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."

Comments

How come

[Gortbusters.org]

RedHat didn't purchase Ximian?

Re:How come

[_|()|\|]

Novell probably paid a lot more than Red Hat would have paid. Red hat is not interested in .NET. Ximian Desktop is largely redundant with its own packaging and customization. Now that Red Hat Linux has changed from a product to a community project, I don't think it's looking for more pacakagers. Red Hat might be interested in the programmers (esp. Evolution), but why buy a company for the privilege of paying their salaries?

Oh yeah, they'll go for that.

[slusich]

Stone: We are going to continue to push it. .Net on Linux is a great idea. We just hope Microsoft isn't against the idea.

I cannot imagine a world in which Microsoft would even consider allowing such a thing to happen.
Still this looks like a good thing overall.

Re:not to compete with M$?

[Havokmon]

but that they are not out to compete with Microsoft

so, will they install Ximian on XP?

Well, I work for a small company running Netware 5.1 and Win98 desktops. I'm looking into doing an LTSP+Mosix type setup, because we only use about 4 applications on older PII hardware.

I'd hate to give up my Netware box, file permissions alone (Inherited rights/filters) are enough to keep me on it. Getting a seemless login (legally - I have an awesome NDS Pam module from France ;) from a Linux box would be awesome.

So, no. In my case, they're not competing with MS, because MS isn't being considered.

Re:Bet they hadn't thought of this

[Lord_Slepnir]

I don't see why they could be against this idea. One thing that keeps many people away from switching to linux is that there are a lot of products you can't get for linux that you can get for windows. By making .Net for linux, software makers can easily port products from windows to linux. If done right, it would just be a matter of compiling it on a linux version of .Net and including a .run file with the distribution CD.

Yay!

[donmiguel42]

"We will have an Evolution-Groupwise connector."

They aren't going to destroy Evolution AND they're going to make it work with GroupWise. Ahh... for those of us running Novell/Linux in the academic world who are getting rather tired of Microsoft's mafia-esque licensing tactics (software assurance, anyone?), this is great news. One less major hurdle between now and a Linux desktop rollout. Yay Novell!

Re:Yay!

[chef_raekwon]

not to mention the dent this should put into Micorsoft's low end server sales...
(and more market share for Linux)

who in their right mind would place a windows server in an environment, when linux(novell) is a choice?

so what do we call this, Novell's GNU/Linux?, or Novell/GNU/Linux, GNU/Linux + Novell NDS? better yet GNU/Linux/NDS...

"the copyright thing"

[_|()|\|]

And remember, we never said the copyright thing between us and SCO was over. We'll see.

These VPs can ham it up all they want, but if they worked for me, I wouldn't let them out of the executive wash room. I'm sorry, but Novell's copyright stunt embarassed them at least as much as it did SCO. To allude to it ominously like the preview of a summer reality show is just tacky.

Re:This is why Mono is such a bad idea

[KamuSan]

It's a bad idea.

Remember OS/2? No? See? Nobody remembers OS/2 (Bill Gates quote!).
OS/2 ran Win3.1 apps natively, so nobody wrote OS/2 apps, but Win3.1 apps.

The lesson is that as soon as you support somebody else's standard, then nobody has any reason to use your standard.

Absolutely DO NOT buy SCO

[CowardX10]

To those who wish that IBM or whoever would simply buy out SCO, consider the following:

1) America is rampant with frivolous lawsuits. Hell, we invented the term, along with nuiscience suit. What big company doesn't have one or more?

2)There will be more to follow. Count on it. When you get big enough, you get sued. If you're intimidated now(or your manager is), then you might as well drop Linux because this won't be the last. This lawsuit is as full of s*** as they come, and if we as a community concede to their desire for a buyout under these circumstances, we have no chance of surviving.

3)The only thing which gives this lawsuit any legitimacy is the fact that SCO bought some UNIX licenses in the past. Everything else about it is made up of lies and contradictions:

1. They attack Linus for not carefully checking and preventing proprietary code from infecting Linux, yet SCO itself continued(continues?) to distribute Linux, apparently oblivious to violation of their own IP.
2. Their inability to decide on what type of IP case this is; copyright? patents? contract violations?
3. They claim ownership of all code related to Unix. As the BSD case has established, this is impossible. If they claim ownership only of work derived specifically from Sys V, then all they can ask for is for those "stolen" parts to be removed.

4)The only thing that matters is what is done in court. "Cease and desist" letters, random claims of ownership of IP, threats to sue anyone and everyone, look pathetic. Despite all the fears of FUD scaring users away, most people understand this. This is why smart companies have a policy of silence during litigation.

5)Be grateful SCO's claims are so outrageous. It's as if I were to send Microsoft a letter claiming they stole some of my IP and therefore the entire company is mine. Or that some MS employee sneaked some SCO code into Windows, and therefore SCO owns all of Windows XP.

The best thing to do is point people to articles like Eric Raymond's and ANUPAM CHANDER's as well as the fact that in the first court challenge by LinuxTag, SCO backed off.