01.26.08
Novell Still Kisses Bloggers’ Behinds for Positive Publicity
Yup! It’s happening again.
After writing pessimistically about Novell, a writer saw Novell reaching out. The PR department took it upon itself to have a little chat with Joe.
Give Novell credit. Rather than slamming The VAR Guy for a particularly harsh blog post about the software company, Novell reached out to him and engaged in a healthy dialog. During a lengthy telephone chat, Novell Senior VP and Chief Marketing Officer John Dragoon (pictured) discussed the company’s business performance and strategy. Here’s a recap of the conversation, and some updated reactions from The VAR Guy. ¶
Why sigh? This isn’t particularly new. We have watched this pattern for a while. Examples include:
- Novell asking Matt Asay to be nice
- After some coverage of Red Hat where Novell was rightly snubbed, Novell wanted an interview Justin Steinman. It was published in CNET and it had a promotional slant.
- Patrolling of the Web courtesy of Novell?
- Dana Blakenhorn had his arm twisted several times after writing critically about Novell
To address the point at hand (about the health of this Microsoft-Novell relationship), watch how Microsoft betrayed Novell and watch the reaction from customers. Novell ignores the problems on the face of it. It might even be delusional if it still believes that customers require that special ‘protection’. As Brent Williams recently indicated, they care about none of that. This co-called ‘protection’ mainly works to Microsoft’s benefit because it creates uncertainty among some of Novell’s rivals. It hurts GNU/Linux as a whole.
Novell has some other issues to worry about, such as this new incident: Novell Netdrive at MSU acts Flaky
I decided to check back on the site today and I noticed that my PHP files were being displayed as text. WTF? I went back to the web interface, and sure enough - all the execute permissions were gone. I set them back, reloaded my page and…
Nothing. My page was still displaying text. At that point I gave up and figured they probably locked it down or something. It wouldn’t be surprising if they removed PHP access from the general netdrive accounts for security reasons. ¶
That blogger probably isn’t ‘important’ enough for Novell to spend its time on, but nonetheless it’s worth pointing out that bloggers will carry on complaining. Novell can try to chase them and buy their love (Microsoft does this too), but that won’t last forever. █
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.