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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)."
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.
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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.
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.
I think perhaps Novell has a tendency to make poor choices in its purchases?
I'm not sure about the rest, but there's little Novell could have done to help DR-DOS. Microsoft broke many laws to keep MS-DOS on top back then.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
Oh please. The parent should be moderated Flaimbait. The thing different from all those other companies is that Gnome is not Ximian. 99% of Ximian's technology is Open Source so Novell dieing out would not affect this. Besides they have been predicting the death of Novell for years now, just like Unix. Novell has a good stratigy behind it. Since its services are top notch and run under Linux they can sell both directly or say to IBM customers. My whole city still runs on Novel. Well instead of migrating to Windows they can now migrate to Novell running Linux. I wish this solution was out when I was doing an internship in London. The solisitors I was working for was using Novell I had to recommend a company that was switching them to NT. They wanted to stick with Novell but all the support was dropping for it. Now this comes out, coupled with the growing number of firs supporting Linux and Novell has new life. It is still a gamble for them but one I beleive will pay off.
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.
Novell acquired Ximian, not GNOME. Ximian is not GNOME, they're only one of the companies behind it. Other significant companies behind GNOME include Sun and Red Hat who also contribute loads of resources, and also many additional sponsors like HP, Mandrake, and IBM. Not to mention the huge amount of independant volunteers, that made the project even possible to begin with.
So there seems to be a huge difference with GNOME compared to the examples you mentioned -- this one will undoubtly survive even without Novell, should they decide to leave it for some reason.
GNU/Linux. The Freshmaker.
Actually I think not - everyone I know is heading reluctantly but inevitably to Active Directory and is ditching Netware.
... what a waste so the next step is simply to bin NDS.
We have NDS *and* AD simply because some/many apps don't speak NDS but integrate directly with AD. So we buy both - NDS cos it's easier to manager and link/sync to AD for app integration.
Thing is
It's not what we want to do but what is happening none the less.
Ximian wasn't exactly rolling in cash either. However, just because it won't have a "material effect" doesn't mean that the amount isn't what you and I would consider large. Its just not what Novell would consider large.
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
You're getting ahead of yourself there. Novell's statement is that they'll "continue to expand their Open Source commitment", not that they'll only support Linux. Sun, for one, will be quite interested in having GNOME and associated apps supported under Solaris as they've chosen it for their next UI.
I'm dubious too, but give some time to see what happens. It's too early to see this is either good or bad - actions speak louder than words, and we would do well to sit back and allow some action to take place before writing people off.
Cheers,
Ian
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."
Personally I think it has more to do with Mono and Novell's attempted transformation into an ecomerce/ebusiness platform. If you can run your .Net middleware on something as stable as a Novell server (yes Novell server beat even Linux for uptime, hell they aproach mainframes, would probably be there too if the hardware was better) then why would you run it on windows =)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
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
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.
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.
So yeah, Novell is probably run by Mormons.
Well I don't mean to troll, but that's a silly connection. The largest church in California is the Catholic church, but I wouldn't assume Cisco is being run by catholics. A poster farther down made a great annalogy, I wouldn't assume SuSE is being run by the German government just because most of the employees are German.
Let's keep religion out of the whole SCO/Novell/'Anything else techie' argument when it has absolutely nothing to do with religion at all.
Sigs are out of style, so I'm not going to use one...oh wait..
These companies, which on certain fields compete against each other, are willing to go in the same direction, isn't it weird?
It's not weird at all. What these companies have done is embraced a piece of software that can't be forcibly pulled out from under them. For an x86 example, Microsoft has consistently been ulitmately destructive to the more successful vendors that run on it (WP, Lotus 1-2-3, Citrix, Quicken, Netscape, co-dev deal with IBM OS/2, etc.). With open source they simultaneously cut costs, improve their PR image, retain control over the code as used for them and have public code review/debugging/contributions.
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.
It's higher than 55%. But even if it weren't, that's still a majority, which means the original poster was right, most utahans are mormons.
And yes, the first post was 'a little goofy' that's why it's rated funny. Laugh. Hahah. You familiar with the concept?
I spent some of the best years of my life surrounded by mormons, I've had a lot of mormon friends, I've got nothing against mormons. Doesn't mean we can't occasionally joke about them. Fact is, most of the good mormon jokes I've heard were told to me by mormons. The best lawyer jokes always came from my aunt who is a lawyer, and the best jew jokes I know came from friends who are jewish. Humour is a pretty universal human trait. Although every group has a few that just don't get it, apparently.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
This was the first thing I thought of - a Novell Desktop OS!!
Novell must by now realise that as long as Microsoft is in Control of the desktop, it is always going to find it hard to grow business in the server space.
This strategy could be the one that really works for them, a Microsoft independent solution, but still with the history of compatibility that will allow their products to work with Windows.
It would make perfect sense for Novell to build and brand their own desktop OS, it has been the missing piece of the puzzle for many years now.
Now, along comes GNU/Linux, which already has the main components of a desktop office suite available. I wouldn't be at all suprised if Novell were to offer funding for a project like OpenOffice, or even take on a partnership with Sun for StarOffice (or they could buy CodeWeavers and take on development of Crossover Office).
Novell and Sun are getting quite close at the moment with the liberty alliance, now Novell is working on Gnome (the new Solaris desktop), I can see the two companies supporting each other in more ways.
Personally I think this is good for Novell and if Novell can make the right choices it could be very good for the community, I am just going to watch over the next 6 months because I dont think this is the last announcement Novell will make with respect to Linux on the desktop.