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Novell & SUSE In Link Up?

Posted by Hemos on from the potential-merger dept.

dmorelli writes "Since it seems to be a SuSE news day, here's something from Friday this past. Novell tried and failed to buy SuSE, according to the Linux Business week story."

13 of 209 comments (clear)

  1. That would have been interesting. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What does this say, exactly, about Novell's current strategy, that they consider Linux so useful to their current plans that they would attempt to buy SUSE?

    If they owned SUSE, what most likely would they do with it?

  2. Conflict of interest? by Polly_was_a_cracker · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I can't help but feel that the german government owning shares of a company like SUSE seems to be a conflict of interest. I don't believe that government should be able should own any controlling amount of stock of a company they could make or brake. (ie: cities in germany switching to linux over MS)

    --
    I have a Cig, but do you have a light?
    1. Re:Conflict of interest? by beezly · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Tell that to the french government (who own a large chunk of Renault).

      I don't think it's a "conflict of interest" though.

    2. Re:Conflict of interest? by KingDaveRa · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I agree. Its never a good idea to have a potential supplier under the umbrella of the government. Then again, when the UK was mainly public (British Rail, Gas, etc) it was absolute, so who cared?

      Still, it would be interesting to see what Novell would do with their own Linux Distro. Novell Servers, Novell Desktops tied up with ZENWorks - it would be very interesting.

    3. Re:Conflict of interest? by Ami+Ganguli · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If you feel that government should represent the interests of the people, and you feel that SuSe is a good thing for the people of Germany, then this situation makes perfect sense. It's only a conflict if the interests of SuSe don't align with the interests of German citizens (which I'm sure is a case that MS would want to make).

      You could, however, say that it's anti free-market. I would reply "so what?", since I think the government needs to intervene in the market from time to time to correct problems.

      --
      It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
  3. too bad... by deviator · · Score: 4, Interesting

    that would have been a pretty good fit for what they're currently trying to do. Make no mistake - Novell has some of the best enterprise management software in the industry. Linux definitely needs this.

    Oh well, they'll just release their own distro of Linux now (called Netware 7).

  4. German Goverment by Noizemonger · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "the German government, which reportedly owns something like 30% of SUSE ($30 million worth), is supposed to be the speed bump." WTF? My Goverment owns 30% of SUSE? Finally they do something useful with my tax money! Nice. Probably its just a goverment loan but 30% of all shares is quite a lot. I wonder if it was a political decision to finance a OSS-Company. Has anybody more info on this?

  5. Deal? by Espectr0 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    According to the article, suse is worth 100 million. They were offered 120 million.

    Why didn't they accept?

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    Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
  6. Novell's next choice - Mandrake! by capn_buzzcut · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Why not?

    --
    "And now, Frank N. Furter, your time has come. Say 'goodbye' to all of this, and 'hello'... to oblivion!"
  7. Change is bad... by drywater · · Score: 2, Interesting

    SuSE Puts out the best distro of Linux (IMHO) and my kneejerk reaction is sheer horror. I know that's not logical, but anything that might change the direction of the company scares me. I just installed SuSE 9 over the weekend and it's a wonderful product. My selfish desire is for SuSE to be left alone and to continue to produce and improve SuSE Linux. I don't want to have to change distros again!

  8. Pronounciation? by bucketoftruth · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Is it "soos" or "soo see"? I've always wondered

  9. Netware & GNU/Linux: yes, please by GoneGaryT · · Score: 3, Interesting
    My place of work is a Novell shop; I think we'd all love at least a Netware client for GNU/Linux. I imagine that goes for a lot of people. It would make 'Linux on the Desktop' a much closer reality for us.

    Also, we have a rolling hardware upgrade program here and too many viable PCs just end up in the skip. The 300MHz PIIs w/64Mb RAM are next for the chop, but they'd be totally acceptable general office-use machines if they ran GNU/Linux. Tending to the luxurious, in fact. My home PC, for example, is a 133MHz Cyrix w/64Mb and I can't be arsed to upgrade, the point being that the economy of Slackware 9 (or whatever the distro of the minute) let's me get away with not being arsed.

    You can see the appeal of it, really. Free at last etc.

  10. Novell: "what has changed?" by eGuy · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Here is what has changed.

    - The Executive Commitee for Novell looks entirely different than it did when it put MS as enemy #1.

    - More than half of management underneath the executive committe has changed since then.

    In other words 'These people' who where 'scarily clueless' are gone. I guess these 'suits' went to SCO for employment.