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Technology Stocks : Novell (NOVL) dirt cheap, good buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: zwolff who wrote (34844)	11/14/2000 6:32:01 AM
From: Frederick Smart	Respond to of 42771

Killing Personal Directory Celebrates NOvell.... >>Today's focus: Novell nixes personal directory ------------------------------------------------- By Dave Kearns I recently wrote about an interesting technology Novell was working on - but I just found out that the technology was killed before my column ever made it to print. In last week's Wired Windows column in Network World, I spoke about Novell's proposal of the .DIR global top-level domain to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and how it might be used. In the column, I referred to personal directory services, a new technology that I'd just read about from Novell Developer Services, described as: "Novell Personal Directory enables all of a user's personal information to be stored and managed in a [Lightweight Directory Access Protocol]-based personal directory under the direct control of the individual. It also provides controlled sharing of such information to external parties (individuals or organizations). It does not depend on an external server, but it can leverage one if it exists." I'd also spent a few hours on the day I wrote the column talking with Novell's Kent Prows about the .DIR proposal and how it could leverage technologies such as personal directory. What I didn't know, what Novell Developer Services didn't know and what Prows didn't know, was that almost a week earlier the personal directory technology had been killed by product management! Evidently, at Novell it's not considered necessary to let the rest of the company know which products are going to go ahead and which are to be stopped dead. Not only were the left hand and the right hand not communicating, they were acting as if the other didn't exist. Granted, the death of personal directory technology doesn't affect the .DIR proposal that much, and "federated trees" are much more important than personal directory to that effort. But it would have been a nice "extra." It's been said that there's no such thing as bad publicity, but Novell is trying very hard to test that philosophy.>> As Yogi Berra said "this is Deja Vu all over again." Anything that gets "too personal" gets short shrift at NOvell: DigitalMe and Personal Directory do not fit with a NOvell vision which places company's and corporations ahead of or more powerful than THE INDIVIDUAL. This is just par for the course. Even the way Novell handled this is classicly reminiscent of the way the original DigitalMe was shelved with insitututional internalized opaqueness and nonsupport after Brainshare '99. NOvell just does not "get" what the REAL internet is all about. INDIVIDUALS. But then again, NOvell's name leads with "NO". And nothing that leads with NO will ever GO. NO celebrates control and power. NO celebrates the collective. NO celebrated politics. INDIVIDUAL boats - individual energy, freedom, etc. - cannot co-exist with a vision that elevates NO over GO. Those three COMDEX news releases have ZERO energy and meaning to me. WHY?? Because I don't see NOvell breaking through NO - the internal politics of fear - and embracing GO. Makes for great copy, but behind the scenes you have loyal old soldiers like Dave Kearns discovering more and more of this lack of internal communication, support and trust that boarders on raw hypocricy. All of this mirrors the same stuff we've seen since March of '99 when Nelson began to co-opt and shut down Novell. Raising up NO over GO. And perhaps Scott is correct, I'm one of the last guys making these observations. Others have left. That's why the price is where it is. This system of NO doesn't want to change. I got into Novell because of ONE thing: the potential power that it's technology could bring to help INDIVIDUALS find/connect/help/serve/communicate/collaborate/cooperate with one another by locking down and controlling more of the who/what/when/where/how and why behind their personal data/information/profiles. Competely open, secure, private and locked down. The INDIVIDUAL beyond Napsterization...... Now it looks like they are battening down the hatches to lash themselves to some of their last corporate boats before splitsville. Perhaps THE GOVERNMENT is the ultimate boat to be lashed to. Peace. GOvell. GO!!

To: zwolff who wrote (34844)	11/16/2000 12:01:15 AM
From: Scott C. Lemon	Respond to of 42771

Hello zwolff, > Hi Scott: > > Comments? > > ====== > > Today's focus: Novell nixes personal directory > ------------------------------------------------- > By Dave Kearns Not sure what's up there ... He says: > What I didn't know, what Novell Developer Services didn't > know and what Prows didn't know, was that almost a week > earlier the personal directory technology had been killed > by product management! ... but then he doesn't seem to quote any particular "official" source ... so I'm not sure where he got this story. I know that the developer web site still has Personal Directory for download ... and I know that I am still working with it ... I'm sure that we'll hear more ... Scott C. Lemon