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

[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

[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.

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.