Novell Buys Ximian

Quite a number of people have been submitting the news that Ximian has been purchased by Novell. All I've found so far is the press release linked to above; more links as they come in. Looks like Nat & Miguel will be remaining around, and Novell's continuing to expand its Open Source commitments. Update: 08/04 17:30 GMT by S : viewstyle writes "According to an interview with Ximian's CTO Miguel de Icaza at Eweek.com, Ximian won't be affected at all by Novell's buyout, and will be shipping a PowerPC version of Mono (preview release in Sept)."

Good News!

[nbarr]

Hopefully, this will improve the development of the desktop Linux. Maybe we will see big improvements in this area, as Novell improves Gnome, causing KDE to also improve so that they dont lag behind.

Also, Mono will probably get major improvements, becoming a good .net alternative.

As far as I'm concerned, good news.

I wonder...

[avalys]

I wonder if this will affect Novell's behavior towards SCO - if they didn't already have an interest in defending Linux, they certainly will now. Considering that they claim to possess the copyrights that SCO is using to bully IBM, I think this may prove to be a Good Thing.

How long before...

[Anonymous Coward]

...I can run .NET on NetWare.

Evolution Exchange Connector

[revividus]

I wonder what will happen with Ximian's Exchange connector [ximian.com] for Evolution? I hope Novell keeps it around, because it's probably my sole hope of getting a boss-approved Linux box at work...

Good for them

[mao che minh]

I want to see Novell survive. My first two years in the IT business was supporting a huge Netware environment, and I have always liked it (Netware) since. With Novell's planned shipment of Linux products, it would also make sense to build a strong Netware client for Linux. Aqcuiring Ximian and all of it's tools is a good start.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Good News!

[nbarr]

I understand your comments, but the reason I believe it will help Mono and gnome, is not because of Novell experience, but simply because Novell has more funds to invest in full time programmers for those projects. That will make the development faster, if not better.

Might not be about the desktop war

[mao che minh]

This is different, in that all of the above were doomed to begin with. WordPerfect had a fledging career, but with the monopoly woes and everything else, no one really expected it to survive (no people in IT anyways). Novell wants to use Ximian as a tool (server administration with a decent GUI), I reckon, and not use it to try to create a viable desktop alternative.

Novell can now skip all of the time needed to build every aspect of some kind of a Linux client/desktop, and instead begin with the progress that Ximian has made.

Winning the desktop is one thing, but I think Novell wants to use Ximian as an access point to a Linux server running all kinds of Netware "packages" (the Netware services Novell will be deploying for Linux).

Mixed Feelings

[Silwenae]

I'm of mixed feelings on this.

I am of the belief that Novell bought Ximian more for Ximian Connector than anything else, Mono second, and oh yeah, Ximian Desktop / Gnome Development is thrown in.

I have a hard time believing Novell has a vested interest in a Linux desktop like Gnome. Out of the three software apps Ximian works with, Gnome is the only one that isn't so much a cross-platform application (Gnome development for Sun / *BSD aside).

It's probably good for Mono as well. But does Novell have the cash to continue development of all these?

I just hope Novell doesn't let them die on the vine.

Re:It's all over for Ximian

[Ominous Coward]

I think perhaps Novell has a tendency to make poor choices in its purchases?

I'm not sure about the rest, but there's little Novell could have done to help DR-DOS. Microsoft broke many laws to keep MS-DOS on top back then.

Re:It's all over for Ximian

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh please. The parent should be moderated Flaimbait. The thing different from all those other companies is that Gnome is not Ximian. 99% of Ximian's technology is Open Source so Novell dieing out would not affect this. Besides they have been predicting the death of Novell for years now, just like Unix. Novell has a good stratigy behind it. Since its services are top notch and run under Linux they can sell both directly or say to IBM customers. My whole city still runs on Novel. Well instead of migrating to Windows they can now migrate to Novell running Linux. I wish this solution was out when I was doing an internship in London. The solisitors I was working for was using Novell I had to recommend a company that was switching them to NT. They wanted to stick with Novell but all the support was dropping for it. Now this comes out, coupled with the growing number of firs supporting Linux and Novell has new life. It is still a gamble for them but one I beleive will pay off.

Re:Good riddance to good rubbish ;-)

[splinky]

Oooo I dunno. The motivations seem different: AOL's enormous, didn't need Netscape and may just have done it to muck about and maybe squeeze Microsoft for better terms on IE.

Novell doing this seems more like a company actually trying to find some new revenue from it, because they're not doing so well elsewhere.

Of course that means it could go one of two ways: they could put their all into it and make it enormous, or they could make a right hash of it and hastily try something else, chucking Ximian to the dogs.

Not saying much new here but hey :o)

Combining strenghts

[GerardM]

With Novell being great as a directory company and Ximian great as a desktop company, I would expect to see security and ease of administration for Linux desktops to be the great beneficiary. This could become available as a proprietary solution or as an open source solution. In either the quality and ease of administring Linux application will improve.

What I am happy with is that Novell first proved itself as a good member of the community before they bought Ximian.

Re:It's all over for Ximian

[Menthos]

Novell [...] has purchased one of the few Linux desktops

Novell acquired Ximian, not GNOME. Ximian is not GNOME, they're only one of the companies behind it. Other significant companies behind GNOME include Sun and Red Hat who also contribute loads of resources, and also many additional sponsors [gnome.org] like HP, Mandrake, and IBM. Not to mention the huge amount of independant volunteers, that made the project even possible to begin with.

So there seems to be a huge difference with GNOME compared to the examples you mentioned -- this one will undoubtly survive even without Novell, should they decide to leave it for some reason.

Linux business model

[Anonymous Coward]

1) open up company
2) use free software
3) make lots of goons work for free
4) brand free software
5) sell company
6) profit !

Re:Mixed Feelings

[mao che minh]

"It's probably good for Mono as well. But does Novell have the cash to continue development of all these?"

I think the question should rather be "does Novell have any interest and/or strategic advantages in continuing the development of all of them?". I say this because Novell certainly has more revenue and excess funds then Ximian did (or at least I hope hope so, it would be rather bleak for Novell if they didn't).

Re:Glad I bought their stock...

[Clansman]

Actually I think not - everyone I know is heading reluctantly but inevitably to Active Directory and is ditching Netware.

We have NDS *and* AD simply because some/many apps don't speak NDS but integrate directly with AD. So we buy both - NDS cos it's easier to manager and link/sync to AD for app integration.

Thing is ... what a waste so the next step is simply to bin NDS.

It's not what we want to do but what is happening none the less.

Re:Money

[Uart]

Ximian wasn't exactly rolling in cash either. However, just because it won't have a "material effect" doesn't mean that the amount isn't what you and I would consider large. Its just not what Novell would consider large.

Re:Expanding thier OPEN SOURCE committment?

[mccalli]

"If all Novell will do is 'support GNU/Linux'...then they are not 'supporting Open Source', they are supporting GNU/Linux...Why use the inclusive language of Open Source when you are in fact not inclusive?"

You're getting ahead of yourself there. Novell's statement is that they'll "continue to expand their Open Source commitment", not that they'll only support Linux. Sun, for one, will be quite interested in having GNOME and associated apps supported under Solaris as they've chosen it for their next UI.

I'm dubious too, but give some time to see what happens. It's too early to see this is either good or bad - actions speak louder than words, and we would do well to sit back and allow some action to take place before writing people off.

Cheers,
Ian

What does it mean?

[conan_albrecht]

It means that many of the Novell employees are Mormon. That's it. I have many friends who work for Novell, and I can tell you, Novell's historical poor business choices have nothing to do with religion. :)

Saying that "Mormons are in control of Novell, Canopy, etc. because the companies are in Utah and have Mormon employees, board members, etc." is like saying that the "German government is in charge of United Linux because many of the SUSE employees are Germans."

Re:Might not be about the desktop war

[afidel]

Personally I think it has more to do with Mono and Novell's attempted transformation into an ecomerce/ebusiness platform. If you can run your .Net middleware on something as stable as a Novell server (yes Novell server beat even Linux for uptime, hell they aproach mainframes, would probably be there too if the hardware was better) then why would you run it on windows =)

Re:Good News!

[binner1]

True, but please let there be a GroupWise plugin for Evolution. I was actually thinking about this the other day, while thinking about the whole Novell services on Linux OS strategy. To be honest, I think this could be really fantastic!

That, and I'm stuck in a Novell shop with Windows on the desktop right now with no great alternatives. Give me a GW alternative, and the rest is a piece of cake.

-Ben

Has anyone thought....

[CooCooCaChoo]

That Ximian may give more to Novell that what Novell can give to Ximian.

Think about it. Novell Netware 6.5 has a *really* crap management console, why not purchase the necesssary skills to improve it?

Now, lets add on top of that the fact that Novell doesn't want to be left out. They have Java, why not add a dot-net compliant framework to the mix so that no matter what the outcome of the framework wars is, Novell will be sitting back with a smile on their face knowing that what ever the outcome, they're covered either way.

Then lets add ontop of that! there are now *MORE* businesses moving to centralised processing, why not make Novell an viable alternative to Windows? get OpenOffice.org, Ximian GNOME, Evolution etc and you will have a really good combo for the end user.

Add even *MORE* ontop by the fact they Novell will earn some brownie points in the developer circles by embracing openstandards and as a net result, Novell has *NOTHING* to lose and everything to gain from this.

Re:Grumble...

[Kismet]

People have been foretelling the doom of Novell for almost a decade. Even during the good economy Novell was the "Sinking Ship."

Isn't it time to give it up? Novell is still here, and shows no signs of being otherwise in the near future.

Possibilities

[The Evil Muppet]

The way I see it, there is an awful lot that Novell stands to gain out of this:

• A native Groupwise client - Novell has publicly stated that the anticipated move away from client software to web interface access to Groupwise was wrong. Looking at the Ximian press release [ximian.com] confirms this part of the deal. The fact that they now have Java clients available to fill this gap seems a bit hollow now really.
• Another bit of server software to flaunt - Novell is being a lot more proactive in expanding the Novell NetWare software library as of late. They assisted in the ports of PostgreSQL and MySQL to NetWare after Oracle dropped support. Mono fits rather nicely considering the above.
• They can let PHB and BOFH types have their way - Some PHBs will choose Windows as their server platform based on the "strugle" (read slaughter) involving .NOT and J2EE. If Novell throw some resources behind Mono, they can also fill that role for those who must have a commercial OS (yes, all 6 of you).
• ZenWorks gets a boost - Red Carpet works and works well now. As ZenWorks is one of the cornerstones of Novell's Linux strategy, anything they can get their hands on to improve it is a definite "yes, gimme!".
• "From the trenches" assistance with their Linux push - Even though Novell have plenty of experience developing for UNIX in general and Linux specifically, having some of the bods from Ximian to help out with the porting of things like iPrint to Linux would have to be a plus
• Offering the complete package - Even though they tend to work together a fair bit these days (both are committed to J2EE, both are involved in the Liberty alliance), Novell needs a desktop strategy to compete with Sun's desktop Linux plans. Additionally, their sales force will no longer need to say "Sure! We can provide all of your server needs! Err...client side? Umm....the area code for Redmond is...."
• Highlighting Novell's commitment to the open source world - Even though Novell have backed down slightly from those dicks who sell stuff that they dare call a UNIX (all who want to see an OpenServer box urinated on, set on fire and then detonated get in touch) this is a pretty decent way of saying "Yes, you own the copyright to a few things. Think we care?"

Well, that's me out of ideas.

buying a potential anti-trust lawsuit?

[ketan]

I wonder if they're buying a potential anti-trust lawsuit. If MS screws Ximian Mono by changing .NET or pointing the patent gun at them or whatever, Novell will have the resources to go after them for abusing a monopoly position, whereas it would be harder for Ximian to do that on their own. Kind of like with DR-DOS, although I think it was Caldera who pursued the litigation in that case.

This post started as a joke; now I'm not so sure.

Re:Wha...?

[RealisticWeb.com]

The State of Utah is predominately Mormon.
So yeah, Novell is probably run by Mormons.

Well I don't mean to troll, but that's a silly connection. The largest church in California is the Catholic church, but I wouldn't assume Cisco is being run by catholics. A poster farther down made a great annalogy, I wouldn't assume SuSE is being run by the German government just because most of the employees are German.

Let's keep religion out of the whole SCO/Novell/'Anything else techie' argument when it has absolutely nothing to do with religion at all.

Re:AOL Buys Netscape, dumps it after MS settlement

[rendler]

Novell buys Ximian, dumps Evolution after settling with MS for about $2 bn.

Yes and the community picks up the slack where Ximian left off. Just like all the other software out there released under a Free license.

Re:One more involved

[MyHair]

These companies, which on certain fields compete against each other, are willing to go in the same direction, isn't it weird?

It's not weird at all. What these companies have done is embraced a piece of software that can't be forcibly pulled out from under them. For an x86 example, Microsoft has consistently been ulitmately destructive to the more successful vendors that run on it (WP, Lotus 1-2-3, Citrix, Quicken, Netscape, co-dev deal with IBM OS/2, etc.). With open source they simultaneously cut costs, improve their PR image, retain control over the code as used for them and have public code review/debugging/contributions.

Re:How to make money off of free software

[JerkBoB]

Didn't work for Eazel, unfortunately.

Or a bazillion other companies with stupid business plans... I don't doubt that people put a lot of effort into Nautilus, and it's sorta nice for those few times that I want to look at a directory listing with thumbnails (I know other people use it extensively), but to build a company around it? With some sort of goofy software distribution pipeline hacked into it?

Whatever.

Re:Wha...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, also bear in mind, that Novell is pretty much headquartered out of Waltham, Mass. All the execs are based in and around Boston. So I agree with several of the previous posters... religion really doesn't have a place in this discussion.

Remember, there are a lot of Novell installations

[WoTG]

Fact 1: A lot of Novell installations are still out there. I would hazard a guess that a disproportionate number of the larger corporate networks are Novell.
Fact 2: Linux is slowing making it's way into corporate networks, but realistically very few companies will completely switch over.
Given this, we see that more so than ever before, it's a mixed network future, Linux + MS + Novell (sometimes) + Whatever. Something people haven't mentioned too much is that Novell Directory Services has add-ons to make it cross-platform, Microsofts AD does NOT. So, if you want to make your spiffy new mixed network run smoothly with less administrative work the choice is clear now, run Novell NDS - possibly even if you don't have Novell servers at all!
Good deal for all involved... all makes sense to me at least.

Only True Within the Developer Community

[reallocate]

>> If they are OSS, the community can take over. I thought that was the whole benefit to OSS in the first place.

That only applies within the narrow developer community. It is quite unreasonable to expect end users to start writing code just to turn an annoying piece of software into something they will use. Instead, they will simply look for a better program.

In addition, consider a business that's evaluating Ximian. If Ximian goes bust, the fact that the code they leave behind is open source doesn't do that business any good unless one or both of these two conditions are met:

1) They pay developers to maintain and support the code.

2) They depend on the "community" to maintain and support the code.

The first option will be ruled out by the first manager who says: "You know, if we'd bought Windows, we wouldn't be in this spot right now. Why should we start hiring developers? We're not a software company. This open source stuff is going to cost too much."

The second option will be ruled out by the first manager who says: "We need this code to keep our business running. How can we depend on some anonymous and amorphous bunch of developers to support our requirements? What happens if they walk away from this code? Face it, we either need to spend money to move back to Windows or spend money to pay some people to maintain this code ourselves. Either way, we're spending money we wouldn't be spending if we'd stuck with Microsoft."

Support and credibility as a business with staying power are the Achille's heels for any company marketing open source. Being purchased by Novell will give Ximian needed credibility among the corporate and business clients they are going after.

Re:Good News!

[Hecubas]

Um, have you actually used Novell or are you just trolling?

Yes, the Netware server doesn't have a fantastic GUI, but then just like Unix or Linux, having a character based console is preferred by many sysadmins. It's fast and simple--no wasted memory on a GUI there.

I'm thinking Novell knows a little bit about GUI apps since they've built a very important one. The ConsoleOne GUI for managing eDirectory is an interesting program, you can extend its capabilities with snapins. Maybe not the best GUI but it gets the job done. Adding the Gnome developer will only help Novell in the long run.

Novell also has a great interest in the desktop since one of their hottest bits of software, Zenworks, is all about managing desktop PC's. If you've ever had to manage 50 or more desktops, you'll realize how handy all the Zenworks tools are. If I'm not mistaken, you'll be seeing those tools on Linux soon.

As for .Net, it seems to make perfect sense that Novell would like .Net running on their platforms if they want to play the "embrace and extend" game that Microsoft is so good at. Give the developers no reason to avoid Novell.

As for the licensing, I would argue that the value you get in Novell's products is well worth the cost. I have yet to see any thing else that can do a better job at managing a network for an enterprise for Novell's price.

One last thing, Novell has certainly been good with supporting Open Source projects. Very cool, unlike the alternative that is trying to squash the GPL.

If I had my mod points today, you sir would have not been given insightful.

Re:It's all over for Ximian

[stefanlasiewski]

purchased one of the few Linux desktops that could potentially give Microsoft a run for its money.

I really like the Ximian Desktop. It's just want Linux needs to get into enterprise environments.

However, Ximian is a pretty small company, and on their own I doubt that they could give anyone a run for their money. Left on their own, Ximian probably would have gone out of business soon.

If the founders of Ximian were confident about the future of their company, they wouldn't have sold it to Novell.

In the last year, it seemed as through Ximian was paring down their offerings in order to focus on a few key markets: Ximian stopped shipping it's desktop for Solaris workstations, and HPUX dropped their contract with Ximian. RH started shipping a decent desktop with Gnome2.2. Ximian dropped support for Debian. Sounds a little desperate.

Novell is a bigger company. The Linux Desktop requires an investment that may not pay off for a while. Novell can take a bigger short term loss then Ximian could.

Re:Holy shit!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's more like one more tiny chink out of the wall around redmond. Defeat and death are still a LONG way off.

That type of hyperbole only clouds your ability to properly judge the situation. And in /.'s on parlance, could be described as FUD.

Re:Wha...?

[Arker]

It's higher than 55%. But even if it weren't, that's still a majority, which means the original poster was right, most utahans are mormons.

And yes, the first post was 'a little goofy' that's why it's rated funny. Laugh. Hahah. You familiar with the concept?

I spent some of the best years of my life surrounded by mormons, I've had a lot of mormon friends, I've got nothing against mormons. Doesn't mean we can't occasionally joke about them. Fact is, most of the good mormon jokes I've heard were told to me by mormons. The best lawyer jokes always came from my aunt who is a lawyer, and the best jew jokes I know came from friends who are jewish. Humour is a pretty universal human trait. Although every group has a few that just don't get it, apparently.

Re:Ximian has annoucment

[beefness]

This was the first thing I thought of - a Novell Desktop OS!!

Novell must by now realise that as long as Microsoft is in Control of the desktop, it is always going to find it hard to grow business in the server space.

This strategy could be the one that really works for them, a Microsoft independent solution, but still with the history of compatibility that will allow their products to work with Windows.

It would make perfect sense for Novell to build and brand their own desktop OS, it has been the missing piece of the puzzle for many years now.

Now, along comes GNU/Linux, which already has the main components of a desktop office suite available. I wouldn't be at all suprised if Novell were to offer funding for a project like OpenOffice, or even take on a partnership with Sun for StarOffice (or they could buy CodeWeavers and take on development of Crossover Office).

Novell and Sun are getting quite close at the moment with the liberty alliance, now Novell is working on Gnome (the new Solaris desktop), I can see the two companies supporting each other in more ways.

Personally I think this is good for Novell and if Novell can make the right choices it could be very good for the community, I am just going to watch over the next 6 months because I dont think this is the last announcement Novell will make with respect to Linux on the desktop.

Re:What is the future of Open Source if...

[TheAwfulTruth]

Except that the idea that every major product would instantly transfer over to another competent maintainer that can grow the code as needed is a bit far fetched. It may happen some of the time, but most of the time the old code would probably die off in a couple or short years. (Or be bought up again by another commercial competitor)

I know this sounds a bit doomey and gloomey, but recent events seem to suggest that there might be some real danger of this in the future.

Re:how much was Ximian worth?

[Hamfist]

For it to be non-material, it needs to be less than 1% of what it affects on Novell's balance sheet. Purchases of companies are assets. As of the last quarter, Novell had 1.6 Billion in Assets. Unless they had an incredible quarter causing cash to go through the roof, it would be hard to see more than 16 million as a maximum selling price.

Re:Novell never wanted WordPerfect

[kotfu]

I call BS on the "it wasn't a disaster" argument.

Novel merged [novell.com] with WordPerfect in Jun 1994. Novell gave up 51 million shares of stock to get all the outstanding shares of WordPerfect. NOVL was [yahoo.com] trading near $15. That puts the price tag for the deal well over 700 million bucks.

Two years later, Novell unloads WordPerfect to Corel for 11 million in cash and 10 million shares of Corel stock. At that time [yahoo.com] CORL was about $10. Value of deal: 110 million.

That means Novell paid 600 million for Groupwise. Seems like a disaster to me.

Re:That explains it

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you have preferred that he begin the sales process and then blindside you and your company with news of the acquisition? Would a national laboratory be more comfortable buying software and support from a company like Novell or from a startup like Ximian? While it sounds like the details were not handled particularly well, there are lots of reasons for putting that meeting on hold until the air clears that do NOT involve blowing off one meeting for another.

Or maybe he just had a personal matter to attend to...

Re:Dang, you're going to need another example (-:

[LWATCDR]

I meant bugs so that it could cover both bacteria and insects, also my spelling is very weak so it was easier. You are leaving out mutation. New or at least different genetic material is created all the time by mutation. Remember not all mutations are harmful.