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Novell Layoffs Coming This Month?
Roblimo writes "Multiple sources close to and inside Novell have told us the company expects to lay off between 10% and 15% of all employees by the end of October. '...shareholders have suggested that Novell divest itself of its consulting group and GroupWise division, while at the same time instituting personnel cuts across the board to bring expenses more in line with revenues,' writes business columnist Lauren Rudd at NewsForge, who also notes that '[Novell's] NetWare revenue stream continues to deteriorate, declining by $36 million in fiscal 2004, excluding the impact of favorable foreign exchange rates.'" NewsForge is part of the same family of companies as Slashdot.
And this article is posted on "Your Rights Online" why?
So again, why is Novell laying off people "Your Rights Online"?
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Let's hope all the FOSS projects they support won't be effected; Hula / Beagle / Evolution / GNOME / LDTP / MONO / Mozilla / OpenOffice and UDDI are worked on by many employees. Last I heard they employed about 50 people just to work on Hula, and their overall view to FOSS has been excellent. Having worked with some of them on the project, I am amazed at the support they've recieved from Novell; let's hope it continues.
fak3r.com
Well, I can't say that I'm surprised. It was only a matter of time before investors started demanding returns and realized that a bunch of kids selling free stuff (Ximian) don't make good business managers. BUt, Novell doesn't have a whole lot left for a product line. Sure they have SuSE and Novell Linux of a dozen flavors but these are all free products. Netware is withering under the assault of Windows and Novells' strategy shift to Linux so, it's dead. eDirectory, Novell's best product ever, continues to be marginalized by Microsoft's included Active Directory and the fact that by time you add on all of the necessary eDirectory components needed to properly manage a Windows network, the cost is outrageous.
So, that only leaves Novell's GroupWise as a saleable product. It seems like divesting GroupWise would be a massive mistake. Almost as big a mistake as allowing the Ximian crew to direct its development, as occurred with the latest version 7.
I would think that the next year will really show us the future of Novell in the enterprise. With all that Novell has been doing with Suse. Not one my favorite distros nor is Novell my prefered directory service. As in the past, my prediction is that it will be a slow and painful death for Novell. Either that or it will be bought up in chunks, not really coming out the same company in the end.
Civilization, the death of dreams.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Having in mind that only now Kontact and Korganizer finally has means to provide seamless integration with GroupWise...
I wish Novell good luck and wise decisions.
I worked at a University campus for a while where we used NetWare extensively. When I started there, Novell folks thought the world of NetWare. By the time I left, there were some serious concerns among the NetWare crowd. NWAdmin was being phased out by ConsoleOne (which is fine) but then the Wed-based manager (forget the name) came in and they claimed they were phasing out ConsoleOne. ConsoleOne was only a year or so old! At that time, we had to run three different admin frontends because each had their own quirks and were incompatible with some stuff. Their NetMail system was a bit of a disappointment performance-wise (but not feature-wise). It took them a LONG time to work out some serious kinks in IFolder (like changing the default directory of the local folder). There's also the problem that NetWare != Novell. A lot of the more popular pieces of Novell's lineup (GroupWise, ZenWorks, NetMail) can be run from a Windows server over Active Directory now.
Where are India and Outsourcing/Offshoring? Can't find that anywhere in the report!
Manojar - pronounced like Manager
iManager
The writing has been on the wall for them. They've got Microsoft, Sun, Red Hat and a few others desperate to eat their lunch.
My understanding is they have some good products, but when you've got Microsoft paying to switch your best resellers over to MS, I don't really see where Novell's got a defensible market position.
I have a feeling that Novell's success would be viewed as a substantial failure on Microsoft's part.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
instituting personnel cuts across the board
.. think of how much money getting rid of half the directors sitting on the company's board would save! Not just from their salaries, but also from their inability to utilize workers to gain revenue growth and customer satisifaction. This would also block them from getting rid of people who will actually do work.
What a good idea
I am going to buy Novell stock when they do this.
Novell has all the components of a solid business, just not the vision. Just look at their homepage - does it tell you who they are or what they have planned for the future?
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Difference is that AD sucks, whereas Netware/eDirectory does not. I'm pretty sure that if I ever get an ulcer, it's because of the stress AD gives me... Wanna do something relatively simple (like, create a group with certain members, and give that group access to certain folders)? Here, go through these zillion dialog-boxes, and click around dozens of times! Oh, if you need to change group-permissions afterwards, please note how those forementioned dialog-boxes freeze and die, making this relatively simple procedure an experiment in agony!
Burn in hell, AD! Burn in hell! Oh Netware, how I loved thee....
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
NetWare *was* way ahead of it's time. 10 years ago, it did things (with an ugly gui and expensive admin) that the MS world didn't start until only a few years ago.
SUSE had a lot of potential. These days, for me, it's much easier to install Linux than Windows (assuming you don't have wacky hardware).
I especially liked SUSE for being the first to include Handicap accessibility features into KDE.
SUSE is still out there and a major player, I just hope they don't get hit too hard - I really think they have a chance to be really successful.
Great Cut the feet right out from under them.. Lets see how well novel can compete in the linux market place with not enough people to do the job.. People will be stressed out and production and serivce will suffer, thus customers will leave and new customers will shy away.
Hey Share holders: That's one great way to kill a company!
It's like an 80s band that maybe stayed around too late. I was at a tech conference in Orlando this week for IT in higher ed. and Novell was representing in the exhibitor hall. Admittedly, they're trying hard, just no one was sitting through their presentations (even with the standard t-shirt/ipod giveaways...
--pete
Who cares? No-one uses Mono. It's a buggy, dog-slow piece of shit. Fuck, even Java is faster in certain circumstances.
So long Novell. Your once great networking empire has been squashed. Your great software will no longer be known to the world. Rest in peace.
Novell has been in a downward spiral ever since Eric Shmidt left to start Google. Netware 4 was the best freaking NOS on the planet. It was stable, it was light, and it's still compatible with most of Netware's product line to date.
Since then, Novell quality has been slipping. Netware 6.5 is absolutely abismal. It's bloated, it's slow, it's unstable, it's Windows NT. Not to mention, Novell raising prices of eDriectory licenses to the point where it's too expensive to license. Novell used to stand for fast, cheap, manageable software. Now they look like Microsoft, if it wasn't for the big red N on their startup screen I wouldn't know the difference.
eDirectory and Zenworks are all that is left of a once great company. While they are still two of the greatest products on the market, that will diminish in time. These layoffs are the first step. We saw it with Corel, now we see it with Novell. Once eDirectory slips, Red Hat may finally have their directory service off the ground and customers will have a path away from gawdawful active directory.
Novell, I once loved thee, take care of yourself.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
It's because there are tons of layed off people. All of them coming together starting bubble companies based on web 2.0 hoping some VCs would fund their bubble ventures.
Seriously, where are all the layed off workers working? Are they still working in the technology sector?
When Cambridge Technology Partners merged with Novell, one of the major selling points was that combining consulting services with Novell's products would produce growth. If Novell's investors have decided to split off the consulting business, this is an admission that Novell's entire strategy for however long it's been since the CTP purchase has been a failure.
I don't know what proportion of Novell's employees are in the Linux/OSS area, but in my opinion these are the only ones to keep. The rest of the business has been in shrinkage mode for many years. I used to work at a large manufacturing company near Novell's operations in Utah, and that company switched from Netware to Microsoft server software about 10 years ago. At the time, I thought that if Novell couldn't keep customers in its own backyard, it was probably doomed. It is amazing how long it takes to kill off an enterprise.
Ironically, Novell finished building about a 12 story office tower in Provo around the time that the Cambridge Technology Partners merger went through. That building is probably worth as much as the IP rights to Netware now.
"Lack of technical competence coupled with the arrogance of power, as usual, leads to no good end."
Novell had a pretty good server level product from 3.12 on. But then they stagnated.
But there is hope. At least the world is starting to embrace open source.
Who wants to start the betting on how soon MS will have to wipe 30% of its workforce?
"...shareholders have suggested that Novell divest itself of its consulting group and GroupWise division..."
In other news, shareholders have also suggested that Microsoft needs to dump Office, and Apple should just stop with the iPod thing already.
You know, eDirectory is nice and all, but I promise you there are more than a few Netware shops out there who continue to be Netware shops primarly because of Groupwise.
That it is really transition and how far I have seen and heard, shareholders all agree that Linux is Novell future. They just want management to know that they have to do very best not to slip in minuses - which is quite ok, because it _is_ their money, really.
About layoffs - so far I am only worried about Groupwise, which I see a only real-life replacement (in price and features) for Exchange. Yes, there are lot of open source solutions, but none of them perfectly integrates with Outlook - which is and will be important for some 10 - 15 years. I just hope that they know what they do. It would be sad that they would discontinue that product.
In overall, I wish Novell luck and get some real big contracts in RedHat style and then I hope their future will be in brighter colours.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Revenue isn't aligned with expenses, so you cut expenses. Still not aligned. So you cut more. Still not aligned, so you cut to the bare bone, you cut the group that creates revenue. Yeah that's a long term solution.
"NewsForge is part of the same family of companies as Slashdot."
Do some people feel the actual slashdot headline will be biased since there is a relationship there?
~jennifer.k~
Lol... I'm hooked on Mono, and I am a Java developer. It's better than Java already in most areas IMO, and when we get to the next milestone, it's going to blow the socks off most other environments. Even Microsoft's implementation is going to look weak in comparison once the windows forms are complete, and there is full C# V3 support.
Yeah, I agree. Just wish there was a decent IDE for Linux. SharpDevelop is very cool, but MonoDevelop has a long way to go to compete. At least when the Windows Forms are complete in Mono, SharpDevelop should run on Linux.
I'm surprises Novell is still around. I haven't had a client choosing to use them in a long long time. I've had some that have legacy novell, but even that was a few years a go.
Any Admins out their choosing to use Novell? If so, what's the selling point for you?
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
That should be interesting, since I've never seen one of those.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Is that still around? How? Who actally pays for this stuff? I never understood installing a secondary network client on a OS that nativly supports networks, is there some purpose I'm missing? I mean other than devoted Novell IT Departments wasting company money to keep themselves employeed? ... I guess I'll never understand... Banyan I understood... It was actually designed to do something other than the samething the native network OS did.
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit!
A couple of weeks ago I did the (adv.) Netware 6.5 training. The (2) other guys were mcse and everything. they did the training because their company was moving from NT4 and W2000 to Windows2003, with Novell E-directory. At first I could not believe this, because it defies market trends. Their decision was based on scalability and performance, and E-directory outperforms AD on both accounts. So we're talking about an all-microsoft shop, that is using E-directory instead of AD. They do exist. The teacher told me that it is quite common for companies to use Microsoft servers with Novell E-directory instead of AD. But still, I'm gonna keep my linux skills up-to date.
I'm European and, frankly, even if our system has a lot of faults yours isn't better, either. And I don't try to conceal the problems of my country pointing the finger at the USA - frankly, I prefer to leave you people alone and worry about myself and the person next door.
But, there is one thing I can assure you: even in the EU, the prospect of getting a lifetime job is getting gradually worse, day by day. By one way or the other we are being forced to live with that and learn to adapt to a new social and economic structure.
Do we blame China our India for our problems ? How can we, when a big part part of the problem is our fault ? And how can you, when the USA (and American corporations, in general) practically alone invented and promoted massively the practice of outsourcing jobs, creating an hemorragic flow of unemployment than even your country is unable to sustain ?
The USA is a great Country (with a big "C") and a great nation but it also has it share of internal problems that every true American must be simultaneously aware of and ready do to something about. And that's the true difference between the EU and the USA - in the USA some people still fight for their rights despite suffering from the same problems we have in the EU (corruption at all levels, media manipulation, corporate lobbying, etc).
Maybe one day we could abbdicate from reductive statements, excessive pragmatism and, for a change, learn something from each other ? The EU needs the USA - the opposite is also true - and only together we can stand up and fight for our place in this century. Pointing fingers at each other does not solve anything.
..considering that my office is switching from a Novell server to a Windows server this evening.
Personally, I don't mind. Right now we have to maintain two seperate user bases, our US domain and the Novell server. Which becomes a pain when a user resets their US domain password after it expires and calls up saying that they can't login to their computer when really it's because their domain and novell passwords are not synchronized.
One annoying thing that I can forsee with the change is that, with our Novell server, a user can only see folders that they have access to where as, on a Windows server, all folders are listed and, when a user tries to access a folder in which they do not have permissions, they receive an error message.
Well, our thoughts are with Novell's staffers, surely. Losing your job is horrible.
That said, there have been articles about Novell's financial outlook for a long while now and they've all pointed in the same direction: cash out greater than cash in, result misery. It's Mr Micawber all over.
Hard to feel much sympathy for the major stockholders, though. Novell's strategy has always been a real gamble: growing a Linux base fast enough to offset the declining Netware and other bases. In essence, a race against time that the stockholders would have known was a real gamble. Even so, the recovery strategy outlined doesn't really add up. If you return the cash pile to the stockholders and sell off non-core and non-performing assets, you aren't left with much. And if you decimate R&D then Netware (which still has a lot of customers) could start to decline very fast indeed as users decide en masse that they are dealing with a husk or shell. That means Novell would be left standing with little more than Linux and therefore a juicy morsel for a takeover.
Hmmn, I wonder if the Wall Street sharks are busy circling, sensing rich pickings from a squabble because damage to SUSE would be a tremendous embarrassment to a lender of last resort, namely IBM.
Either way, in SUSE Linux Novell has one of the real jewels of the f/oss world, imho. They've put a lot of funds into SUSE and into other aspects of open source that benefit us all.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
When I spoke with a salesmen about becoming a potential reseller/OEM of Suse, the salesman I was speaking with said "If you're only going to sell 2 or 3 licenses a month it's not worth my time. We want large deployments." He said that about 5 times in a 15 minute conversation.
I might not be a $1mil/mth salesman, but I can tell you from a purchaser's perspective it doesn't matter how much or how little you sell, being told @#$% like that really just flat out ticks a person off. The specific job I was bidding on would have been 50 desktop licenses and 2 servers, but because of that kind of comments that were repeatedly said to me...well, Redhat won the contract instead of Suse.
I've never really been impressed with Suse in the first place, but the customer had heard good things about it and wanted to go that direction to replace MS desktops and Novell servers in their business. After explaining the situation I had run into with the Suse sale tactics, they decided to follow my previous suggestion. So not only did they lose a customer that had specifically requested it, they lost a company that would have been selling their products and promoting it.
So yeah, doing B.S. like that is going to hurt the bottom line and one can only hope that the salesman I spoke with is one that ends up on the unemployment line. Granted, it would take ALOT more than that to make me consider Suse again simply because that guy should NEVER have been allowed to be talking to the public about buying products.
I live in the Provo, Utah area, and I am close to several people who *currently* work for Novell. Laying people off is not a new trend for Novell, but has been going on for many years, and will likely continue for many more, as long as the current CEO Jack Messman and his current collection of board members stick around.
Despite the steady decline in company profits, the head management of Novell continue to draw (relatively) massive paychecks every year. This isn't a question of whether they deserve it, but it's obvious that a few extra million dollars cut from the top would save hundreds of jobs a year. Even if they were to cut the CEO's salary by 50-60%, he would still be making high 6 figures a year. Novell is working on some very amazing projects, and it's sad to know that by cutting the workforce like this, they will be dropping several of their current projects.
In a more general sense, by laying off workers almost yearly for some time now, a culture of FUD about job security has put a huge damper on morale at Novell. The stories I hear are chilling, and simply scary. Employees don't feel any sort of long-term commitment to the company anymore because they could get the axe next week, or next year. It's sickening. Slice the fat off the top, and save the company, before it's too late, Novell!
By the way, letting the CEO go isn't really an option in this case... his contract says that he gets somewhere around $7M when he leaves... which makes it difficult.
It's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the end.
I think consolidation would be good for Novell at this point. They offer A LOT of services and software. Not all of them being highly profitable. However, though not seeing the numbers, I can't imagine groupwise being a loser for them. In fact, I consider it to be one of their stronger products. Instead of dumping certain services all together, I think certain products should be dropped and their engineers refocused. For example, they used to (still might?) have a radius server. Currently they put resources into freeradius to help it interact with e-directory. Bam. A full fledged radius server better than their own with minimal of effort.
They could dump their printing services and integrate with cups rather easily I think. Also, border manager should be dumped in favor of iptables and squid. They should phase out their current myriad of configuration tools in favor of yast. Give it an online component that is fully compatable with yast modules. Hell, don't tell anyone and just revamp iManager to do this. Groupwise really has no open source analog imo. It provides pop,imap,smtp,news, and client reader abilities all in one. These are all available as individual open source projects. However, none are as integrated as groupwise. If anything, revamp it and make it use edirectory natively.
Ideally it would be nice for Novell to develop a few of their key services and attempt to integrate with other open source projects on others. This way they have a few really kickass services that integrate really well with some kick ass open source projects. We're doing Freeradius + edirectory for Wifi and it's working really well for us. I'd like to see more of this!
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
Somewhere in the mid-90's at an Atlanta Comdex Microsoft had a booth right across from Novell. Microsoft was hawking its wares to replace all the NOS (Network Operating System for those too young) functionality that Novell offered. Literally right across the aisle.
The writing was on the wall!!! It took 7 years before Novell made any move to Linux. As far as I'm concerned if this is the vision inherent in Novell, except for the projects they BOUGHT into, its time for Novell to GO!!!
A little history first. In the early 90s Novell was doing less than $500 million in revenue, but they were experiencing astounding growth. They were pulling in profit margins in the 80% range and the net income was in the hundreds of millions. By 1995 they were doing $2 billion in sales, after that things aren't quite so rosey. In two years Novell lost half of their 1995 revenue and were down to $1 billion in sales and net income on average was in the tens of millions. The peachy days of 80% profit margins and 50% year over year growth were gone. Up to today Novell has done a good job of maintaining their level of revenue at around $1 billion per year, however, the margins and net income are still in the gutter.
As one of the average guys I hate it when we get nailed with layoffs, however, in 1995 when revenues were at the $2 billion level there were just over 7,000 employees at Novell, today at $1 billion in revenue there are over 6,000. To bring expenses in line with revenues I think there is no choice but to cut the head count. It sucks but its a fact.
I don't think this spells the end for Novell and I don't think the open source projects supported by Novell need to worry, that is where Novell's future will be made. And Novell does have a future. If you look at how well Novell managed to hang on to their business with $1 billion in revenue from 1995 to 2005 with Microsoft trying to kill them off I think its obvious they still have lots of fight left in them. Now with open source upsetting the balance in the market Novell seems to be aligning themselves with the change. I think they are doing the right thing and they will succeed.
Nonsense. The long term status for Novell is great. They are not in the red nor have they been for some time. Yes, NetWare could be in the toilet, but they have known that for quite some time now - Duh, that is why they went to Linux. That is one reason they are relevant for the long term.
It is the short term that the investors are concerned about. Novell's total revenue has remained steady but not growing as everyone thought it should and the investors are getting ansy.
Common everyone, keep it in perspective. Yes it is sad that they have to layoff people and they probably won't be able to contribute as much to open source as they have recently. This does not mean Novell is dead or that others will be "eating their lunch", or that their commitment to OSS has changed. They still make more money than they spend. They still have a sizable chunck of change in the bank that is not diminishing. That bank account is the primary reason their long term status is just fine.
It has great products, but a lousy, overbureaucratized management structure with lots and lots of layers of people whose sole functions are to shaft the people below them and survive the next purge by the people above. This makes for a fanatically strong political system, with lots and lots of people looking over their shoulders instead of looking forward.
/.
It is also centrally managed, Soviet-style, complete with multi-year plans and targets and Novell employees are regularly gathered together to compliment their leader for the overperformance on this meaningless metric, and the achievement of "difficult" targets in the teeth of a bitter competitive wind. As is usual in command enterprises, everywhere else other than Provo is treated as a satellite state. Only from Provo do all the ideas come, so if you're bright and have a great idea and don't work in Provo, don't bother telling anyone about it because they don't want to know. And if you persist they'll park you in a shitty job until you get the message and leave. Lots did.
There should be a sign on all offices "Abandon initiative all ye who enter here". They have lots of meetings whose purpose is to crush all ideas from below and praise the crappy ones from above. Rebranding, corporate restructuring, departmental changes, layering, delayering, change management etc are regular 3-6 month occurences. During my five years there, I moved desks 16 times. Eventually you don't bother emptying boxes into your drawers because you know that another org change is just around the corner. The people adminsitering these changes never moved. It was uncanny.
Initiatives come thick and fast from above and your only choices are to keep your mouth shut or be drowned in the slurry. At one time, everyone in Novell went through the Kepner-Trego rational decision making course, complete with little cards and posters on the wall and papers for people to do rational decisions on. The only problem with that, is in order for rational decision making, there must be rational decision makers, which in Novell is a joke. One month after the course nobody mentioned, let alone used, Kepner-Trego again.
Then Novell merged with Cambridge Consulting (or was it Cambridge Consulting reversed into Novell?) Cambridge weren't doing very well. Novell weren't doing very well - the result would be a world-beater? Like to guess?
Cambridge added a lot more consultants that Novell didn't need. In order to employ those extra consultants, Novell did the most obvious thing: it screwed its partners. So the partners who had done such sterling work promoting the Novell brand found that Novell itself was competing for those same customers to order to employ those extra consultants that Novell didn't need.
With all of this could Novell make a profit through its Consulting arm? No. It charged twice as much and still managed to lose money because most of the time, it pitched for delivery times that were too short and had to use up all of the profit and then some to pay its consultants past the end date in order to deliver at all. Thus Novell managed to screw its partners and fail to make a profit. The perfect result for its competitors. One customer I consulted for that after their experience, they would never use Novell Consulting again (this was one of the largest privately-held companies on the planet).
Novell joined the Linux field too late and bought the wrong company (should have been Red Hat). It bought SilverStream for too much money. It's been behind the curve for lots of new products too often.
It's testing and quality of software are terrible. More often than not, products would be shipped with key pieces of functionality missing pending the first or second service pack. The software would work, but you had to wait to be able to deploy it meaningfully.
Novell should be bought by somebody who knows how to run an enterprise for profit. Instead its run by people who know only how to cover their own asses and rule by fear. I guarantee you, any turnaround specialist would perform a decapitation of Novell's byzantine management structure to stand any chance.
You read it here first on
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
Don't divest GroupWise. Get rid of the crappy acquisitions: SilverStream (worst attempted integration ever) and Cambridge (which is probably impossible at this point). Why divest good products (GroupWise, ZENWorks, NetWare/OES). With the exception of the recent oss acquisitions (ximian, suse), their track record is abysmal. I mean, why buy Silverstream. What does that do for your offerings? Does anyone out there actually use this? You paid a ton for nothing. Why buy Cambridge? Cambridge didn't even provide consulting services on Novell's products? The announcement at Brainshare was an embarrasement. Noone new how to spin it. What next, buy back Quattro Pro? Novell could be such a great company if they would only know themselves and stop trying to be something they are not.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
eDirectory on Linux does a network good.
Novell is a great company with a lot of good management products. Novell's biggest problem is tha they don't have a well defined and well marketed problem.
Their other big problem is that some products like Zenworks are still clunky products. I am really suprised that IBM did not acquire them years ago. There has been 3 different negotiations over the years. IBM IBM had acquired Novell back in the 1997 timeframe Microsoft would have come under a lot of pressure. At the time OS/2 Warpserver was number 3 and still had a lot of marketshare. IBM could have migrated Netware users and run it under Warpserver until a migration was completed. Today IBM has a lot invested in directory services and Novell would make a good fit.
I could sse a scenario where CA or HP would acquire Novell. Novells focus on directory services would help HP become more of a software company and CA a enterprise streingth directory service products.
No its really not, people need to try to understand what a right is before they go off half cocked about what a right is. A right is not something that is given to you, I cant *give* you the right to free speech I can only prevent myself from infringing on that right. A right is something you have because you're human, not something given to you by any government or body of people. The US bill of rights which is based in the philosophies of many European 17th and 18th century thinkers, and which in turn is a basis for many of the rights later granted in the mostly monarchial systems of 18th and 19th century Europe does not *grant rights* it protects them.
The minute you say that a right is something provided by the government you give the government power they should not have. Example: I do think education is a right, everyone has the right to pursue an education but the Government is not obligated to provide one just to stay out of the way. Health Care is not a right unless you're talking the right to pursue healthcare.
Before you jump all over me just because something is not a right (health care, education) does not mean its not a good and perhaps necessary thing for the government to provide just *PLEASE* stop calling it a right!
This is not the beginning of the end, just one of the many death throes of a once great company, overcome by greedy executives. I fear that Novell will be gone completely within 10 years.
Sorry to sound so pessimistic, but I am right now.
It's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the end.
Funny how everybody rants about everything not related to these layoff plans at all. Like Netware, Suse, Groupwise and the US economy. What seems to be the case is that some Novell acquisitions didn't work out and those are the primary targets. From: http://biz.yahoo.com/bizj/051024/1181522.html?.v=1
"Ziff Davis reported any layoff would likely impact Novell's Extend product line, which Web enables software applications. Novell acquired the product in its $212 million purchase three years ago of SilverStream Software, formerly based in Billerica, Mass."