Summary: Novell PR used to obscure the company's harm to the community

Under the banner of "Novell Executive Summit gives back to the community" Novell has just pushed a self-promotional plug, a press release by some measures. ITWeb publishes this as though it is news because it's hardly structured like a press release. What is this, journalism [1, 2]? Or the handing over of one's soapbox directly to corporations, which means one no longer has to just pretend that NBC, for example, is independent from GE and Microsoft?

Novell is rightly concerned about its public image. It's seen as the pariah in many circles of the very same people and products which it targets. As this new article put it:

Patent infringement and sharing have been a big issue for Microsoft in recent years. The company has in some cases avoided going to court by signing patent sharing agreements with several companies, most notably Linux vendor Novell.

Novell is hardly a "Linux vendor". GNU/Linux accounts only for a small portion of its revenue. The financial reports are just a couple of days away and here is a little preview.

Novell Inc NOVL $0.04 $0.05 25.0% 5/28 AMC $4.06

Novell will report alongside the following companies:

Costco Wholesale Corp.; H.J. Heinz Co.; Novell Inc.; Sears Holdings Corp.

Will it be a terrible quarter like the previous one? ⬆