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Novell lays off AppArmor programmers (News.com)
News.com reports that
Novell has laid off its AppArmor developers. "Novell will
continue updating AppArmor and using and it in its Suse Linux Enterprise
Server software, but the development mechanism has changed since Novell
released AppArmor as open-source software in 2006. Some companies outsource
programming work to India, but with active open-source software projects,
there's even lower-cost options."
(Log in to post comments)
Novell lays off AppArmor programmers (News.com) Posted Oct 15, 2007 16:12 UTC (Mon) by i3839 (subscriber, #31386) [Link] That reads like "Novell thinks security isn't worth its developers money".
Ouch.
Novell lays off AppArmor programmers (News.com) Posted Oct 15, 2007 16:35 UTC (Mon) by farnz (guest, #17727) [Link] Or that AppArmor doesn't provide any security, just warm fuzzies - it can be read either way around.
Novell lays off AppArmor programmers (News.com) Posted Oct 15, 2007 20:56 UTC (Mon) by i3839 (subscriber, #31386) [Link] Then why is Novell continuing to use AppArmor?If they had moved to SELinux, you'd be right.
Novell lays off AppArmor programmers (News.com) Posted Oct 16, 2007 8:56 UTC (Tue) by farnz (guest, #17727) [Link] They're continuing to use it because they've got customers using it in production, and it's hard for a firm like Novell to tell its paying customers, "You know this technology we told you was brilliant? It's not. We know you've spent lots of money fitting in with it, but we're dropping it now."It's as reasonable an explanation as the claim that they don't care about security.
Novell lays off AppArmor programmers (News.com) Posted Oct 16, 2007 9:54 UTC (Tue) by i3839 (subscriber, #31386) [Link] You've got a point there. But it's still puzzling, because if they went for the warm fuzziness, why not spend some money on it to keep it warmed up? Are they hoping those customers don't notice, because otherwise it could go like this: "Dear paying customer, see that technology we told you was brilliant? We kicked out the developers working on it, it's a community project now. Please continue paying us for using it, thank you for your money." So no matter what the reason, it reflects ugly in the muddy water.
Novell lays off AppArmor programmers (News.com) Posted Oct 15, 2007 16:38 UTC (Mon) by chaneau (guest, #6674) [Link] So in the same week I learn that all the efforts I've done to try and understand SELinux were in vain and that apparmor was the way to go and now this ??? perhaps I shoud go to the dark side at least that would rid me of the guy from Redmond :-)
<sarcasm> Of course now that Novell has acces to all the expertise in the field of security as demonstrated by the gurus of Microsoft, they certainly don't need those kind of "amateurs" any more.
:-)
Novell lays off AppArmor programmers (News.com) Posted Oct 15, 2007 16:37 UTC (Mon) by danieldk (subscriber, #27876) [Link] I was kinda suprised by the reasons given. Judging from the apparmor-dev list virtually all development was carried out by (ex-)Novell engineers.
Novell lays off AppArmor programmers (News.com) Posted Oct 15, 2007 16:37 UTC (Mon) by MisterIO (subscriber, #36192) [Link] It sounds like "We don't want to contribute,we just want to take others' contributes".
Novell lays off AppArmor programmers (News.com) Posted Oct 15, 2007 16:50 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] No, Novell really does want to contribute. Just as long as it's written in Mono.
Novell lays off AppArmor programmers (News.com) Posted Oct 15, 2007 20:51 UTC (Mon) by xorbe (subscriber, #3165) [Link] My first reaction was, "It's developed, we don't need to employ dedicated developers any longer." Who knows...
Novell lays off AppArmor programmers (News.com) Posted Oct 15, 2007 21:49 UTC (Mon) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281) [Link] Actually for the AppArmor developers now founding Mercenary Linux this seems to make sense. They can now get hired to consult and harden any Linux distribution, whereas inside Novell presumably their talents would be focused on SUSE. This is different for developers working on GNOME, etc.
So, the result makes some sense to me, but I am not sure about the process getting there.
Novell lays off AppArmor programmers (News.com) Posted Oct 15, 2007 22:52 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] And what a wonderful name for a consulting company!
(`Why yes, our pay rates *are* mercenary.')
Novell lays off AppArmor programmers (News.com) Posted Oct 16, 2007 0:12 UTC (Tue) by Ed_L. (guest, #24287) [Link] Er, ah... just what *else* would they be?:-)
Novell lays off AppArmor programmers (News.com) Posted Oct 16, 2007 8:50 UTC (Tue) by crispin (guest, #2073) [Link] The name "Mercenary Linux" means that we are Linux security for hire.
Novell lays off AppArmor programmers (News.com) Posted Oct 16, 2007 14:09 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] Well, yes, but it has alternative meanings which are nicely irreverent, and also literally security-related :)
Laying off experienced developers ? Posted Oct 16, 2007 17:30 UTC (Tue) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link] I can understand that Novell doesn't want to fund development of some projects (regardless of my personal opinion of AppArmor, which is positive) - it is certainly their business decision to make. But is there such an abundance of experienced Linux developers that Novell can afford to simply fire them instead of relocating them to other projects ?
Laying off experienced developers ? Posted Oct 17, 2007 1:27 UTC (Wed) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link] It looks to me like the developers themselves thought they could make a go of setting up an independent company but were held back by a sense of corporate loyalty to Novell -- maybe the redundancy payment was sufficient incentive and start-up capital for them, and I wouldn't be surprised if Novell were now to become a significant customer, cutting its ongoing salary costs while continuing partial support for the developers in question. Since news.com appears to be down just now I haven't read the article, but the very existence of a spin-off startup consulting company indicates that the departure has been anticipated and planned for.
Laying off experienced developers ? Posted Oct 17, 2007 1:39 UTC (Wed) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link] Could be. I certainly hope so. I didn't get that impression from the article, though. I remember it quoting the main developer saying that he didn't think relying on the community for AppArmor development would be sufficient, so he felt compelled to set another company up in order to keep things going. (I could be remembering wrong, and of course I also can't check the article now :-( ) On a totally unrelated note: DNS for news.com doesn't resolve. I just noticed that another high profile web site (mp3.com) also has the same problem. Are we witnessing some sort of Net-wide DNS meltdown ??
DNS meltdown Posted Oct 17, 2007 2:02 UTC (Wed) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link] Certainly a partial DNS "meltdown", yes. I was querying Netcraft for (other) sites that were unresolvable yesterday (back up today) and Netcraft couldn't see them either. Rather strange.
Laying off experienced developers ? Posted Oct 17, 2007 22:02 UTC (Wed) by crispin (guest, #2073) [Link] It was not planned for. As I said in the news.com article, the layoff came as a complete surprise to us. We conceived of the idea for Mercenary Linux a week later. Please contact us if you have Linux security needs, especially with respect to AppArmor.
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