sicariusdracus writes to tell us that Ron Hovsepian, the new president and COO of Novell may have his hands full in the near future. Ron has been tasked with getting the troubled business back on track which many have speculated could result in more than 20% of the 5,800 man workforce getting a pink slip (although Hovsepian suggests that may be an over exaggeration). Part of the restructuring will be announced with Novell's fourth-quarter financial results. Novell to Release 20% of Their Employees? Log in/Create an Account | Top | 160 comments | Search Discussion Display Options Threshold: -1: 160 comments 0: 156 comments 1: 110 comments 2: 77 comments 3: 32 comments 4: 19 comments 5: 8 comments Flat Nested No Comments Threaded Oldest First Newest First Highest Scores First Oldest First (Ignore Threads) Newest First (Ignore Threads) The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way. Act I (Score:4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 02, @06:04PM (#13936527) Smithers: Mr. Hovsepian there's some solicitors at your door to see you.Hovsepian: Release the employees. [ Reply to ThisRe:Act I by ChrisGilliard (Score:2) Wednesday November 02, @06:48PMRe:Act I by AgentUSA (Score:1) Wednesday November 02, @09:44PMRe:Act I by boxfetish (Score:1) Wednesday November 02, @11:25PM fly my prettys, fly (Score:3, Funny) by hector_uk (882132) on Wednesday November 02, @06:05PM (#13936533) i just got a mental picture of evil novel monkeys with wings being released...... [ Reply to This Stocks? (Score:2) by Gr33nNight (679837) on Wednesday November 02, @06:05PM (#13936538) So after the 4th quarter results are in, that would be a good time to buy Novell stocks? $7/share is pretty tempting... [ Reply to ThisRe:Stocks? by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Wednesday November 02, @06:34PM Re:Stocks? (Score:4, Funny) by tonyr60 (32153) on Wednesday November 02, @06:38PM (#13936785) SGI's are even cheaper.... [ Reply to This | Parent Support _only_ KDE and SUSE (Score:5, Interesting) by billybob2 (755512) on Wednesday November 02, @06:44PM (#13936830) Yes $7/share is pretty tempting, but Novel's stock will only go up if they start being profitable. Novel had it coming to them when they bought Ximian, a gnome vendor that made a hodge podge of different products that are now dead (remember RedCarpet?). Novel should stick to SUSE/KDE and re-orient all its developers towards improving _only one_ application for each particular need (ie. YAST for installation/maintenance, KDE for desktop, etc).Novel's premier Linux distribution, SUSE, is historically based on KDE yet the individual projects that they're supporting (Beagle, Evolution) are gnome apps. I think in the long run KDE will become the de-facto standard primarily because of the tight integration among its applications and excitement in its developer and user base about KDE 4. If you don't believe me, take a look at how many more posts there are in KDE-Look [kde-look.org] than in Gnome-Look [gnome-look.org]. In fact, there is KDE-Apps [kde-apps.org] for independent apps built with the KDE/QT framework, while there is no such place to aggregate gnome apps.In conclusion, Novel should get their gnome developers to work on KDE so that they have a tightly integrated system with no duplicated functionality. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Support _only_ KDE and SUSE by maw (Score:2) Wednesday November 02, @06:53PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Re:Support _only_ KDE and SUSE (Score:4, Informative) by Chapter80 (926879) on Wednesday November 02, @07:18PM (#13937078) Novel's stock will only go up if they start being profitable. To be clear, Novell is profitable [yahoo.com].EPS (ttm)=0.92 means that their Earnings Per Share for the Trailing Twelve Months was 92 cents a share. On a $7.47 share price (when I looked at the link, above), that's about 12% Earnings return on the share price (or a PE Ratio of 8.08).That's really not a horrible return. Not great, but not bad, considering some tech companies LOSE money. It's only as high as it is because the stock price is beaten down so badly. Of course, you need to consider FUTURE earnings, not past, when buying a stock.I'm no stock guru, but I do have what most would consider a sizeable portfolio, and I am in Novell at just over $6 (full disclosure here) for a few grand. So, yes, if I could encourage buying without touting the stock, I would. But I can't; that might be illegal. [ Reply to This | Parent1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Support _only_ KDE and SUSE by xgamer04 (Score:3) Wednesday November 02, @08:32PMWhy push this? by WindBourne (Score:2) Wednesday November 02, @08:52PMRe:Support _only_ KDE and SUSE by petermgreen (Score:2) Wednesday November 02, @08:53PM2 replies beneath your current threshold.Re:Support _only_ KDE and SUSE by vagabond_gr (Score:3) Wednesday November 02, @09:00PMRe:Support _only_ KDE and SUSE by bonius_rex (Score:1) Wednesday November 02, @10:32PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Stocks? by LnxAddct (Score:2) Wednesday November 02, @06:53PMRe:Stocks? by BigCheese (Score:1) Wednesday November 02, @11:10PMA stock buy-back is in the works (supposedly). by khasim (Score:2) Wednesday November 02, @06:58PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. released (Score:5, Funny) by specialkp (922254) on Wednesday November 02, @06:06PM (#13936547) (http://www.geocities.com/udesktop) I sure hope they're released under the GPL... It's good to see companies like this releasing human resources though. I'm going to download some today! Anyone got a torrent? [ Reply to ThisAlso in business news... by Tackhead (Score:2) Wednesday November 02, @06:20PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:released by glesga_kiss (Score:2) Wednesday November 02, @06:34PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. 600 people to be laid off (Score:5, Informative) by Marcus Meissner (6627) <marcus@jet.franken.de> on Wednesday November 02, @06:06PM (#13936548) (http://www.marcus.home.pages.de/) Pretty old news, it will be around10% or 600 jobs [yahoo.com]Ciao, Marcus [ Reply to ThisRe:600 people to be laid off by mypalmike (Score:2) Wednesday November 02, @06:22PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. release... oh good, finally released... (Score:5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 02, @06:07PM (#13936556) Wait a minute, are you saying we're FIRED?I have such a hard time with this Newspeak. [ Reply to ThisSimpsons Quote by kai.chan (Score:3) Wednesday November 02, @06:32PM Re:release... oh good, finally released... (Score:4, Funny) by idlake (850372) on Wednesday November 02, @06:56PM (#13936918) Actuall, we programmers try to think of it as "allocation", "freeing", and "releasing". So, no, they haven't been "fired", they have been "freed". [ Reply to This | Parent Re:release... oh good, finally released... (Score:5, Funny) by Otter (3800) on Wednesday November 02, @07:00PM (#13936948) (Last Journal: Wednesday November 02, @10:48PM) I suppose it beats working at Sun and getting "garbage collected"... [ Reply to This | ParentRe:release... oh good, finally released... by TheSpoom (Score:3) Wednesday November 02, @09:19PM They're object oriented (Score:4, Funny) by vadim_t (324782) on Wednesday November 02, @08:13PM (#13937473) (http://sheelab.homecreatures.com/) foreach NovellWorker Worker in CurrentlyHired {        if( Worker.TooOld || Worker.EarnsTooMuch || Worker.HatedByBobInAccounting ) {              Worker.Release();              Worker.Dispose();        }} [ Reply to This | ParentRe:They're object oriented by zippthorne (Score:2) Thursday November 03, @12:28AMWITH release by Thing 1 (Score:2) Wednesday November 02, @10:11PM Mono (Score:4, Informative) by Tanaka (37812) on Wednesday November 02, @06:08PM (#13936560) (http://www.stu.org.uk/) Lets just hope this has no effect on Mono [mono-project.com]. I'm amazed how far thay have come with the project. There are so meny sin-off projects now, it has to be taken seriously. [ Reply to ThisRe:Mono by Tanaka (Score:1) Wednesday November 02, @07:43PMRe:Mono by Tanaka (Score:1) Wednesday November 02, @08:03PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Mono by idlake (Score:2) Wednesday November 02, @07:14PMRe:Mono by idlake (Score:2) Wednesday November 02, @07:16PMRe:Mono by hey! (Score:2) Wednesday November 02, @08:06PMRe:Mono by idlake (Score:2) Wednesday November 02, @09:54PMRe:Mono by PCM2 (Score:2) Wednesday November 02, @07:19PM6 replies beneath your current threshold. help me out here... (Score:5, Interesting) by CDPatten (907182) on Wednesday November 02, @06:10PM (#13936585) All joking aside, who uses them anymore? Is their business all legacy support?Do any of you guys use them? I guess I ask because I'm surprised they are still in business.I hanve't seen a novell system in many years, and never hear about copanies doing a big novell roll-out. [ Reply to This Re:help me out here... (Score:4, Interesting) by CoolCash (528004) on Wednesday November 02, @06:22PM (#13936679) Our company does, we have 23 severs running Netware and GroupWise, in our company. They are great file and print servers with great directory services. We only have three employees managing all the servers and all helpdesk calls for 350 people. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:help me out here... by gnuLNX (Score:1) Wednesday November 02, @06:45PMRe:help me out here... by hey! (Score:2) Wednesday November 02, @08:14PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Re:help me out here... (Score:4, Informative) by deanoaz (843940) on Wednesday November 02, @06:27PM (#13936716) They are still big among enterprises that value reliability and ease of use for large directories. I work in local goverment and it is our central store of identity and authentication for 12,000 users, as well as distributing applications and hosting files. Netware 6.5 provides great resources for Identity Management. Many goverment and educational sites use Netware, maybe because they typically don't have a lot of money for staff and need something that isn't labor intensive or prone to failure.We have never had server downtime because of a virus or worm.Novell's marketing seems to be the only weakness, the products are great.Their hope of the future is migrating all their existing features to run over Linux. [ Reply to This | Parent2 replies beneath your current threshold.Re:help me out here... by Cerberus7 (Score:2) Wednesday November 02, @06:52PMRe:help me out here... by Bulmakau (Score:1) Wednesday November 02, @06:53PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. NetWare 6.5 here, GroupWise 7, ZENworks 6.0. (Score:4, Interesting) by khasim (1285) <brandioch.conner@gmail.com> on Wednesday November 02, @06:54PM (#13936906) Novell's old products are great. But their sales force sucks beyond belief. They are one of the few companies where you have to defeat their sales force to get them to sell you anything.And you had better know exactly what you want because they're not going to offer any advice.The only time you'll see/hear a Novell rep is when a tech support company goes cruising for clients. The Novell reps love to be driven around to see customers that they wouldn't ever call on their own.I could double Novell's sales with nothing more than a two line phone and an email account. Seriously. Microsoft takes executives from potential clients to expensive dinners. Novell won't even waste a phone call on an existing customer. They won't even let you know when new products come out that could fit with the stuff they have on record that they sold you. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:NetWare 6.5 here, GroupWise 7, ZENworks 6.0. by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Wednesday November 02, @09:01PMRe:help me out here... by Searaven (Score:3) Wednesday November 02, @07:06PMRe:help me out here... by zap_branigan (Score:1) Wednesday November 02, @07:17PMRe:help me out here... by bonius_rex (Score:2) Wednesday November 02, @07:20PMIdentity management by PCM2 (Score:3) Wednesday November 02, @07:32PMRe:help me out here... by NeoSkandranon (Score:2) Wednesday November 02, @07:39PM'Release' the Marketing Department!!! by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Wednesday November 02, @07:42PMRe:help me out here... by carldub (Score:1) Wednesday November 02, @08:53PM6 replies beneath your current threshold. take the money and run (Score:2) by OffTheLip (636691) on Wednesday November 02, @06:12PM (#13936600) Will Ron Hovsepian be different than many other high powered COO's in the long run? What if he fails to resurect Novell, he will be paid either handsomely as a saviour or bid adieu with a seperation package. Either way he will be far better than the pink slip recipients. It's never about the little guy when stockholders are involved. Even when those laid off deserved to be. [ Reply to ThisRe:take the money and run by vertinox (Score:3) Wednesday November 02, @06:46PM Released... (Score:5, Funny) by ch-chuck (9622) on Wednesday November 02, @06:12PM (#13936604) (http://slashdot.org/) Lets just say they've been "open sourced". 1160 people liberated, people want to be free.But not me, I'm expensive. [ Reply to This Yesterday... (Score:5, Interesting) by Otter (3800) on Wednesday November 02, @06:14PM (#13936624) (Last Journal: Wednesday November 02, @10:48PM) In the Boston Globe yesterday: "Novell trips over its Linux strategy [boston.com]".I'd had a feeling that that story wasn't going to get posted here... [ Reply to ThisRe:Yesterday... by geomon (Score:3) Wednesday November 02, @06:20PMRe:Yesterday... by Darth (Score:3) Wednesday November 02, @07:02PM that article is bullshit (Score:4, Insightful) by idlake (850372) on Wednesday November 02, @07:05PM (#13936988) Novell didn't "trip over its Linux strategy". Novell's primary product, Netware, was dead when Microsoft finally incorporated equivalent functionality into Windows. That's what the company "tripped over". Novell was essentially dead before they started doing anything with Linux. I find it amazing that they have managed to stay so relevant and important, and their acquisitions of SuSE and their support of Mono look like excellent ideas.There is no way that their move into Linux was ever going to keep them going at their past levels. That's neither surprising, nor is it Linux's fault. You can make a decent business out of FOSS, but it's not going to be a cash cow like Windows or the old Novell.I frankly can't judge whether Novell is executing right with SuSE. But the quality of SuSE as a distribution has been consistently high, and they have a good shot at selling to businesses, in particular in the European markets. I hope they'll make it, alongside RedHat and a completely free Debian; we need more and smaller companies, not a few behemoths. And, to me, the Linux distributions strike a good balance between compatibility and diversity. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:that article is bullshit by Otter (Score:2) Wednesday November 02, @07:23PMRe:that article is bullshit by BigCheese (Score:1) Wednesday November 02, @11:39PMRe:Yesterday... by UnanimousCoward (Score:2) Wednesday November 02, @07:06PMRe:Yesterday... by Bruce Perens (Score:2) Wednesday November 02, @07:30PMRe:Yesterday... by Otter (Score:2) Wednesday November 02, @10:37PMRe:Yesterday... by Bruce Perens (Score:2) Thursday November 03, @12:06AMRe:Yesterday... by norwoodites (Score:2) Wednesday November 02, @11:17PM released? (Score:1) by dlt074 (548126) on Wednesday November 02, @06:16PM (#13936642) into the wild? [ Reply to This1 reply beneath your current threshold. over exaggeration (Score:2) by aktzin (882293) on Wednesday November 02, @06:20PM (#13936668) Is that the opposite of "misunderestimation", as coined by a certain US President? [ Reply to This So It Is True! (Score:4, Funny) by Comatose51 (687974) on Wednesday November 02, @06:24PM (#13936695) 20% of the 5,800 man workforce getting a pink slipSo it is true! There really are no women in IT!I kid, I kid. [ Reply to ThisRe:So It Is True! by geomon (Score:2) Wednesday November 02, @06:27PMRe:So It Is True! by Chris Burke (Score:2) Wednesday November 02, @06:45PMNot true, not true! by mister_llah (Score:3) Wednesday November 02, @06:52PMRe:So It Is True! by woolio (Score:1) Thursday November 03, @12:37AM Release them? (Score:1) by l00k (910333) on Wednesday November 02, @06:35PM (#13936775) Release them? As part of a coordinated tag and release programme I assume. We'll soon be seeing poor tagged IT professionals with broken wings and tracking bands for anklets arriving in flocks all round the country, perhaps stopping at a workplace near you. A pity. [ Reply to ThisRe:Release them? by Marko DeBeeste (Score:1) Wednesday November 02, @07:02PM New Zealand and Novel? (Score:1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 02, @06:48PM (#13936856) Didn't the New Zealand government just announce [slashdot.org] a big partnership with Novel? How are they reacting to all this negative news coming out of the company? [ Reply to ThisRe:New Zealand and Novel? by skingers6894 (Score:1) Wednesday November 02, @10:01PM Old News - Submitted and Rejected (Score:1) by segedunum (883035) on Wednesday November 02, @06:52PM (#13936882) I submitted this days ago when it actually was news, and it got rejected. Bloody Slashdot :-). [ Reply to This "Released" (Score:2) by ddent (166525) on Wednesday November 02, @07:10PM (#13937024) (http://www.omegasphere.net/) First they "lose" their employees (what, you can't find them?). Then they "let them go" (as if they wanted to). Now they "release" them (from what, a prison cell?). The euphemisms just keep getting better! [ Reply to This Huh? (Score:1) by Moofie (22272) <lee@@@ringofsaturn...com> on Wednesday November 02, @07:10PM (#13937025) (http://moofie.lastcoolnameleft.com/) "over exaggeration"As opposed to an under exaggeration? [ Reply to This No problem... (Score:1) by kalbzayn (927509) on Wednesday November 02, @07:21PM (#13937097) (http://kalbzayn.blogspot.com/) Google will hire them. They are hiring everybody. [ Reply to This1 reply beneath your current threshold. 5,800 man workforce? (Score:2) by MMHere (145618) on Wednesday November 02, @07:57PM (#13937366)