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Novell Vice Chairman on Ximian, SCO
dotnothing writes "microsoft-watch.com has an interview with Chris Stone, who is the Vice Chairman of Novell. Stone says that Novell will be introducing a Linux distribution with Novell products and the Ximian desktop, but that they are not out to compete with Microsoft. He also expressed some gratitude to Red Hat for countersuing SCO."
but that they are not out to compete with Microsoft
so, will they install Ximian on XP?
... information wants to be forwarded
Don't buy out SCO, it is a bad investment.
To buy SCO you would need a reason why this is a good use of money, to make them go away is probaly not a good use of corporate funds.
Those millions could do a lot of legal fighting, or development, or even advertising. All with a better ROI then removing SCO.
"He also expressed some gratitude to Red Hat for countersuing SCO."
He knows what to do, with the fund and all.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Why the hell does anybody wants to buy SCO? They are only worth the money if they are gonna win the lawsuit, and I hope that never happens.
Disclaimer: This opinion was created without the use of any facts
Microsoft Watch: What's the future of Mono, Ximian's implementation of .Net on Linux?
.Net on Linux is a great idea. We just hope Microsoft isn't against the idea.
... it puts you in the position of looking over your shoulder for as long as it is deployed. Indeed, were the GNU/Linux desktop and server implimentations to fully embrace it, Linux servers and desktops could well put themselves in the position of existing solely at the pleasure of Microsoft ... which would be a fleeting thing at best.
... it is about ceding authority to an avowed enemy of software freedom ("Linux is Unamerican" Microsoft may or may not be inherently evil, but that they are an enemy of free software is indisputable), be it authority in unilaterally defining a standard or, worse, authority in having the legal clout via patent (and perhaps copyright) law to kill a free project dead ... perhaps an entire genre of free projects if said project provides critical underlying infrastructure.
Stone: We are going to continue to push it.
And therein lies the fatal flaw in pushing a Microsoft-controlled (and possibly patented) standard on a free platform
It isn't about 'sucking up valuable developer time and effort' (plenty of things suck up valuable developer time and effort, indeed, that is the very essence of free software and the freedom for people to explore solutions wherever they lead)
We dismiss such concerns at our own, rather substantial, risk.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I hope Stone knows where he can send that nice fat check for the fund.
This coming from the company who has zero interest in the long term survivability of Linux...
What Iwould like to know, is how do we know that the code SCO is guarding, wasn't taken from Linux in the first place?
SCO is guarding their code, because they say it's theirs, but with Linux code is already out in the open. So how do we know WHEN SCO created their code?
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
They've allowed Wine. Why? Because they have no choice in the matter.
This can only be a good thing. Despite what a lot of people say, Novell has lots of customers, and most are really commited to Novell products. Thus with them starting to move to Linux, and push it to their customers, we will see a lot of corporate Novell users switching to Linux. Novell has great tools for Windows, and if they port them to Linux (seems like they plan too), it will make convincing people to use Linux that much easier. PHB's still love to pay for software, let them pay for Novell Linux
(a) have some software layer that can use windows .dlls in linux, just like Wine. Software will be significantly slower, however.
(b) have something that can compile .Net code the way .Net does, but uses Linux libraries instead. You'll get things to run a bit faster than option a, but it's going to be quite an undertaking to rewrite every microsoft library to be completly compatable with linux, especially the DirectX stuff. Wine has already done a lot of that, but thier windows libraries don't function exactly like the native windows ones.
(c) Microsoft decides to open-source thier libraries, embraces linux. Then I'll be able to port my copy of Duke Nukem Forever to Linux. This will be the second largest article on slashdot that week, right behind the second coming of Christ.
Besides the obvious issues - which compiler/linker, precisely what version, what patches, which static libraries, what versions, etc - there is also the issue of alignment. I've worked with compilers/linkers that would not zero out empty space within the created images. Therefore the binary image would contain random gibberish that happened to be in memory when the compile ran. Thus, the "same" binary could generate different checksums.
Posting as AC from work (but you know who I am)
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO
You know, Stone's little talk reminds me of what I've heard coming out of IBM lately. I can't help but wonder if Novell took a look at IBM, decided that they've done quite well for themselves with Linux, and decided to jump ALL the way onboard too.
Evolution-Groupwise by itself is enough for this merger to produce some great things.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Chris Stone is an excellent guy for Novell to have as a VP, as well as being a well respected chair of the Open Group he also used to be base player for the band that became Aerosmith (he left 6 months before they had their first big hit).
However, I have to wonder about the wisdom of producing yet another Linux distribution, particularly one aimed at the desktop arena. Although you may not know it from the figures, many internaional companies have already standardised on SuSE or Red Hat for their Linux vendors and the name Novell still has some bad connertations in the Corporate world.
Much of Novells strategy today seems to be selling very high value (expensive) products based around XML and Web Services (see their Silverstream aquisition) to Fortune 500 / FTSE 100 companies. I know as an implemetor for their excellent DirXML Meta Directory in a 100,000 employee company.
To my mind they would be better forming an alliance of the sort that SuSE and Sun announced yeterday, where Sun support and Distribute SuSE Linux and SuSE use Sun's Java in all their distributions. Novell could add their tools to SuSE and Red Hat, such as Directory Clients and Xen Works clients, concentrate on selling their servers on the SuSE and Red Hat platforms they already support and bundle SuSE and RedHat desktops for Netware customers. This would give them client penetration and server sales opportunities without having to compete with the Linux vendors. They could also leverage the relationship these vendors have with Sun and IBM who would be happy as the Novell server components also run on Solaris and (I think) AIX. Thoughts?
Novell didn't fail because the market wasn't ripe, Novell failed because the bungled the whole thing. I think the market is riper now for a legit MS contenter from server-workstation. There wasn't as much an interest in alternate OSes then.
The biggest problem Novell had then was getting over their reputation as a "file & print" vendor. Novell = NetWare, which isn't as much the case anymore. Novell isn't known as just a server OS maker, they aren't known at all. Ironically this may work in their favor since we're into a new generation. They can use their experience and amazing programmers in a relatively fresh market, perhaps not being hampered by their stigma this time.
Well, we would. The masses like their M$ Office apps, and they run okay on 2000 Server boxes running Citrix Metaframe. Although this wonderful little deal may (read: probably will) give us a better way to do it.
As far as the naming goes, my vote is for Ninix ;)
It only shows how clueless Novell really are. They bought Ximian for what ? Evolution ? MONO ? Ximian Desktop 2 ?
They could have the software without buying Ximian because it's all opensource and developed through many people. What they did was putting money into the throath of Ximian's CEO Icaza and Friedman for the work of other people. Evolution is opensource and it will stay opensource, MONO is opensource and it stays opensource, Ximian Desktop 2 is only a polished GNOME (which is made by other people). So what did Novell actually purchase ?
They could have all this stuff w/o paying anything.
Wouldn't buying out SCO be just like negotiating with terrorists? Make no mistake: they want to be bought out! McBride and his cronies get themselves a golden parachute, SCO disappears, and the lawsuit disappears, and everyone is happy. Until one fine day a new piddly-ass failing SCO wannabe corporation with some semi-valuable "intellectual property" tries to do the same. There will be no end to it then.
IBM and RedHat and everyone concerned should do their utmost to grind SCO into the dust, so as to give a clear message that this sort of "terrorism" will never be tolerated.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
Considering Microsoft has made moves against Wine before (copyrighted header files springs to mind) but have never mentioned patents, I am 100% confident that they cannot shut it down via that route.
In the unlikely event that they may have patents on the API implementations, Wine would do what every open source project does in such a scenario and work around them or get them invalidated. The chances of them having a patent that is required to implement an API is practically nil and has never been encountered in 10 years of reverse engineering Windows. The DMCA causes more problems.
People throw around the bogey man of patents whenever big corporates are involved. "Just you wait and see, they'll never survive". Too bad that it's grounded more in paranoia than reality.
I see one fool here, and that is you. You do not "choose" to own property, owning property is the only thing that enables you to have significant choices.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger