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News

• Novell's iPrint open to attack, say researchers

  Attackers can exploit bugs in Novell's iPrint application to obtain corporate information or hijack computers, security experts said today.

• SCO to pay Novell $3.35 million

  At the beginning of its massive legal fight against Linux in 2003, The SCO Group imagined a day when companies like IBM, Novell and others would pay it large amounts of cash for alleged infringements on SCO-owned Unix code.

• Desktop Linux for consumers years away: Novell CEO

  Novell’s Suse Linux at the desktop is unlikely to be popular with consumers in the next three to five years, according to Novell CEO Ronald Hovsepian.

• Novell invites ISVs to build appliances on Suse

  To make it easier for its customers to deploy new applications on virtualised or standard servers, Novell's Suse Linux division is jumping into the software appliance wave.

• IRD to shift to new Novell Suse platform

  The Inland Revenue Department is to upgrade its Novell infrastructure from Netware version 6 to Open Enterprise Server 2.0.

• Novell unfolds new IT management vision

  At its recent Brainshare user conference in Salt Lake City, Novell unveiled its new vision for system management.

• Linux helps bring mainframes in from the cold

  Novell hopes the cost benefits associated with its newly announced SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Starter System for IBM System z will help prove to IT managers that the mainframe is not yet a footnote in the history books.

• Waikato DHB dumps Novell for Microsoft

  Waikato District Health Board looks set to install a new electronic messaging and file management system in the latter half of 2008.

• Novell wins SCO case

  Novell has won a significant ruling in its lengthy battle with The SCO Group.

• XenSource expands its virtualisation capabilities

  A new version of the XenSource virtualisation hypervisor, released on Monday, now works on servers running the Windows 2000 operating system from Microsoft.

• Novell's secretive virtualisation buy

  In November, Novell quietly acquired a company whose resource virtualisation software is being used to bolster the datacentre automation capabilities of Novell’s ZENworks management package.

• Ballmer: 'Open source is not free'

  Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer made it clearer than ever at a meeting with financial analysts that the company's recent deal with Novell is primarily about bringing the Linux threat to heel.
  "I would not anticipate that we make a huge additional revenue stream from our Novell deal, but I do think it clearly establishes that open source is not free," Ballmer said. (See a transcript here.)
  His remarks came the same week as the company announced more of the technical details of the deal. In contrast to that announcement, which focused on areas such as virtualisation, web services standards and an interoperability lab, Ballmer said the value of the deal to Microsoft lay in its potential to set a precedent that could force Linux distributors and users to pay Microsoft for its intellectual property.
  The problem, Ballmer said, continues to be that Linux costs next to nothing. "Having a competitor out there who at least nominally looks to be close to free is always a challenge," he said.
  He said the Novell deal was a "very important" step towards dealing with the price threat: namely, that Microsoft could begin to bring its patent arsenal to bear on Linux companies. "It demonstrated clearly the value of intellectual property, even in the open source world," Ballmer said.
  "Open source will have to respect intellectual property rights of others just as any other competitor will," he said.
  His remarks risk reopening the rift between Novell and Microsoft over the way the deal should be interpreted. In late November, three weeks after the deal was announced, Ballmer said that Linux companies could be infringing on Microsoft's patents.
  Novell begged to differ, and the solution was a statement from Microsoft explaining that the companies "agreed to disagree on whether certain open source offerings infringe on Microsoft patents and whether certain Microsoft offerings infringe Novell patents".

• Microsoft, Novell plot Longhorn, Linux virtualisation

  Microsoft and Novell have spelled out details of how they plan to put their operating systems on the same physical servers.

• Microsoft ousts Novell at Ag and Forestry

  The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry will next month begin rolling out a major infrastructure upgrade based on a Microsoft platform to replace its existing Novell systems.

• GPLv3 touted as foil to Microsoft-Novell deal

  Let the spin control begin. In an open letter issued recently, Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian attempted to distance his company from Microsoft’s claims that open source software, including the Linux kernel, infringes on Microsoft intellectual property.