Posted 8:44 AM

Novell Support goes off the deep end.

Novell Sr. VP Colleen O'Keefe justifies their current support money grab with claim that "We absolutely believe there is tremendous value in Novell's patches, service packs and other intellectual property and that the cost of providing these services should not be solely born by current maintenance customers."

What's the brouhaha about? This Novell announcement:

"To further encourage more customers to take advantage of the comprehensive benefits a maintenance contract provides, Novell is announcing that as of November 15, 2009, maintenance or subscription authorization will be required to access service packs and patches (excluding stand-alone security patches) for most Novell products. In early 2010, we will extend this initiative to include Technical Information Documents (TIDs) in the Novell Support Knowledgebase for products in the general support phase of the product lifecycle."

That's right, Novell is asking you to pay for its mistakes.

Maybe there's a business plan here for me - are you willing to pay $10/month to get the errata pointing out the corrections to stuff in the newsletter? Do I have to start making more mistakes before you'll pay up?

Labels: Novell