "and soon you'll see tools from both Novell and Red Hat that shape the linux server and desktop market", I wouldn't be posting on slashdot, or at least I'd be posting from a nice beach somewhere.
Fire/lay off 40% of the most unproductive managers and middle managers
Cut HR by 20%
Increase marketing/sales half of what HR is cut by (in number of bodies) so that adoption of Linux from Netware can be increased (thus naturally relieving the NetWare burden)
(If attrition is high) Give a 20% increase in salary to new hires and pay increase to the 50% most productive coders/researchers
Streamline the organization internally so there is no more than 4 steps from any employee to an executive officer.
No, you probably won't see the benefits this quarter. But you will see long-term profits increase substantially.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Why is an MS fanboy shop trying to force Novell into anything?
Novell has positioned itself to deliver a complete solution from the desktop to the server.
If they finalize the Novell Linux Client AND make it run on most dists there are many companies who could switch to OES on the back and Linux at most of the desktops in a heartbeat. I assume there are a bunch of people like me out there who want OES but also want a linux client. Ncpfs doesnt quite cut it, neither do pam_ldap.
I really hope they get their thumbs out, to much waiting and many customers will move to other solutions.
HTTP/1.1 400
When I was at the latest Novell seminar, they brought up the point that they already have over 90% of the non-x86 server market. They acquired SuSE with the intent of expanding their share in the x86 market (which as you say, they've lost most of what once they had to Windows).
:/
They also mentioned that they have a billion in cash on hand, and no debt. So Novell isn't hurting, tho it sounds like certain shareholders want to change that.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Hey! What happened to all my porn ?!?
Did I read that right?
5%
And they think they call the shots? Have a right to define Novell's future direction? Think it means something that they don't like being ignored?
5% could hurt, I suppose, but it really makes them look like jerks. I wonder if they are buddies with somebody at SCO.
Let me get this straight- You have a server that ran problem free for about 3 years and your conclusion is it was "Important To Somebody Who Really Liked Novell" Shouldn't that be "Important To Somebody Who Really Likes Servers That Don't Crash Often"?
Maybe they should drop the private planes on SCO.
Maybe put some R&D staff in them before hand. That way they can kill two birds...
The jets can go, IMHO. But by all means keep the engineers and the R&D.
C|N>K
Let me get this straight- You have a server that ran problem free for about 3 years and your conclusion is it was "Important To Somebody Who Really Liked Novell" Shouldn't that be "Important To Somebody Who Really Likes Servers That Don't Crash Often"?
I'm not commenting - at all - about how stable that OS is/was. In fact, I'm fairly impressed with both that, and the IBM x-Series 330 that was sitting there chugging along all that time. Of course, it's possible that was literally doing nothing until some cosmic ray flipped a bit and made it stupid, but otherwise it may not have had a single disk read/write or a single network I/O in all that time. No way to know with lighting it up and spending some time on it.
So, whoever chose that recipe certainly had their reasons, but they didn't leave much of a trail. And regardless, my point is that the use of the Novell platform didn't survive whatever business software/process evolution the users went going through.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
"Lose" not "Loose"
I've just done a bunch of poking around on the web to find out more about CSFB and what I'm seeing is a LOT of references to Microsoft. Could there be some kind of connection here? I'm thinking that MS could be involved in an attack against Novell in the same way they were in an attack against IBM, i.e. whispering in somebody's ear to do so and providing some cash.
Maybe credit suisse boston tea party should buy ...
some SuSE Linux from novell.
it is sad to have a crappy bank meddling in
computer software business
That in 2003 agreed to pay a $150 million fine to the State of New York for issuing "fraudulent" research reports? Oh, and also set aside another $450 million to pay off the inevitable civil suits? That Credit Suisse First Boston?
Or pehaps the Credit Suisse that in 2002 was fined $30 million by the SEC?
Or would it be the Credit Suisse that admitted that they'd hidden funds belonging to descendents of Holocaust victims for over 50 years after the end of WW2. That Credit Suisse?
Anybody who is still running netware fits in one of these categories: 1) They are too cheap to upgrade--"Hey, My NetWare 3.12 server still runs, why change it? My Windows 95 works with it just fine!" 2) They have a huge implementation--NetWare 5.1 rolled out to 700+ remote sites--"It will HURT if I upgrade!" 3) They are a die hard loyalist--"The only way bill gates will get my $$$ is prying it from my cold, dead hand!" I remember when I just finished rolling out ManageWise at a oil & gas company and then found out they had 2 engineers working on it! Can you spell EOL? and I loved how once they announced their linux direction, they reassured their customers "don't worry, NetWare won't be going away!" Ya right! and of course it was hilarious that Novell products actually ran better and more stable on Windows and Linux then NetWare--not sure how that made sense. My Novell customers either get migrated to Windows 2003 or Debian.
Once you go public, the company is burdened with a need to focus on short term advantages at the cost of long term development. Quarterly or monthly balances take precedence over longer term plans unfortunately, even if the longer term plans would net more profit.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Being taken over is nearly always good for stockholders in the takeover target, as the acquiring company usually pays significantly more than the the market value of the stock. So it's possible that one of the options they're exploring is putting the company up for sale.
Takeovers are bad for nearly everyone else, of course. Sun buying Novell would be particularly bad, as Sun is less Linux-friendly and the OS market isn't exactly very competitive. But the stokcholders aren't concerned about that.
This is about share price. Nothing else. Fire a bunch of people and some similar shenanigans so that the share price would increase and those shareholders can cash in and go off to do the same to other companies.
It has nothing to do with what's good for the company, just what's profitable in the immediate for those particular shareholder.
Same thing is happening at Time Warner, with one of the corprorate raiders of the 1980s who's now one of their shareholders and making a noise for them to sell off lots of good stuff and repurchase their shares so that the share price would increase and he would cash in.
This is the disease of the American economy.
Please start by killing the Mono project and firing Miguel and every fool that works on it with him.
the whole thing was sort of poetic
Poetic as in, you and your organization are so short sighted and plan so badly that the only way your systems attract your attention at all is to crash? 3 years of runtime and you think that poetically represents failure? WTF?
I hope that thing was a print gateway, and that there is a Unix box circa 1983 walled in somewhere under a stairwell that is even now filling its disk drives ip with print jobs.
you and your organization are so short sighted and plan so badly that the only way your systems attract your attention at all is to crash
Where, in what I wrote, did you see me even suggesting it was "my" organization? I'm a consultant. I was there, with no prior exposure to their systems, to help them out of an unrelated emergency problem. I noticed the newly ailing Novell box while trying to understand what was on that side of a firewall chewing up bandwidth. That particular server was something none of them even knew to worry about.
Further, if you actually think about what I said, it's not the failure I found interesting as I read this morning's news, it's Novell's increasing obscurity to the markets that it not so long ago essentially owned. That, considering the fact that the server had been chugging along all that time anyway, was the poetic part (vis a vis the 400 engineers still laboring away Novell today - well, so far, anyway).
Wow. I'm not sure what it is about my original comment that seems to make people want to insert facts other than, or beyond those I mentioned. Oh well.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Now that was a funny, but not informative non-contributing message poking fun at a non-funny, non-contributing bitchy message about the non-funny, non-contributing karma whoring. I laughed!
90 percent of the "non-X86 server market"? Ummm...I don't think they're telling the truth. The biggest market outside Intel/Compatibles is almost certainly Sparc/Ultrasparc, with Solaris as the OS. Besides Sparc, your options are kind of limited...PA-RISC, Alpha, Power....of those, only the Alpha might have any Netware presence. And I doubt there are too many Alphas in signifigant numbers anymore.
Isn't Netware supposed to be for X86 machines primarily? Did he possibly mean "non-MICROSOFT" server market, perhaps? (Still, I'd even have a hard time believing that...I'd bet Solaris rules there too).
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Layoff's should be easy, just have a contractor interview ALL the staff and ask the question: "What have you done lately?" Anybody who starts their answer with "Ummm..." is slated for the first round of layoffs. Anybody who starts with the "Well..." is slated for the second round.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
A little red daemon popped out and declared that Netcraft said the server was dying?
Fair enough. I probably shouldn't leave comment for general consumption first thing in the morning. Point well taken.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Its too bad Novell is a public company, having to serve the shareholders unfortunately is now going to be their undo-ing.
equity firms, investors and such care nothing for R&D, and would rather mortgage the future for a rosier bottom line in the next 3-4 quarters
This will eventually be Google's undoing as they muse serve their masters on Wall Street as their growth is tempered by their size
Remember: Novell owns a large piece of Unix.
When you hear Novell nowadays, forget the horrid beast that was Netware, and think "Unix" - remember, Novell is the company which is going to be executing SCO and SCO's executives for fraud, breach of contract, libel, and so forth.
Why pay for an R&D department when you can get a bunch of OSS coders to look at the stuff commercial (and other OSS) developers are doing (R) and write OSS replacements in their spare time (D) for free?
A second serious problem is inviting Micro$ofters onto the board to make decisions affecting the long term life or death of the company. Even in the best of situations, MS has no culture or understanding of opensource technologies. In the worst of situations, these could actively or passively monkeywrench Qt. Maybe KDE will have to fork Qt, but even that will cause added burdens and delay that could be avoided by keeping M$ fingers out of Trolltech's decisions.
If i wanted to sell Novell, I'd push for some near sighted fixes too.
Ah, THAT would explain Novell's statement.
Also means linux is hardly an unknown environment for their engineers, given that UNIX and linux are kissing cousins.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
That guy's ego comes first, and don't you forget it.
He better never cross my path, i'll demonstrate my Open Source knuckle sandwich.
Getting old fast, Shit!