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Ray Noorda Dead at 82
HaeMaker writes to tell us that Ray Noorda passed away today at the age of 82. Noorda was best known for his leadership role at the helm of Novell Inc. Known to some as the "father of network computing" Noorda took the then small Novell from around 17 employees to well over 12,000.
is here
Common sense is not so common
Does anyone happen to know what his involvement was, if any, with Novell's purchase of UnixWare from AT&T?
As a UnixWare administrator at the time, I had had great hopes for it. It was the premiere UNIX for x86 computers at the time, and the sale to Novell brought a lot of hope to a lot of people. Linux was just becoming strong, and the BSDs had just resumed again after the lawsuit. We were thinking that Novell would really push UnixWare, and attempt to make it become one of the most widely-used PC operating systems.
Unfortunately, that did not happen. In many ways, that may have been a good thing. I personally think it was a bit saddening, as UnixWare was a rather fantastic system at the time.
The father of Netware died. Although I briefly knew of the technology and faced obscure questions on some of the certification exams that I took, I shuddered at the horror of working in such an environment. Then I reminded myself that I should consider myself fortunate that I missed out on Windows NT entirely. There are some things worse than death itself.
I think that Ray saw that Novell's future was in Linux. That's why Canopy put money into Caldera. Unfortunately, the Novell culture couldn't make use of Linux, so Caldera got cut off and had to sink or swim on its own.
I'm sorry to hear of Ray's death at age 82, but y'know, with an average lifespam of 80, that means that some poor schmuck is condemned to die at age 78.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
For all of the bad things that could be said of Netware (there were many), let's not forget that without it MS may have never advanced networking and infrastructure to the point they have (keep reading before you say "bah!"). Novell was THE competition for MS during the 90s. I worked in a blended NW/NT environment during the late 90s and from my vantage point the competition was fierce. For that, I say thank you. To those in doubt: Think of MS security then think of what it could have become without Novell as a competitor - shudder if you must. Rest well Ray.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
It's a shame that, IMHO, certain people took advantage of him as his intellect started to slip, and no parent should have to outlive his own daughter. Still, he was a giant in his day, and he funded a lot of startups while never being personally greedy (at least that I saw).
I am glad to have known him.
If he was such a networking guru, you would have thought he'd set his TTL a little higher.
Be relentless!
...you are a true Noord icon!.. ;P
why would it take him that long to pay off his mortgage? It doesnt make any sense. please explain
...you certainly did shape my career, and therefore my entire life.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
I can't believe these obituaries for Ray Noorda highlight his supposed business skill, when he rode Novell straight into the ground and singlehandedly destroyed both Digital Research and WordPerfect. Noorda's Novell bought WordPerfect for $855 million in June 1994, when its word processor, formerly the industry standard, was struggling and needed smart management. After Noorda left the company, Novell promptly sold WordPerfect to Corel in January 1996 for 10 million shares of Corel stock and $11 million in cash -- that's right, an $800 million loss in 18 months. Meanwhile, WordPerfect's market share had totally collapsed.
An October 2000 article in Computer Business Review Online, "Why Companies Fail", discusses Noorda's reign:
Of course, Noorda also found the Canopy Group, of which the less said the better.
Noorda achieved some great things, but for much of his latter career he was a force for chaos and destruction.
We'll crush the evil bastards!
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Very little: Univel was a joint venture between AT&T and Novell; they occupied the second floor of the Sandy, UT facility, just off 106th South just off I15 (I worked on NetWare for UNIX on the third floor of the same building).
Ray was already pretty much out by then; he was still chairman of the board, but even then he was known to write himself notes when travelling so that he'd know what city he was in when he woke up in the morning.
Novell's day to day operations were handled by "the office of the president", which was Ad Rietveld (former WordPerfect president and CEO), Mary Burnside (Novell's COO up to that point) and Jim Tolonen (Novell's COO up to that point).
After the purchase of USL, Noorda's legacy, "coopetetition" - start several groups working on solving a problem at the same time, and run with whatever ends up actually being best - was pretty much all but gutted by the USL management.
Bryan Sparks and Ransome Love actually went off and started Caldera with their own funds by selling a number of large parcels of land they had bought a while before that, and it was only after they had kicked in their own money that Noorda came along with Canopy and funded them. They left because there was a lot of NIH going around after the USL purchase, and they weren't allowed to work on the product they wanted to build, so they started a skunk works internally, and went outside when the former USL management started getting all competing projects cancelled.
-- Terry
"Truly an American icon."
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Assuming the average lifespan to be 80 (not even close), that could also mean 730 poor schmucks would be condemned to die at age 79 years, 364 days. Alternatively, 365 poor schmucks could be condemned to die at age 78 years, 364 days. Your answer is only true if 80 is the median lifespan ;)