VMware Looks To Acquire Novell's SUSE Unit

minutetraders writes "According to the Wall Street Journal, VMware is attempting to acquire Novell's SUSE Linux operating system business. This move would give VMware a full stack of enterprise software and allow it to establish itself as a full-blown infrastructure and software vendor in direct competition with Red Hat." The WSJ report is behind a paywall, but it's accessible in full through a Google search.

Comments

why not just acquire all of Novell

[tomhudson]

- with one exception - dump Miguel. Please. Mono is something you see a doctor about. Let's keep it that way.

Re:why not just acquire all of Novell

[bsDaemon]

I would have fully paid the $999 for the BSD/OS license when I was in high school, but they rolled back a bunch of the stuff into FreeBSD, which I could buy for about $30 (this was in dialup days still, and i didn't have the time to actually download stuff that big). I did pay the $150 or whatever for XiG accelerated X server, because it ran better through Linux ABI that XFree86 did natively.

If you've been around the floss stuff for a while, it can rub off some, but frankly, the older I get the less I care about the politics of "free software" or whatever. I don't mind paying to get something that works and saves me time, rather than cobbling together a less-than-optimal solution for geek credit.

Re:why not just acquire all of Novell

[mdm-adph]

If there's suddenly a problem with Java w.r.t. patents and stuff, would the alternative really be something "open source" based upon a Microsoft product? :\

Re:why not just acquire all of Novell

[arivanov]

Dude, whatever you are smoking can you please share it.

Gnome perpetrates Winhoze coding practices into the unix world. Just take any piece of gnome code and read it. Carefully. And follow the code design, not just the code "quality".

Let's just take ekiga as an example, though any gnome app will do.

The state machine is tightly coupled with the UI just like a Windows application. As a result making it use multiple CPUs properly or reusing the code for anything other than another Gnome application is impossible. Not surprisingly it triggers races in underlying (similarly badly coded) libraries like there is no tomorrow. Same for having the UI stripped away. This is impossible. And just do not get me started on the subject of trying to integrate something to a piece of gnome code. Because the apps state machines are built around the UI half of the key functions that should show up on dbus end up as inaccessible. Taking same ekiga as an example - call is exposed while hangup is not because it is so UI-tied up that there is no way in hell to expose it.

Re:why not just acquire all of Novell

[rantomaniac]

While personally I think Mono is a very nice piece of technology, in many ways superior to the Java platform... in my eyes Miguel lost all credibility back when he endorsed OOXML and later Silverlight.
Helping Microsoft embrace/extend the web with Silverlight by giving the illusion that it's cross-platform was the last straw.
For reference, Silverlight is neither cross-platform by design, because it's able to call native DLLs, or in practice because Moonlight is waaay behind.

Re:why not just acquire all of Novell

[NickFortune]

what desktop are you using and what is your language of choice?

If I can jump in here: I use FVWM with a heavily customised config file. Languages of choice, depending on the task at hand, are C, C++, Perl, and (currently) Lua or Ruby. That's running Linux, rather than BSD. I do use some Gnome and KDE apps.

I've never used Java for anything significant. I did use Mono professionally for three to four years, a couple of years ago, I can safely say that I don't miss it in the least.

Gnome is all right, and I quite like KDE, but both of them consume a lot of resources to provide a set of integration features that I don't need and rarely use. And I've rather got used to having a desktop that does things my way, rather than whatever is current trendy in the relevant communities.

Re:why not just acquire all of Novell

[fwarren]

Really, it's only the "community" and the zealots (many of whom are here on /.) that really give a crap about the ideology

I have given a lot of thought to this subject. In regards to politics, copyright law, and free software. It is only the nuts that are unreasonable that change the world. The question is all a matter of timing and is right now the time to fight. There are those who fight to soon and are marginal and die on the sidelines. Then there is a time when people are just a little to soon and are considered inflexible, eccentric or a little nutty.

Take a look at the founding of the United States, or of Women's Rights, or the Abolition of Slavery, in England, France, the United States etc. Going from horses to cars, harnessing steam, the world being round. All things that we take for granted now. But there was a time people could be killed for expressing such views. Then there was a time they were just considered nutty. Then there was a time where someone was unreasonable and the world bent to their view, instead of the other way around.

The better question is how principled are we. With all intellectual honesty, it is right that people should be able to govern their lives, have religious freedom, for women to have rights, for a person to not be a slave and enjoy the rewards for the work of the sweat of their brow? Is the same to be said of software freedom? If it is we should stand for it and bend the world to our will. It is up to each of us to determine in the short term if we should run non-free software to get work done now.

If I sound crazy, then it was just to soon to say this.

Re:why not just acquire all of Novell

[21mhz]

Let's just take ekiga as an example, though any gnome app will do.

The state machine is tightly coupled with the UI just like a Windows application. As a result making it use multiple CPUs properly or reusing the code for anything other than another Gnome application is impossible. Not surprisingly it triggers races in underlying (similarly badly coded) libraries like there is no tomorrow. Same for having the UI stripped away. This is impossible.

That's why GNOME has switched to Empathy, just another GNOME app but done right.

Re:Not SuSE

[DrgnDancer]

It won't be taken as seriously. You can *say* it's as good as an Enterprise Distro, it might even *be* as good. People that buy OSes for companies want to see a name they recognize. Right now those names are Red Hat (not available), SuSE, and to a less extent Canonical/Ubuntu (not available). Red Hat would probably be the one everyone wants to buy, but between being the market leader and being fairly profitable (not Microsoft or Apple levels of profitable, but plenty of money to keep everyone in kibble for sure), that's not much of an option.

Re:Then Microsoft acquires VMWare

[oldspewey]

I don't see Microsoft acquiring EMC anytime soon.

If they bought SUSE...

[brennanw]

... does that mean we'd eventually see versions of vCenter Server and vCenter Client that run on something other than Windows? That would be nice.

A defensive maneuver for VMWare

[symbolset]

Microsoft is giving away their shiny new hypervisor with their operating systems. What would be more fair than for VMWare to give away operating systems with their hypervisor?

Re:As a loyal Novell customer

[FlyingGuy]

Really crud is it? Then Please tell me about: an equivalent open source piece of software that Encompasses all the features of :

• Border Manager
• Zen Works
• NetWare
• GroupWise

Please do educate us ( at least me ) as to ready to install software that can duplicate or exceed the capabilities of each of those that does not have the Microsoft label. Because as it is I am ready to through Novell under the train, but not until I can do so without turning to The Empire.

Novell can't afford it

[42sd]

No matter how much VMWare is willing to pay, Novell can't afford to lose that part of the company. They are already hardly relevant. They need SuSe and the clout they have to make sure that they have a suitable place to run all of their other software. I'd guess they'd have to get the whole company instead of just the SuSe division.

Re:Novell can't afford it

[tsstahl]

I think you missed the news about Novell looking to break itself up into pieces.

Re:interesting move

[Courageous]

ESX is not "based" on Red Hat, even using a loose reading of the word "based".

When you log onto the console operating system in a ESX environment, you are not, in fact, logging onto ESX at all.

The console operating system is a privileged VM running on the ESX server that solely exists to let you run command lines and the like, to discover information about the hypervisor's state, tell it what to do, and so forth. That has turned out to be the source of numerous security holes, hence the moving away from it.

C//

Re:Not SuSE

[tomhudson]

Mandriva is dead. Almost all the devs have either quit or been fired in the last week. read moe here, the goodbyes on Cooker here, and the newest "plan" - to move development of Mandriva to Brazil here and turn it into a BRIC- country distro. Forget that China already has Red Flag Linux. Forget that they were able to grab Connectiva (a Brazilian distro) and killed the brand. Forget that ALT Linux is an actively maintained Russian distro with a new release earlier today.

Mandriva has lost 30 million euros, unable even to win over its' home market despite the government helping push them in education. It's dead, Jim!