[TriLUG] Novell Acquires Ximian

Jon Carnes jonc at nc.rr.com
Mon Aug 4 19:46:49 EDT 2003


Here, here!

I agree completely with Ryan.  This ties in very nicely with Novell's
networking strategy; their offering of Zen works (which include Apache,
PHP, and MySql), and their Edirectory product.  Novell hasn't been a
marketing power-house but they certainly have been a great
infrastructure provider for large/medium enterprises.

The addition of the Ximian folks also allows Novell to give customers a
tight integration with Linux workstation desktops - which helps
corporations who want to make the transition over to Open Source on
their workstations.  All in all its a great strategy.

As for Dr-DOS, that really came in handy and served its purpose quite
nicely as I recall.  The good Folks at Microsoft were trying to do some
licensing voodoo to cripple the use of their DOS in launching the
Netware core (for folks who don't know, Novell did not have a bootable
OS, so they depended on DOS to boot the system).

Also, MS kept mucking with the DOS so that using it for Netware was
getting very difficult.  It seems they were "inadvertently" trying to
stifle the use of Netware...

Once Novell bought Dr-DOS, they had a bootable OS (which they shipped
with their Netware), and they were no longer held hostage by Microsoft.
I was a platinum reseller of Novell during that time and I remember
cursing Microsoft even back then...

Jon  

On Mon, 2003-08-04 at 16:50, Ryan Leathers wrote:
> I disagree C. Magnus
> 
> While Novell has groped about with sundry products over the last decade
> the center piece has always been directory services.  Mail has also been
> a key offering, but has captured a small share of the market.  It seems
> to me that a strong play for the mail services market on Linux is a
> natural fit and a great way to draw more attention to the real star -
> directory services.  Not a change of focus at all.
> 
> 
> On Mon, 2003-08-04 at 15:53, Magnus wrote:
> > On Monday, August 4, 2003, at 01:21  PM, Jon Carnes wrote:
> > 
> > > Dude! That is sooo cool. The Ximian guys are going to have steady 
> > > income
> > > now, and the next iteration of Netware (version 7) is going to be even
> > > cooler.
> > 
> > Or, on the flip side, this could go as well as all the other cool 
> > things that Novell acquired (in the "Have you seen me lately?" file).  
> > Or maybe it means the Ximian Desktop will finally run on DR-DOS.
> > 
> > It seems like a really BAD fit for Novell, to me, unless Novell is 
> > looking to drastically change their focus.
> > 
> > --
> > 
> > C. Magnus Hedemark
> > http://trilug.org/~chrish
> > PGP Key fingerprint = 984D 9A88 3D60 016F BE01 1506 60FB 85E1 9ABD 96F6




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