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Novell Buys Ximian
Quite a number of people have been submitting the news that Ximian has been purchased by Novell. All I've found so far is the press release linked to above; more links as they come in. Looks like Nat & Miguel will be remaining around, and Novell's continuing to expand its Open Source commitments. Update: 08/04 17:30 GMT by S : viewstyle writes "According to an interview with Ximian's CTO Miguel de Icaza at Eweek.com, Ximian won't be affected at all by Novell's buyout, and will be shipping a PowerPC version of Mono (preview release in Sept)."
They have the announcment on their main page now.
UPS Sucks
ch-ch-ch-ch-changes at Ximian. You know, right before the newly expanded going out of business yard sale at Novell.
I ran "Red Carpet Update" this morning. Now I know why it downloaded a copy of the Book of Mormon to my computer. Thanks, Slashdot!
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
this will have any effect on Ximian though... so I'm not too bothered ;)
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
Me no like!
Gnome wasnt built in a day.
An promising up-and-comer bought out by a wrinkled old has-been. Oh the humanity. What's their plan?
Hopefully, this will improve the development of the desktop Linux. Maybe we will see big improvements in this area, as Novell improves Gnome, causing KDE to also improve so that they dont lag behind.
Also, Mono will probably get major improvements, becoming a good .net alternative.
As far as I'm concerned, good news.
Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
I wonder if this will affect Novell's behavior towards SCO - if they didn't already have an interest in defending Linux, they certainly will now. Considering that they claim to possess the copyrights that SCO is using to bully IBM, I think this may prove to be a Good Thing.
This space intentionally left blank.
What was the amount involved ?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
...I can run .NET on NetWare.
Let's recap some of Novell's previous purchases:
Wordperfect - barely breathing
Quattro Pro - dead
Paradox - dead
DR-DOS - dead?
Novell, a company whose mission for the past 15 years seems to have been "Buy Microsoft's competition and run it into the ground" has purchased one of the few Linux desktops that could potentially give Microsoft a run for its money.
Might as well cede the desktop to Microsoft.
*HUH*???
That's the damn strangest acquisition I've ever heard of.
Hell, Novell's purchase of WordPerfect seems to make sense under this veil.
Weird, weird, weird...
"...In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true..."
Does not sound to me like Miguel will be rolling in cash though ...
Pathman, Free (as in GPL) 3D Pac Man
I wonder what will happen with Ximian's Exchange connector for Evolution? I hope Novell keeps it around, because it's probably my sole hope of getting a boss-approved Linux box at work...
philcrissman.com.
Novell ought to be careful that they don't contract Mono.
I am not hawking NOVL, and I do own less than 100 shares (disclosure complete, post commencing) but I'm glad I re-evaluated them. With their recent release of their products for Linux (which seem to be doing reasonably well), and now with this purchase, it seems that they are serious about Linux. Since they were always great in the directory space, it seems like they just might be positioning themselves to try and contend in directory services again.
libertarianswag.com
Since when was Ximian sinking?
I want to see Novell survive. My first two years in the IT business was supporting a huge Netware environment, and I have always liked it (Netware) since. With Novell's planned shipment of Linux products, it would also make sense to build a strong Netware client for Linux. Aqcuiring Ximian and all of it's tools is a good start.
By the of gread Speculation.
Novell come with full throttle. New novell server support Linux and now this.
Me thinks all M$ enemys begin act together
[My english is better than most other people's Turkish, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
Usually it's not a good idea to attach a lifeboat to a sinking ship. Novel should be selling off/spinning off divisions that have a chance of surviving, not acquiring more units to pull under.
My biggest problem with Novell is that to get any of the great benefits that Netware provides, I have to buy a slew of stuff -- like ZenWorks and BorderWare. To get a complete network OS, I have to either shell out, or make some kludges to get things to work together, using olde batch files, for example.
In all, this means it's better to start of with something that only claims to be the hub of an NOS and build other software on to it -- like SME Server -- and its at no cost.
In buying Ximian, I hope Novell will be able to offer SMEs a workable, useful, solution that gives everyting a NOS should be capable of for the same price (rather than just the core) so desktop management (over Windows, Linux and Mac), e-mail, and firewalling would all come together at a Microsoft-beating price.
I can just see the headline in five years:
"Novell Sells Gnome/Mono Copyrights to (other Utah "technology" company)".
</sarcasm>
Actually, the Ximian logo rather shows a diving monkey, so, indeed, it might be too soon to evaluate its sinking condition :)
Anyway, I didn't know they were generating profit at all so I was not surprised at the grand parent's remark.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Two-faced dumb plug Sen. Orin Hatch is now faced with a dilemma. Which constituency will he support -
Novell & open source, *or* SCO and the forces of evil. Hard choices for such an honorable man.
Novell can now skip all of the time needed to build every aspect of some kind of a Linux client/desktop, and instead begin with the progress that Ximian has made.
Winning the desktop is one thing, but I think Novell wants to use Ximian as an access point to a Linux server running all kinds of Netware "packages" (the Netware services Novell will be deploying for Linux).
First there was IBM. But IBM made a deal with a guy named Bill and slowly saw their computer monopoly erode, as this thing called Windows allowed anyone to operate any PC. But then it was decided to link computers together, and up came a new software company, Novell, and now someone other than Bill was making money off of software, and Bill didn't like that, so out came Windows NT, and Novell saw their brief monopoly collapse. IBM and Novell weren't happy, so IBM hooked up with another guy, named Linus, and slowly started taking back what Microsoft had taken away, in the datacenter, at least. So here's Novell, looking at IBM and realizing hey, it brought them back, it can bring us back too. And now the community has a big player putting Linux on the corporate desktop. Right on, Novell. Best of luck to ya.
Novell seems to have a pooorer reputation after the SCO imbroglio on copyright ownership. In fact, there seems to be little difference in the people owning Novell and SCO.
I'd be very surprised if Novell dumps Evolution like AOL dumped Netscape AND Mozilla. IMO, this is the WORST news for Linux in recent times, worse than the fake SCO threats actually.
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
I'm of mixed feelings on this.
I am of the belief that Novell bought Ximian more for Ximian Connector than anything else, Mono second, and oh yeah, Ximian Desktop / Gnome Development is thrown in.
I have a hard time believing Novell has a vested interest in a Linux desktop like Gnome. Out of the three software apps Ximian works with, Gnome is the only one that isn't so much a cross-platform application (Gnome development for Sun / *BSD aside).
It's probably good for Mono as well. But does Novell have the cash to continue development of all these?
I just hope Novell doesn't let them die on the vine.
All that useful software I've always wanted on my Linux desktop! Wonderful software sch as:
;-)
* Groupwise connector for Evolution.
* Directory Services for Linux.
* ZenWorks for Gnome
I can't wait!
Novell buys Ximian, dumps Evolution after settling with MS for about $2 bn. I guess. Can't see anything else which Novell could be contemplating now. What's Novell doing with Linux, I'm curious??? Weren't they supposed to be a Netware company??
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If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
That's what I'm talkin' about. No more wasted money and trips to the weed spot. I can just pull down the latest patch! Just in case, anyone got Linus' pager number..?
It would be easy for Novell to put together a nice bundle of Linux technologies, then sell it under their own name. The PHBs who don't trust OSS wouldn't have to know any better.
I'd personally like to see Novell hire the SAMBA team. It would be pretty cool to see them take back the file and print server space from MS using their name on OSS.
Oooo I dunno. The motivations seem different: AOL's enormous, didn't need Netscape and may just have done it to muck about and maybe squeeze Microsoft for better terms on IE.
:o)
Novell doing this seems more like a company actually trying to find some new revenue from it, because they're not doing so well elsewhere.
Of course that means it could go one of two ways: they could put their all into it and make it enormous, or they could make a right hash of it and hastily try something else, chucking Ximian to the dogs.
Not saying much new here but hey
With Novell being great as a directory company and Ximian great as a desktop company, I would expect to see security and ease of administration for Linux desktops to be the great beneficiary. This could become available as a proprietary solution or as an open source solution. In either the quality and ease of administring Linux application will improve.
What I am happy with is that Novell first proved itself as a good member of the community before they bought Ximian.
Are they all wanting the success of GNU/Linux or is it a case of against-Microsoft-anything-will-do?
These companies, which on certain fields compete against each other, are willing to go in the same direction, isn't it weird?
Maybe this means that Evolution will get S/MIME support now.
1) open up company
2) use free software
3) make lots of goons work for free
4) brand free software
5) sell company
6) profit !
Perhaps we'll see a GroupWise plug-in/connector for Evolution now. Hopefully it won't go the other way and get replaced by a GroupWise Java client... competition in the e-mail client/calendaring solution world is a decidedly good thing IMO.
Novell's continuing to expand its Open Source commitments.
So they will go from 'runs on GNU/Linux - good enough' to the GNOME foundation position "It does not ship until it runs on GNU/Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD"
If all Novell will do is 'support GNU/Linux' and leave Mac OS X, FreeBSD, NetBSD and others hanging in the breeze, then they are not 'supporting Open Source', they are supporting GNU/Linux.
Why use the inclusive language of Open Source when you are in fact not inclusive?
Previously, Novell had an excellent product - their directory services. In addition, it would run on more Microsoft operating systems than NT. For example, you could authenticate and use Novell resources from DOS, not so with NT, at least not without a LOT of help. Novell is the product everyone wanted to use, because it made your life easier, it's just that noone wanted to run their operating system.
Now they have a chance to go in with the operating system that EVERYONE is wanting to run (a lot of people _want_ to run Linux, but are unable to do so because of their Windows machines). Novell is the king of getting their software to play nicely with Windows. I can see Novell going into Linux, and then being able to replace Active Directory with the click of a button.
And this purchase means that their server will be incredibly easy-to-use.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Novell a few years ago used David Bowie's "Changes" in a television advertisement.
1) Start a company
2) Sell it
Like teaching a new dog old tricks
hmmm, I'm not sure about this at all.
a Ray Noorda company buying Ximian? is this a good thing for the comunity, seeing what another Ray Noorda company is doing to the linux comunity these days?
OK, so I was joking, but it is sort of compatible with what Apple's doing.
Stick Men
From internal sources of some Ximian developers I have heard that Novell are planning to discontinue working on GNOME and go for KDE. The employees have been instructed to make themselves confortable with the new situation. All further development on GNOME projects should be stopped. So all work that Ximian has done on GNOME such as bonobo, orbit2 and some minor other things are canceld from this day. Novell is not interested to continue working on GNOME.
Actually, the Ximian logo rather shows a diving monkey
I personally always thought he looks more like the fuckingroovin character.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
The parent has got rightfully modded to +5, but my other post with similar sentiments lies at -1 Flamebait!
Looks like the mods are having a field day!
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If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
At first this seemed like a match made by a Sid. Then I remembered why I still like Novell - NDS. NDS is by far the most robust, scalable, and secure directory in the world. Why doesn't everyone know this? Because Microsoft doesn't own it and Novell is marketing inept. Novell does files and directories very well. Novell has tried to round out its offerings to include application servers but has failed every time. Linux might be a perfect match for Novell since it sort of sells itself and allows the support arm of Novell to cozy up to the CIOs looking for support contracts (someone to blame). Oh yea, they are already cozy with the CIOs since many Fortune 500 companies are still paying on support contracts with Novell because they just can't seem to (nor really want to) get rid of NDS. I've been telling my friend over at Novell for years that pushing (not just making available) NDS for Linux would make Novell viable again. It's by far the best for managing Netware, Linux, Windows, etc. They should give away limited licenses and charge for the rest. Right now people don't even know it's an option. Maybe things will change. Then again Novell has killed every company it's acquired since Norda left.
Unfortunately, they are legitimizing .NET, and in doing so opening the door to Microsoft for more Windows server sales.
Stick Men
DR-DOS 0wn3d all other DOSes! That's a desktop operating system isn't it? That's what DOS stood for right?
(for the humor imparied, I know what it stood for)
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Let's just hope they don't turn around and sell Ximian to SCO!
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
It means that many of the Novell employees are Mormon. That's it. I have many friends who work for Novell, and I can tell you, Novell's historical poor business choices have nothing to do with religion. :)
Saying that "Mormons are in control of Novell, Canopy, etc. because the companies are in Utah and have Mormon employees, board members, etc." is like saying that the "German government is in charge of United Linux because many of the SUSE employees are Germans."
Statements like:
"The acquisition of Ximian was an all-cash transaction and is not expected to have a material effect on Novell's financial statements"
imply the amount of money involved was peanuts. Does anybody have figures on this?
Forget Netware. That's an obsolete (wonderful, but obsolete) tool. Netware is a delivery system for NDS/eDirectory. That's where Novell sees a future.
-30-
Congrats on the Novell takeover!
For reference, eDirectory already runs on Linux. Sun's DS has glibc issues on any recent linux distro, and openldap of course runs on Linux too.
-b
As discussed in "Novell to Make Linux Robust and Reliable", NetWare 7 will be able to run on the NetWare or Linux kernel.
An email client like Evolution running at the speed of Sylpheed (but without Sylpheed's chronic bug of pretending to send messages but not actually sending them).
With Novell just a little bit more significant than Corel who will soon be disolving into a corporate sellout plan I can't right now see the purchase of Ximian by Novell as a good thing.
About all that Novell does these days that I can tell is to stage massive tradeshow displays and give stuff away. I remember one Comdex here in Toronto a few years back where Novell gave away giant red umbrellas if you sat through a presentation. My partner and I sat through the presentation but in order to collect the umbrella you had to spend more than an hour in a massive lineup. My partner stayed in line until the bitter end and recieved an umbrella while I went to other booths and managed some quality time with an engineer from Pioneer to learn more about DVD authoring and making hybrid DVDs. Better value I think.
Any moderations down will be proof of the conspiracy
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
WHAT??? The Novell guys origionally tried to squash the SCO lawsuit because they believed that they still owned the copyright to the source code. The origional and first amended copies of the contract spelled it out that way, it was only a second amended copy from several years later that some mid level exec signed that the copyright was signed over (somebody at SCO pulled a smart one there, it probably never even went by a lawyer for Novell). Novell doesn't even think they have a copy of the second amended copy, but they did verify that SCO's copy was legit and signed by an authorized representitive of the corporation.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I see a Register article on this. I also see an article about teaching chimpanzees VisualBasic and then reselling their services. I discount *both* news articles to a joke.
I'm not sure were Novell plans to take this but, I would love to see Evolution become GroupWise arware.
The desktop angle makes no sense at all to me. Novell doesn't have a clue about desktops.
Uh oh.
Existing:
Canopy -> Novell
Canopy -> Trolltech -> KDE
New:
Canopy -> Novell -> Ximian -> GNOME ??
Need I mention:
Canopy -> Caldera -> SCO?
Do we have to worry now? Will the FSF go back to considering the technically excellent but tiny minority desktop GNUStep the One True FSF Desktop?
Everybody keeps comparing this to Novell's "disatrous" purchase of WordPerfect -- but that was no disaster. They never wanted WordPerfect; they wanted Groupwise. Wordperfect wasn't interested in selling just Groupwise, so Novell bought the whole she-bang, stripped out Groupwise, then unloaded the rest of it on those poor chumps at Corel. The whole thing actually made a lot of sense for Novell . . .
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. But when life gives you crap, please don't make a beverage out of it.
There are three areas where GNOME is of value to them:
* Evolution -- since they control the direction of it, they can integrate Novell services
* RedCarpet (which is popular and linked to Evolution and Ximian GNOME's success) -- able to ship Novell products to several distributions and to Sun and HP.
* Ximian GNOME (which standardizes the UI and RPMs/DEBs of several desktops) -- allows Novell services to install easier because the have a common install environment (it's basically like UnitedLinux, but broader). This environment also allows them to use RedCarpet to distribute and install other corporate products from other companies (much like Lindows does with their "clip-and-run").
So every facet of Ximian is perfect for Novell. They made a good choice. I hope that they're able to deliver on even half the potential.
Can you fill me in on the joke? I don't get the connection. Is Novell run by mormons or something?
Sigs are out of style, so I'm not going to use one...oh wait..
Remember Eazel? They tried the same business model and went bankrupt. Without a buyout, Ximian would be bankrupt later this year.
There is a basic difference. That time they did not have OS support for an imp application like office suite and remember this is where M$ won the race with itz office leading to the death of wordperfect. This time the OS is open. Letz see what happens!!!!!
So, who's going to buy Trolltech?
They're probably the largest, independent from big biz, Linux related company left.
Then people could stop bitching about QT and KDE not being free enough.
AFAICT Novell is dying, doomed to become another company like Banyan. NDS is a superior technology, but Novell fumbled it with NW 5; we had to switch to Win2k for the sake of our Mac clients, which Novell walked away from.
All the resellers I talk to say nobody buys Netware new, virtually all of the Novell sales they do are upgrades for a few loyalists that won't switch to anything else.
I won't argue the superiority of Win2k in any sense; NW4.11 NDS was vastly better, especially when dealing with multi-site and distributed security setups. But Novell became just impossible for us if we wanted to keep our Macs reasonably integrated with the PCs.
IMHO Novell's purchase of Cambridge Tech Partners was an acknowledgement that their days are numbered. Perhaps purchasing Ximian will enable them to get into the Linux consulting world.
That's a good question. I really don't know. I hadn't really noticed that before, to be honest. I didn't make the site, it's a friend of mine's site, actually.
-Xanadu
That Ximian may give more to Novell that what Novell can give to Ximian.
Think about it. Novell Netware 6.5 has a *really* crap management console, why not purchase the necesssary skills to improve it?
Now, lets add on top of that the fact that Novell doesn't want to be left out. They have Java, why not add a dot-net compliant framework to the mix so that no matter what the outcome of the framework wars is, Novell will be sitting back with a smile on their face knowing that what ever the outcome, they're covered either way.
Then lets add ontop of that! there are now *MORE* businesses moving to centralised processing, why not make Novell an viable alternative to Windows? get OpenOffice.org, Ximian GNOME, Evolution etc and you will have a really good combo for the end user.
Add even *MORE* ontop by the fact they Novell will earn some brownie points in the developer circles by embracing openstandards and as a net result, Novell has *NOTHING* to lose and everything to gain from this.
"The difference between pornography and erotica is the lighting" - Woody Allen
I didn't think Mormons believed in Evolution...
we can expect Novell to use Ximian's offerings, APIs, research and development to stick a spoke in M$s wheels and poke Gates in the eye.
Here's to their continued success.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The only thing that's even remotely comparable is zsh.
-Dom
Well, that's me out of ideas.
I wonder if they're buying a potential anti-trust lawsuit. If MS screws Ximian Mono by changing .NET or pointing the patent gun at them or whatever, Novell will have the resources to go after them for abusing a monopoly position, whereas it would be harder for Ximian to do that on their own. Kind of like with DR-DOS, although I think it was Caldera who pursued the litigation in that case.
This post started as a joke; now I'm not so sure.
You have a choice: tax and spend Democrats, or borrow and spend Republicans. Choose wisely.
Your Sig is full of shit you jackass.
Yes and the community picks up the slack where Ximian left off. Just like all the other software out there released under a Free license.
*shrug*
If you think about it, Ximian's strategy with Mono is quite brilliant. As a developer I can't really see myself wanting to create a Gnome application using the GTK+ C APIs simply because I would really like to avoid using C for writing graphical applications. I'd much rather use something like Java or C#, which to me seem better suited for developing GUI applications. As more and more developers realize C and even C++ aren't really tailored to creating large maintainable GUI apps, then an alternative will become more popular. As much as I hate to say it, I believe .NET is going to become the most popular framework for developing client side apps. Not because the .NET GUI APIs are better than Swing, but because of the ubiqitous nature of Windows and the fact that the .NET CLR is seamlessly integrated into the Windows infrastructure. Sun must reach the same level of tight intergration with the JVM if it even hopes to compete on the client side as .NET builds up steam. It's sad to admit that the majority of applications programmers are in the Microsoft camp. This means they are familiar with Microsoft tools such as Visual Studio, so it only makes sense that these developers will adopt newer MS technologies like .NET. Wouldn't it be a beautiful thing to be able to develop an app on a superior platform like GNU/Linux and then be able to run that same app on Windows unmodified? Yes, we have this capability with Java, but as this community can surely understand, choice is not a bad thing.
:)
Build bridges people, not moats
I personally don't think that Novell have much interest in the Ximian Desktop. They may have some interest in Evolution - maybe there's a hairbrained scheme to mate it with Wordperect and Gnumeric to produce a bastardized "Office Suite". .NET platform. The way things are going, pretty much anyone who wants to do webservices the Microsoft way will have to purchase Win2003 or whatever it's called in the future - or download the .NET framework if you can't be bothered buying a new OS. However, Novell probably hope to offer a competing stack for webservices based on mono and Linux - much more compelling because they're cheap/free.
No, I think Novell are interested in servers and services. Microsoft are making alot of noise about WebServices on the
Novell are also trying to leverage NDS on Linux as an alternative to Mickeys active directory. Add RedCarpet into the mix for easy update/deployablility and of course the Ximian connector stuff as a bonus, and they've pretty much got a whole competing stack.
It remains to be seen if Novell now underplay their hand as they have done in the past...
I just *know* that they are/were really hoping for a native open source connector for Evolution to be written by Ximian.
Still think this will be a priority to a company that makes significant revenue from a proprietary groupware server?
..."Miguel, meet Utah. Utah, meet Miguel. We'll introduce Nat later when he takes care of the screensaver thing."
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
It is just too simple to look back at history and prove that every major technological acquisition by novell has failed miserably, I don't know how CTP is doing now days, but novell tried to figth MS and failed (wordperfect), tried again and failed one more time (groupwise) and has consistently tried and failed. It's true there's a market for linux and associated services, with the addition of CTP they'll have an offering for their customers, "switch from outlook to evolution now!" may sound appaeling to some.
But in serious business they will keep on playing niche markets, and some die hards fans of novell.
My prediction is that they'll integrate simian desktop into their products making it easy to administer, extend evolution funcionality, dissappear the symian brand, and figth MS once again.
Interesting how Ximian (and its linux developers) are headquartered in Boston. Messman (CEO of novell and president of the Board of Directors) used Novell to buy his own consulting company (Cambridge Consulting) in Mass (which needed a major cash infusion). Management has been moved from Utah to Mass. Recent layoffs in Utah (where Novell used to be headquartered) hit mainly senior engineers and linux folks. Neat how that happens. Coincidence?
can any one say, Novell Desktop OS. I think it sounds kinda nice. :-)
Maybe under the new leadership - and some subsequent partnerships - they can fix my biggest gripe aboue Ximian - dependency yuckiness.
Ximian works just fine if all you ever install are Ximian packages from its updater. But when I install a (for instance) Redhat package - rpm or otherwise - its expecting to find RH's menu format, RH's base libraries, etc. Ximian replaces too much of that, and a lot of things stop working right because of it.
It's bad enough I've got to distinguish between packages made for Suse, Redhat, Mandrake, etc - and then be sure they're only using libraries from the base configuration, and not funky updated experimental or hard-to-get libs. But when I've got to make sure the package is specifically for Ximian for Redhat (and not plain Redhat, or Ximian for Suse, or whatever) in order to know I'm getting menu entry and a consistently-placed file location, that's a real headache.
Maybe Novell, being a little more coprorate partnership-friendly (I hope), will work with the big verdors to avoid this? Maybe? Please?
The Mormon church has loads of records about people and how they relate to each other. Novell's flagship product (Netware) is used to store records about objects (including people) and how they relate to each other.
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
Oh I guess so. Why not throw in a reference to Bill's having said 'no one needs more than 640K of RAM' too? And maybe a line about how Apple stole everything from Xerox and forget about that pesky license they paid. So, OK... I guess you could have written cliched tripe even less factually informative that what you posted. So keep working at it... you'll transition from uninformed twit to knowledgable /. troll in no time at all!
Is there any OS vendor other than Microsoft (and SCO) that isn't using open source software in some way? This is because open source software benefits companies as long as they don't thrive on full control of their environment (Microsoft). Granted, most of the companies you listed also sell hardware and could probably survive even if their software products went away.
Back in April 25, 1994, PC Magazine had an article announcing that Novell Inc was developing a Linux based desktop system for Windows, DOS, NetWare, and Unix applications.
From that project, a group of Novell alumni formed Caldera Systems International with the backing of Novell's founder, Ray Noorda.
The Canopy Group, which purchased major holding in Caldera, was also founded by Ray Noorda.
Today Caldera Systems International, trading under the name The SCO GROUP Inc, at the direction of executives at the Canopy Group Inc, is threating the same target Linux desktop market for using the same technology that Novell owned and sublicensed to the original SCO.
Fact 1: A lot of Novell installations are still out there. I would hazard a guess that a disproportionate number of the larger corporate networks are Novell.
Fact 2: Linux is slowing making it's way into corporate networks, but realistically very few companies will completely switch over.
Given this, we see that more so than ever before, it's a mixed network future, Linux + MS + Novell (sometimes) + Whatever. Something people haven't mentioned too much is that Novell Directory Services has add-ons to make it cross-platform, Microsofts AD does NOT. So, if you want to make your spiffy new mixed network run smoothly with less administrative work the choice is clear now, run Novell NDS - possibly even if you don't have Novell servers at all!
Good deal for all involved... all makes sense to me at least.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
>> If they are OSS, the community can take over. I thought that was the whole benefit to OSS in the first place.
That only applies within the narrow developer community. It is quite unreasonable to expect end users to start writing code just to turn an annoying piece of software into something they will use. Instead, they will simply look for a better program.
In addition, consider a business that's evaluating Ximian. If Ximian goes bust, the fact that the code they leave behind is open source doesn't do that business any good unless one or both of these two conditions are met:
1) They pay developers to maintain and support the code.
2) They depend on the "community" to maintain and support the code.
The first option will be ruled out by the first manager who says: "You know, if we'd bought Windows, we wouldn't be in this spot right now. Why should we start hiring developers? We're not a software company. This open source stuff is going to cost too much."
The second option will be ruled out by the first manager who says: "We need this code to keep our business running. How can we depend on some anonymous and amorphous bunch of developers to support our requirements? What happens if they walk away from this code? Face it, we either need to spend money to move back to Windows or spend money to pay some people to maintain this code ourselves. Either way, we're spending money we wouldn't be spending if we'd stuck with Microsoft."
Support and credibility as a business with staying power are the Achille's heels for any company marketing open source. Being purchased by Novell will give Ximian needed credibility among the corporate and business clients they are going after.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
NDS is the best directory service out there.
Combine the best directory service with mono and you've got a great e-commerce system.
Actually, Novell networking predated the IBM PC by a couple of months [first shipped late 1980]. The product was called 'ShareNet' and could connect Apple ]['s and several flavors of hardware running CP/M 2.x [including Z89, Osbourne/1 and most S-100 systems]. This was later extended to support additional client OS's [M/PM, CP/M 86, SB/MS/PC DOS 1.0 later DOS 2.x] and network topologies [Arcnet, Ethernet, Omninet]. That is when their flagship product was renamed to "NetWare" [about 1983]. When the PC/AT was introduced, Novell ported their OS from their 68000 based system to both 8086 and 80286 PC CPUs [NetWare/S, NetWare/86, NetWare/286. Advanced NetWare / 286 [1985] added multithreaded design and os expansion via 'Value Added Processes' [I wrote a couple, including a licence manager for our vertical market application]. VAPs had to be loaded at boot time - they could be disabled but not unloaded. NetWare 386 [and later versions] were non-bootable, and launched from a DOS session. [The DOS session could be dropped and the space added to the memory pool]. They featured dynamic loading and configuration of most network resources [hardware drivers, protocols, routing settings, disk mirroring and backup]. The NetWare OS was multithreaded - but not preemptivly multitasked - no virtual memory was available. This brings us to 1987 - and the introduction of IBM's first 80386 systems...some of which are probably still running NetWare 3.x today.
Caution: Do not stare into laser with remaining eye.
No.
The real answer for Unix on the desktop is Mac OS X. Linux is a pain in the ass on the desktop, with or without Ximian.
I would know, I've recently switched to Apple after Using Linux (all distribs) for > 6 years.
Looking for a great online backup: Green Backup
It's not what we want to do but what is happening none the less.
Yah. Unfortunately, I see this happening everywhere (and not just with NDS/AD, either). People are saying, "We have no choice; we have to do this.
So, let me ask this: is this the way a free market is supposed to work? Or is it that we are all in Microsoft's Reality Distortion Field (tm)?
It's time to demand the best solution, not the most convenient. Many vendors are starting to understand that Microsoft is not the fount of all software; so, when NDS is the better solution, demand support for NDS, or choose a different vendor for your software. Once the vendors hear that enough (and perhaps lose a few sales), they will wake up.
Okay, so the real world doesn't work that cleanly. But, damn, sometimes I wish the market were truly free (as in "Free Market Economy"), and we were active participants instead of sheep.
Baaaaa.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
As probably one of the few people here who actually knows what Banyan was I'd have to agree completely. Novell simply didn't transition to ANYTHING since 4.11. When the world went app server crazy in the mid 90's they left Novell behind. Look at how shitty NT 4.0 was when it came out. Look at how fast ISV's and companies fled Novell and their crappy programing interfaces. Oh sure a bunch of companies keep Novell around for File/Print/Directory services, but for Internet apps and groupware apps, Windows ate Novell's lunch.
Novell is dying, its just a question of when. New companies simply don't invest in Novell, its mostly just old investments which are keeping them afloat. As a CNE and longtime Novell admin its not like I don't appreciate what Netware does/did well, but like the parent mentioned talk to any reseller. They'll be the first to tell you that Novell peaked in the early 90's and has gone downhill since.
I'm not really sure what this means for Ximian. Perhaps this is more of an exit stratedy for Novell more than anything else since its obvious that Netware isn't going to be a reliable cash source forever. At least with Ximian they have at least some sort of opportunity for new growth.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
This made me ponder - what happened to DR-DOS? Last I heard Caldera got ahold of it. Does that mean SCO now owns DR-DOS? Not exactly. Here's the SCO position statement: http://www.caldera.com/company/drdos.html
I predict this will have major impact on both Novell and the open source community. Novell will use OpenSSL and OpenSSH on their next major OS release. Imagine it with a sensible desktop? If they put money in mono they can drop their sluggish java stuff. Somehow I've always had trust in Novell and I certainly hope they hold.
One more nail in the coffin in Redmond. Cheerz! =)
Girls are strange. They don't come with a man page.
-- Michael Mattsson
Well, this is going to get a solid 1 - (Stupid) mod, but...
As soon as I saw that headline, it felt like going over the top of the hill on a roller coaster. What can I say? I really, really like the package presented by Ximian Desktop 2--enough that Windows no longer has a place on my hard drive (tho it is on the old computer for jukebox purposes... damn WiMP-requiring audio feeds...).
I'm happy in the coporate sense for Nat & Miguel and everyone--but please, don't take my desktop!
And what about Novell .Net
Similar Novell makes summons Microsoft.
Actually, the Ximian logo rather shows a diving monkey
It always looked more to me like it was sprawled out at a murder scene.
... all major O.S. products are bought up by large corporations?
It seems that as open source projects become more attractive and actually have some kind of utility, big corps are simply going to gobble them up one by one just like they do to smaller closed source companies.
Discuss.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
This is the end of the Sun's "Mad Hatter" project?
I thought they started Gnome because Qt/KDE was only "OpenSource" ?
But what scares me really is the fact that their Gnome/Mono contribtions might end up being disputed ? (ala SCO ?)
You should be aware that Novell's actual results could differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements, which are based on current expectations of Novell management and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, Novell's ability to integrate acquired operations and employees,
They have explicitly said that "These are empty promises folks !" ?
Gnome will survive ...
How can one possibly underrate the quality of a user interface and shell where the command to shut down an interface is 'shut' while the command to start it back up again is 'no shut'.
Just ask Darl.
The company I work for was supposed to get a visit from Ximian last month for a presentation on their technology. They called at the last minute to cancel their meeting. I wondered whether there was more to the cancellation than "Nat had to respond to a personal matter".
I'm deeply suspicious. I am now inclined to believe that Nat bailed on us to attend a meeting to discuss the sale of Ximian to Novel. Considering the fact that I work at a national laboratory and that YOUR tax dollars are buying commercial software, I find it terribly disheartening to see Linux-related companies failing so miserably on customer service.
When you arrange a sales meeting, you should show up for it.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
http://www.novell.com/linux/ for general stuff and http://www.novell.com/connectionmagazine/ has a feature on the future of Novell and Linux.
Update: Kreskin's homepage has moved, you can find it here.
Please make a note of it and update all future * is Dying trolls.
Over the last few years, Novell has undergone a quiet metamorphosis. Written off as a failure once Windows NT shipments exceeded NetWare sales, Novell surprised many by refusing to die. Even after committing multiple marketing blunders, the company continued to survive. No longer Microsoft's arch enemy, Novell silently reoganized. In the past few years, Novell has focused on basing networking solutions on Directory Services. Once eDirectory could run on Windows NT/2000, the unbelievable occurred: eDirectory on Linux. While Novell's initial efforts were not taken seriously by Microsoft, most businesses or the Linux community, it was an important step. Jump forward a few years and Novell is strongly supporting Linux in the enterprise with a declaration of services for Linux. In addition, Novell is supporting OSS on NetWare. With the purchase of Ximian, Novell is aligning itself even more with Linux. Is Novell doing this to get back at Microsoft? I don't believe so. Novell wants to sell products. They see a dwindling future for NetWare if it competes against Windows and Linux. Considering their options, I believe they've made the smart choice.
After exhaustive research and excrutiating analysis, I've determined that Bubba is, in fact, everywhere.
So what's wrong with OpenLDAP? Not serious enough for you?
What would *really* be interesting is if RedCarpet were ported to Mono along with Ximian setup tools and a few other system configuration utilities.
This approach would allow Novell to create a standard Novell Desktop utilities that behaves idendically on all platforms, whether they be Linux, Solaris, HP, MacOS, or even Windows. Crossplatform Novell RedCarpet update would allow them to update to any platform too. And Mono (if ported appropriately and if Novell extensions are added) would allow Novell developers an easy way to write utilities for all their desktops no matter what OS is running.
Wow.
I highly doubt we'll see anything of the sort.
But the question is do you think my sig is wrong because you are an extreme right wing bigot that hates people that believe in evolution. Or do you think my sig is wrong because you are an extreme left wing bigot that hates people that have faith in God? Of course does it matter which extreme a bigot is? An other question that pops to mind is do you know that it is impossible to tell you, from what you hate?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
This deal makes NO sense to me at all.
/. Pollyannas who want to see good times ahead every time somebody throws a million bucks at Linux.
Novell is not a desktop OS company and to try to be is a complete and utter waste of time and money when Microsoft owns that space (and the REAL Linux OS companies are moving in). For Novell to play catchup is just stupid.
Now if all they want to do is put a nice front end on their networking stuff, I could see it. They might be buying Ximian for the quality of their GUI technical developers and for not much more. This in itself does not mean Ximian will go away but it's not particularly beneficial for Ximian IMHO.
Otherwise, the whole thing sounds like a random purchase by management that really does not know where Novell's next customer is coming from (other than their directory services - which is doomed against Active Directory anyway, simply because of Microsoft's monopoly).
No, this deal is not good for anyone, despite all the
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
It's Mono and evolution. Think about it, they've just gotten (for what I bet was a very reasonable price) THE most experienced .NET porting group in the world.
My prediction is that Novel will:
1) Port Mono to Netware.
2) Port Evolution to Windows (with a connector for GroupWise)
3) Keep Ximian active in the Linux/Unix world, just so they can generate good-will and credibility if/when they're forced to make Linux they're main focus.
When punk rock is outlawed, only outlaws will have punk rock.
Someone wants to create the recursive version for this one?
That's because our heritage is one of being forcibly evicted from our homes, having our towns torched and our leaders jailed on false charges and assasinated, being driven across the country, and having the US army sic'ed on us, with more recent history including having evangelical preachers protest violently against us whereever we are, having stones thrown at us at a fairly recent temple dedication, being depicted as abusive and deadly crackpots by lying authors in mass media, etc. Mormon techies are used to checking Slashdot for tech news (trying to ignore the "we want our pr0n and illegal music" stories, discussions, and people) and then either running for cover or fighting a lost battle whenever anything to do with religion, utah, or conservative moral values is mentioned. I think I can speak for all of us in saying we're sorry for our all-too-common knee-jerk responses and appreciate your patience as we get used to the idea that not everyone is out for our blood.
I beleive their current line of funding went dry late last month.. wherein they had to get emergency funding for day-to-day operations. seems like an oppertune byout.
...the day that the Linux desktop holy war was won.. ..by KDE.
"+1 Informative" only I used up all of my mod points already.
It's also kind of like using MS-Windows: many people in those systems don't know that a realistic alternative exists.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Yes, you can! You can say "these dudes are different to each other". (-:
IRL, they both dispense authority down a pyramid with a very narrow apex, they both add a lot of stuff to what the bible has to say, they both do hair-raising stuff to/with dead people (almost as if they were in some way still alive) and so on. Admittedly the Mormons haven't massacred as many heretics or started any world wars, but maybe that was because they've never had a real opportunity?
As to the religion pervading everything, have you ever been to a truly Catholicised country? One where the peasants worship even effigies of the local clergy? One where your data goes straight from the Tax Office to the church (and they come and collect goods-to-the-value-of if you haven't paid enough tithe etc)? One where you suspect they're trying to convert you with sheer weight of Marys?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...just find out more about Scientology. All fixed, no problem.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Daddy dearest went out to a nightclub when he was much younger (a pretty singular event all by itself) and was sitting around a large table having a drink with the crowd that had dragged him there. Being Dad, he drank only lemonade (Dad uses Coke as a turbo boost if he has to drive for more than about 6 hours).
After a while, he started to catch odd looks from a pair of blokes across the table. Then a tell-us-all-about-yourself started adjacent to them and went around the table until it go to him, and soon afterwards petered out. He did notice, though, that they'd both almost collapsed with relief when he'd described himself as a "Bush Baptist/Calathumpian Cross" in the department of religion, so he asked a mutual acquaintance about that when most of the table (including these two) hat hit the dance floor. Friend laughed, and explained that they were both Mormons, had deduced from Dad's drinking habits that he was too, and had been absolutely terrified that he would report them to the head office! (-:
What a way to live! If you believe, don't drink, because you know that your recording angel will jot it down. If you don't, don't pretend because (1) it's hypocrisy; and (2) it'll drop your lifespan down to within cooee of being gay.
I don't live there, and don't have the right. Is there a problem? (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Yes, it does. It guarantees that one day they will screw you.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...it seems more likely that Oracle is controlled by Mormons.
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My book-keeper swears by it. I ask them to port it and/or Open it about once a quarter, you should too.
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D'ya think we can blame all of that on Licensing 6.0? (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Mr A. "Jackass" Coward is probably a left-winger.
I don't follow either wing, but I do agree with so many others - even some Atheists - that the theory of evolution is a dangerous crock. Because it can be bent to fit any situation (nothing so funny as watching two True Believers bending it convincingly in opposite directions to explain a contradiction) it has no explanatory power at all.
Despite this, it is used to justify murder (genocide, euthanasia and abortion), rape, sundering of families on eugenic and other grounds, and so much other destructive stuff.
I surmise that it might only be a pressing problem if you combine it with extremism, because the Roman Catholic Church has killed or caused the death of something in the order of 100 million people and they were and still officially are creationist - just. And I hear many right-wingers making statements that add up to the same stupid pseudo-rationale: "the ends justify the means".
Nevertheless, there is much that contradicts evolution even in Truly Believing publications that would never dream of knowingly exposing evidence against the One True Faith; but because they can only see evolution everywhere they look, it never dawns on them that it's only their preconceptions that make it so, or that looked at without that prejudice the evidence they rely on tells a completely different story.
"Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" is still repeated as gospel well over a hundred years after it was conclusively shown to be deliberate fraud. Big polystrate fossils are either ignored or given the most breathtakingly daring explanations. Cubic kilometers of homogeneous alluvials with no internal evidence of conformities are just written off. Every new discovery in microbiology raises another apparently insuperable barrier to gradual development but is marketed as a shiny new discovery brought to us by all-conquering evolution. And so on.
On the other side of the story, all of the major arguments for long time periods have holes in them. Tree-rings and ice-layers have both been shown to be semi-annual, big time. Oxygen "varves" and gradients are known to be natural and relatively short-term (hundreds or thousands of years rather than millions or billions). Arp's quantified redshifts and linked quasars have poked big holes in uniformitarian cosmology (Arp himself is not creationist). And so on.
It might be an attention-getter tagline, but it's transient. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
> People have been foretelling the doom of Novell
> for almost a decade. Even during the good
> economy Novell was the "Sinking Ship."
> Isn't it time to give it up? Novell is still
> here, and shows no signs of being otherwise in
> the near future.
I agree.
On the other hand, BSD is dying. Or so I hear.
Tridge and the SaMBa team have zero tolerance for this kind of thing.
The short story is that Microsoft can fiddle it all they like, Australian law will ensure that Tridge and his crew are free to reverse-engineer it. Meanwhile, Microsoft will be alienating customers, giving them yet another reason to switch (to linux or another alternate).
Unlike some academic situations where "zero tolerance" has been used as yet another excuse for picking on minorities or unusual people, the SaMBa team have a clear and simple mandate.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...that TSG don't use Open Source Software?
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wxRuby is about to go 1.0, and has a new entry on (the very OS-X-looking) RubyForge. Ruby itself is a great language!
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
"until someone violates the GPL, goes to court and actually wins"
This would just cause the massive army of GPL developers to stop writing code under the GPL, and make the said companies lose their elite free workforce.
A major point that you are missing is that Linux exists, and each company will deal with it a different way.
Many people have become accustom to total market share domination, companies like IBM and Sun are fighting a very different battle. Total domination in a hardware market is now incredibly difficult if not impossible, so gaining market share is the goal. Linux gives these opportunities.
One example which comes to mind is Apple and linux PPC. I run an ibook with debian PPC. Apple hardware is truly amazing, and if linux becomes a desktop standard, Apple will gain a major competitive advantage over their current position in the desktop market. This is desirable for Apple (Duh).
Each of the companies who are supporting linux stand to gain some, if not many (usually almost free) competitive advantage(s) over their current position in the market.
While I can not tell you what each of these companies is thinking, I guarantee that each company which is supporting linux has a simple business plan on how they will use linux to gain market share and increse profits.
"Bugs" is a fairly generalised Americanism, but if it means "insects" then the way the population becomes resistant by letting the members of it who are not resistant die. This means that the population as a whole loses genetic information and becomes, overall, weaker. No evolving takes place. In order for evolution to work, there must be a mechanism for generating new, useful genetic information at least as fast as it is destroyed in this manner.
If "bugs" means bacteria, they exchange information in forms like protein rings, and this is a "design feature", not an accident. No new information is being made, it's just being swapped around. No evolving takes place. Whichever bacteria are holding the magic info when the plague arrives survive, and so the information itself survives. Kind of like musical chairs, only not as funny.
Almost every religion has The Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. For Atheism to be sustainable, even it has to have a similar rule.
Just as programming would be a lot easier if it weren't for all of these annoying users, so a good attitude is much easier in the absence of real-world subjects on which to practice it.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...you might switch to KDE. (-: g/d/r :-)
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing