The topic is briefly touched on in the book: "In search of stupidity". Basically the NetWare kernel wasn't actually developed by Novell, at least not initially,

The topic is briefly touched on in the book: "In search of stupidity". Basically the NetWare kernel wasn't actually developed by Novell, at least not initially, but by a team from a company called Superset. As described you could suggest things to the Superset team, but they wasn't actually someone your could order around, partly because they weren't even employees for many years. This team completely ignore customer demands, and focuses solely on technical improvement that have little real-world tie-in. The book is "In Search of stupidity" by Merrill R. Chapman, this particular topic is covered on page 173-174.