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Ximian

Novell Vice Chairman on Ximian, SCO 228

Posted by CmdrTaco from the only-gonna-get-stranger dept.
dotnothing writes "microsoft-watch.com has an interview with Chris Stone, who is the Vice Chairman of Novell. Stone says that Novell will be introducing a Linux distribution with Novell products and the Ximian desktop, but that they are not out to compete with Microsoft. He also expressed some gratitude to Red Hat for countersuing SCO."
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Novell Vice Chairman on Ximian, SCO More

Novell Vice Chairman on Ximian, SCO

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  • Red Hat/SCO legal docs (Score:5, Informative)

    by viewstyle ( 645956 ) * on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @08:55AM (#6614222)
    Speaking of Red Hat -- SCO released some of their legal threats which I found to be entertaining. Excerpts are in this story [eweek.com]...
    • Speaking of Red Hat -- SCO released some of their legal threats which I found to be entertaining. Excerpts are in this story...

      What Iwould like to know, is how do we know that the code SCO is guarding, wasn't taken from Linux in the first place?

      SCO is guarding their code, because they say it's theirs, but with Linux code is already out in the open. So how do we know WHEN SCO created their code?

      • SCO is guarding their code, because they say it's theirs, but with Linux code is already out in the open. So how do we know WHEN SCO created their code?

        SCO has had a pretty extensive version control system for a number of years, which contains code checkin dates, code author, etc. It's easy to forge some dates at a superficial level, but I'm hoping the judge would require a code audit of some of the sources which are harder to forge, such as backup tapes or the institutional memory of some ex-employees (S

    • LOL (Score:5, Funny)

      by JoeLinux ( 20366 ) <joelinux.gmail@com> on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @10:21AM (#6614845)
      As located here [eweek.com], RedHat calls SCO's practices "likely to cause confusion, mistake or to deceive". Is that legalese for "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt"?

      Just a thought,

      Joe
    • From the story:
      "SCO has not been trying to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt to end users. We have been educating end users on the risks of running an operating system that is an unauthorized derivative of Unix."
      Yeah. In other words, they have been spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt to end users. Isn't that what we've all been saying all along? Good thing SCO is finally admitting it, at least in the second sentence.
    • The thing I thought was the most interesting about this interview the comment about the copyright issues with SCO not being over just yet. A subtle hint at document forgery, perhaps? This is going to be interesting.

  • not to compete with M$? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gurisees ( 315528 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @08:55AM (#6614224)
    but that they are not out to compete with Microsoft

    so, will they install Ximian on XP?

    • Re:not to compete with M$? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Havokmon ( 89874 ) <rick.havokmon@com> on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @09:05AM (#6614291) Homepage Journal
      but that they are not out to compete with Microsoft
      so, will they install Ximian on XP?

      Well, I work for a small company running Netware 5.1 and Win98 desktops. I'm looking into doing an LTSP+Mosix type setup, because we only use about 4 applications on older PII hardware.

      I'd hate to give up my Netware box, file permissions alone (Inherited rights/filters) are enough to keep me on it. Getting a seemless login (legally - I have an awesome NDS Pam module from France ;) from a Linux box would be awesome.

      So, no. In my case, they're not competing with MS, because MS isn't being considered.

  • How come (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Gortbusters.org ( 637314 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @08:56AM (#6614228) Homepage Journal
    RedHat didn't purchase Ximian?

    • Re:How come (Score:4, Interesting)

      by _|()|\| ( 159991 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @09:36AM (#6614468)
      Novell probably paid a lot more than Red Hat would have paid. Red hat is not interested in .NET. Ximian Desktop is largely redundant with its own packaging and customization. Now that Red Hat Linux has changed from a product to a community project, I don't think it's looking for more pacakagers. Red Hat might be interested in the programmers (esp. Evolution), but why buy a company for the privilege of paying their salaries?

  • Oh yeah, they'll go for that. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by slusich ( 684826 ) <slusich@gmail.COMMAcom minus punct> on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @08:59AM (#6614244)
    Stone: We are going to continue to push it. .Net on Linux is a great idea. We just hope Microsoft isn't against the idea.

    I cannot imagine a world in which Microsoft would even consider allowing such a thing to happen.
    Still this looks like a good thing overall.
    • I think they have considered allowing such a thing to happen.

      I seem to recall that Microsoft released over 1 million lines of code in their shared source effort to get .Net running on Linux, etc.
      • I seem to recall that Microsoft released over 1 million lines of code in their shared source effort to get .Net running on Linux, etc.

        Yes, Microsoft loves to give back to the community out of the goodness of its own heart. I'm positive they did not have any alterior motives at all.

    • Re:Oh yeah, they'll go for that. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by IamTheRealMike ( 537420 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @09:33AM (#6614447)
      They've allowed Wine. Why? Because they have no choice in the matter.
      • No choice? Hardly - if Microsoft wanted to they could throw a truckload of patent infringement claims at Wine without even breaking into a sweat. The only problem with that would be the "Microsoft crushing the competition" backlash, and given the wrist tapping (it isn't even a slap) they got from the DoJ I doubt they'd care less about that.

        No, either they don't view Wine as a significant threat, or the fact that it can run Office apps == bigger market for one of the things that makes Microsoft money I don'
        • There is nothing innovative in the Windows APIs. Even the more windows specific stuff like DCOM has plenty of prior art available.

          Considering Microsoft has made moves against Wine before (copyrighted header files springs to mind) but have never mentioned patents, I am 100% confident that they cannot shut it down via that route.

          In the unlikely event that they may have patents on the API implementations, Wine would do what every open source project does in such a scenario and work around them or get them

    • When I read that, I assumed he said it with a twinkle in his eye, and the reporter would have been justified in adding a "wink smiley."

      It isn't like Microsoft can do much about code on another platform that happens to be compatible with what third-party developers are writing....

  • Right... (Score:5, Funny)

    by mschoolbus ( 627182 ) <travisriley AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @09:00AM (#6614255)
    "but that they are not out to compete with Microsoft"

    "Uh... Yeah... We want to sell this but, uh.. not a lot of it..." - Chris Stone

  • Bet they hadn't thought of this (Score:5, Funny)

    by Sir Haxalot ( 693401 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @09:01AM (#6614258)
    Stone: We are going to continue to push it. .Net on Linux is a great idea. We just hope Microsoft isn't against the idea.
    I'd 'just hope' Linux users aren't against the idea.

    • Re:Bet they hadn't thought of this (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Lord_Slepnir ( 585350 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @09:11AM (#6614321) Journal
      I don't see why they could be against this idea. One thing that keeps many people away from switching to linux is that there are a lot of products you can't get for linux that you can get for windows. By making .Net for linux, software makers can easily port products from windows to linux. If done right, it would just be a matter of compiling it on a linux version of .Net and including a .run file with the distribution CD.
      • .NET languages do have some advantages over Java, but just trivial things that can be implemented on top of Java VM, with a modified compiler and some JNI code. Classes with attributes for example, can be compiled as JavaBeans. There are not so many existing .NET apps and they can probably run under Wine.

        So the question is, why not focus on Java?
      • If done right, it would just be a matter of compiling it on a linux version of .Net

        That's true of C also, and various other languages as well, but the big catch is the "If done right...". I think history proves that it will not be done right.

  • Fund (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ultrabot ( 200914 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @09:03AM (#6614274)
    "He also expressed some gratitude to Red Hat for countersuing SCO."

    He knows what to do, with the fund and all.
    • If Novell is going to release their own distribution it would be helpfull if SCO won. That way Novell and SCO would be the only ones authorized to distribute Lunix.
      • If Novell is going to release their own distribution it would be helpfull if SCO won. That way Novell and SCO would be the only ones authorized to distribute Lunix.

        No they wouldn't, because they'd be violating the GPL, and therefor violating the copyrights of all the various contributors who didn't plagarize SCO code. Care to take bets on which group represents a larger portion of the Linux codebase?

  • This is why Mono is such a bad idea (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FreeUser ( 11483 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @09:11AM (#6614323)
    Microsoft Watch: What's the future of Mono, Ximian's implementation of .Net on Linux?

    Stone: We are going to continue to push it. .Net on Linux is a great idea. We just hope Microsoft isn't against the idea.

    And therein lies the fatal flaw in pushing a Microsoft-controlled (and possibly patented) standard on a free platform ... it puts you in the position of looking over your shoulder for as long as it is deployed. Indeed, were the GNU/Linux desktop and server implimentations to fully embrace it, Linux servers and desktops could well put themselves in the position of existing solely at the pleasure of Microsoft ... which would be a fleeting thing at best.

    It isn't about 'sucking up valuable developer time and effort' (plenty of things suck up valuable developer time and effort, indeed, that is the very essence of free software and the freedom for people to explore solutions wherever they lead) ... it is about ceding authority to an avowed enemy of software freedom ("Linux is Unamerican" Microsoft may or may not be inherently evil, but that they are an enemy of free software is indisputable), be it authority in unilaterally defining a standard or, worse, authority in having the legal clout via patent (and perhaps copyright) law to kill a free project dead ... perhaps an entire genre of free projects if said project provides critical underlying infrastructure.

    We dismiss such concerns at our own, rather substantial, risk.

    • Re:This is why Mono is such a bad idea (Score:4, Interesting)

      by KamuSan ( 680564 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @09:27AM (#6614413) Journal
      It's a bad idea.

      Remember OS/2? No? See? Nobody remembers OS/2 (Bill Gates quote!).
      OS/2 ran Win3.1 apps natively, so nobody wrote OS/2 apps, but Win3.1 apps.

      The lesson is that as soon as you support somebody else's standard, then nobody has any reason to use your standard.

      • Re:This is why Mono is such a bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)

        by alienw ( 585907 ) <alienw.slashdotNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @09:40AM (#6614510)
        OS/2 ran Win3.1 apps natively, so nobody wrote OS/2 apps, but Win3.1 apps.

        If OS/2 hadn't run Windows apps, nobody would have ever used it. The reason it died was the high price and poor hardware support (it didn't run on non-IBM machines without a lot of tweaking). Stop using that example, for fuck's sake.

        The lesson is that as soon as you support somebody else's standard, then nobody has any reason to use your standard.

        Does linux have anything remotely resembling .Net? Other than mono, of course.

        • Does linux have anything remotely resembling .Net? Other than mono, of course.

          You mean, somthing like dotGNU [gnu.org]?

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
          Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Applications people wanted to run were on Windows; some applications they *had* to run was on OS/2.

          I found OS/2 much simpler and reliable than Windows to implement, and deploy (once you weeded the bad memory and MBoards out), especially 2.x on.

          Early on, Microsoft eliminated certain network DLLs from their OS/2 SMB network distributions which prevented browsing, etc. from an OS/2 machine. making it's viability worse, but hedging their bets in case it took off.
      • The lesson is that as soon as you support somebody else's standard, then nobody has any reason to use your standard.

        Maybe you're not familiar with Internet Explorer, or Windows, or Microsoft Word?

        MS has made their market by supporting other folk's standards and--this is the important part--GIVING THE USER A REASON TO USE MS! Historically, this has been cost...

        and I'm sure that an OSS .NET implementation can beat MS on dollar-cost. Maybe even time-cost too.
      • ...following that logic, the Linux community should ensure that Java applets won't work on Linux based machines... Or, perhaps the Linux community should use something else besides OpenGL because heaven forbid something gets ported over to OS X from it...

    • Re:This is why Mono is such a bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)

      by alienw ( 585907 ) <alienw.slashdotNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @09:32AM (#6614440)
      Why don't you people get a clue first? No underlying Mono infrastructure is threatened by patents, since ECMA requires that all patents be licensed at no charge, and .Net is standardized with them. There are a few pieces which could potentially be patented, but their removal would not significantly harm Mono. If Microsoft still hasn't sued the Wine project, there's a very slim chance they could sue Mono.

      Your other side of the argument is basically the "not invented here" thing. If Microsoft invented it, it must be bad for free software. It's not like Microsoft can force Mono to change its ways, so I fail to see your point. Mono is not a Wine clone, it's a development framework for Linux, one that could potentially be very useful for writing portable software.

      I don't see anyone here bitching about Java, even though it's also a similar, proprietary technology controlled by one party -- Sun. Hell, I would say that Linux is more of a threat to Sun than Microsoft. So why isn't Java a threat to Linux?
      • The whole point of .Net on Linux (in my opinion) is interoperability. However, at least two of the key technologies (Windows Forms and Web Forms) are not part of the ECMA standard. They are owned (patented? copyrighted? not sure which) by Microsoft.

        The "underlying Mono infrastructure" in itself is of little interest, other than possibly as some sort of "neat" technology.

        This is like saying that Java runs on every platform except for swing only works on Solaris.

        Microsoft may not have sued Wine (who sh
      • Java is a threat to Linux. At least, according to Stallman. When I talked to him personally, I asked what is the equivalent to the KDE issue today. He answered in a second: Java. He thinks that anyone that writes Java code and make it free software should only use classes avaliable on Kaffe, and not those that are only on Sun's JVM.

      • Who marked this insightful, when it is wrong?

        ECMA only requires RAND, which means almost nothing in real terms.

        In some cases, Microsoft and others have said "royalty-free", which is still clearly not GPLable and does not seem to extend much beyond a very basic core of C#, which I believe is far less than you get with a Java distribution, for example.

        On the reference implementations I find mention of the mplementations being limited to "non-commercial" uses.

        I complain about Java's lack of openness all th

      • Quote from Steve Ballmer: Responding to questions about the opening-up of the .NET framework, Ballmer announced that there would certainly be a "Common Language Runtime Implementation" for Unix, but then explained that this development would be limited to a subset, which was "intended only for academic use". Ballmer rejected speculations about support for free .NET implementationens such as Mono: "We have invested so many millions in .NET, we have so many patents on .NET, which we want to cultivate."

        You [ffii.org]

    • by letting fear of Microsoft dictate what you think people should and should not build.

      You're yielding, not those building Mono.

      • You Mean ... (Score:2, Troll)

        by FreeUser ( 11483 )
        If anyone is "ceding authority" it is you ... by letting fear of Microsoft dictate what you think people should and should not build.

        You mean, like the way a motorist cedes authority to a precipice they drive along, by chosing not driving over the edge?

        Microsoft has a history of bullying tactics and abuse of their monopoly to shut down competitors, even small upstarts who pose no real immediate threat. They have a history of moving development targets and changing standards with little or no warning (a
        • Mono isn't akin "driving off a precipice".

          At the very most your scenario of Microsoft atacking Mono is nothing more than a possibility. (It's also not a possibility that people are blind to. The approach of the Mono team to potential IP related problems seems completely sensible).

          So perhaps it's akin to driving along the edge of a precipice. I've driven up my fair share of mountains and perhaps it is a bit more dangerous than a trip down to the local shops but sometimes the place you want to go to hap
    • And therein lies the fatal flaw in pushing a Microsoft-controlled (and possibly patented) standard on a free platform ...

      You mean ECMA. Not Microsoft controlled. Guaranteed royalty free.

      Indeed, were the GNU/Linux desktop and server implimentations to fully embrace it, Linux servers and desktops could well put themselves in the position of existing solely at the pleasure of Microsoft ... which would be a fleeting thing at best.

      Indeed, my ass. Does that mean that Bjarne Stroustrup can call to term th

      • Re:This is why Mono is such a bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Malcontent ( 40834 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @12:10PM (#6615800)
        Interesting that the PRO MS posts on this thread are all modded up the wazoo even when they are factually incorrect.

        1) ECMA requires RAND not "free and clear"
        2) MS controls patents on ado.net and forms and many other parts of .NET
        3) MS has publicly said that they will enforce their property rights when it comes to .NET.
        4) MS sues businesses all the time.
        5) Giving away .0001% of your income does not make you good and neither does it undo all the evil things you have done in the past. Especially if you got the money in an evil way in the first place.
      • In Colombia very often the drug barons, that make a fortune out of the misery of many other people, regularly give to good causes in their towns of origin: public services, schools, even help building the local church.

        Not surprisingly the locals normally love these criminals and more often than not are willing to do anything (and here I mean anything) in favour of their patrons.

        Draw your own analogies, it is not difficult (keep a sense of proportion, there are degrees of black here), but to say that someb
        • In Colombia very often the drug barons, that make a fortune out of the misery of many other people, regularly give to good causes in their towns of origin: public services, schools, even help building the local church.
          Comparing Microsoft to a Columbian drug lord? Right, and you think I need help with my logic.

          Draw your own analogies, it is not difficult (keep a sense of proportion, there are degrees of black here), but to say that somebody does not behave like a truly bastard in one field because he be
          • Almost every programmer in the world should thank Microsoft for pushing personal computing, because we wouldn't have a job otherwise.

            Personal computing was pushed by the Commodore PET, by Apple's II and successors and by the hundreds and thousands of companies building IBM compatible personal computers.

            And by Microsoft when they looked away when students used their pirated version of MS Works or MS Word.
            • Personal computing was pushed by the Commodore PET, by Apple's II and successors and by the hundreds and thousands of companies building IBM compatible personal computers.

              And why were the "hundreds and thousands of companies" (nice exaggeration, btw) building all of them? To run Microsoft software.

              And by Microsoft when they looked away when students used their pirated version of MS Works or MS Word.

              Nice way of discounting reality! I wish I had that power, too.

      • You do realize that Bill Gates contributes more to charities every year than 90% of the population makes in their life times?

        You mean `charities' like Planned Parenthood? Yeah, sure, support Bill Gates the baby-murderer.

  • Yay! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by donmiguel42 ( 586995 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @09:12AM (#6614332)
    "We will have an Evolution-Groupwise connector."

    They aren't going to destroy Evolution AND they're going to make it work with GroupWise. Ahh... for those of us running Novell/Linux in the academic world who are getting rather tired of Microsoft's mafia-esque licensing tactics (software assurance, anyone?), this is great news. One less major hurdle between now and a Linux desktop rollout. Yay Novell!

    • Re:Yay! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by chef_raekwon ( 411401 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @09:25AM (#6614401) Homepage
      not to mention the dent this should put into Micorsoft's low end server sales...
      (and more market share for Linux)

      who in their right mind would place a windows server in an environment, when linux(novell) is a choice?

      so what do we call this, Novell's GNU/Linux?, or Novell/GNU/Linux, GNU/Linux + Novell NDS? better yet GNU/Linux/NDS...

      • Re:Yay! (Score:2, Insightful)

        by donmiguel42 ( 586995 )
        who in their right mind would place a windows server in an environment, when linux(novell) is a choice?

        Well, we would. The masses like their M$ Office apps, and they run okay on 2000 Server boxes running Citrix Metaframe. Although this wonderful little deal may (read: probably will) give us a better way to do it.

        As far as the naming goes, my vote is for Ninix ;)

    • I think the one thing you really have to remember here is that we're talking about Novell. I'm just waiting for them to do something Galactically Stupid, like deciding to make Groupwise a Java-based-only client, or drop it entirely.

  • "the copyright thing" (Score:4, Interesting)

    by _|()|\| ( 159991 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @09:14AM (#6614342)
    And remember, we never said the copyright thing between us and SCO was over. We'll see.

    These VPs can ham it up all they want, but if they worked for me, I wouldn't let them out of the executive wash room. I'm sorry, but Novell's copyright stunt embarassed them at least as much as it did SCO. To allude to it ominously like the preview of a summer reality show is just tacky.

    • Maybe, maybe not. Remember, SCO shut Novell up by showing them a document wherein Novell assigned copyrights of certain things over to SCO. The funny thing is, Novell has no record of said documents. So who knows, maybe some sort of foul play is involved.

      Or he could just be blowing smoke :)

  • what a hypocrite (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jfinke ( 68409 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @09:22AM (#6614384) Homepage
    In a second letter between Red Hat and SCO, dated today and written by SCO chief executive Darl McBride to Red Hat's Szulik, McBride expressed surprise that Red Hat had chosen to sue. "I must say that your decision to file legal action does not seem conducive to the long-term survivability of Linux," McBride wrote.

    This coming from the company who has zero interest in the long term survivability of Linux...

  • Reread On Title... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tsali ( 594389 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @09:25AM (#6614399)
    Novell Vice Chairman on Ximian, SCO

    I'm sure it was just me, but did a first glance at this headline read sorta like "Novell Vice Chairman on Ximian *and* SCO?

    I got chills up and down, but then I read the article.

    Whew. Close one.
    • > I got chills up and down, but then I read the article.

      There's your problem. As anyone on /. knows, you should never *actually read* the articles. Next time, be sure to post before reading the articles or you will confuse all the veterans.

  • SCO Teleconference (Score:5, Informative)

    by jmkaza ( 173878 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @09:27AM (#6614412)
    This may be a bit off topic, but I didn't want to submit a story and have two SCO headlines in a row. Darl's holding a teleconference today to answer questions about the Red Hat suit. The press release is here. [cnn.com]
    Call 1 (800) 238-9007 and enter 274040 as the access code.

  • Great exposure for Linux (Score:4, Insightful)

    by lrandall ( 686021 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @09:35AM (#6614463) Homepage
    This can only be a good thing. Despite what a lot of people say, Novell has lots of customers, and most are really commited to Novell products. Thus with them starting to move to Linux, and push it to their customers, we will see a lot of corporate Novell users switching to Linux. Novell has great tools for Windows, and if they port them to Linux (seems like they plan too), it will make convincing people to use Linux that much easier. PHB's still love to pay for software, let them pay for Novell Linux

  • 10 years later (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @09:37AM (#6614479)
    I found this bit interesting:


    Microsoft Watch: Now that you are buying Ximian, will Novell offer a Linux desktop distribution?

    Stone: Yes. The plan is to package the Ximian desktop with some of our products. Specifics are yet to be determined. But we want to cover Linux from the desktop to the server.

    Ten years ago, Novell was the owner of DR-DOS, Netware, and Unixware, and had the potential to be a solutions provider for everything from the desktop, to medium sized workgroups, to enterprise scale solutions, but what did they do? They tried to compete against Lotus Smartsuite and MS Office with an office suite based on Quattro Pro and WordPerfect.

    NT wasn't even ready yet, they coulda been a contender...
    • All they had to do was to make perfect office run as a NLM. That would have been huge for corporations.

      Ray had the right idea of combining Unix and Netware. It seems like he had some sort of a vision but just couln't carry it out.

      Bad management, bad decisions, bad outcome. Predictable really.

  • IBM? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Erwos ( 553607 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @09:45AM (#6614556)
    You know, Stone's little talk reminds me of what I've heard coming out of IBM lately. I can't help but wonder if Novell took a look at IBM, decided that they've done quite well for themselves with Linux, and decided to jump ALL the way onboard too.

    Evolution-Groupwise by itself is enough for this merger to produce some great things.

    -Erwos

  • Chris Stone and Novell Linux Distributions (Score:5, Insightful)

    by alistair ( 31390 ) <[alistair] [at] [hotldap.com]> on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @09:45AM (#6614560)
    Chris Stone is an excellent guy for Novell to have as a VP, as well as being a well respected chair of the Open Group he also used to be base player for the band that became Aerosmith [panug.org] (he left 6 months before they had their first big hit).

    However, I have to wonder about the wisdom of producing yet another Linux distribution, particularly one aimed at the desktop arena. Although you may not know it from the figures, many internaional companies have already standardised on SuSE or Red Hat for their Linux vendors and the name Novell still has some bad connertations in the Corporate world.

    Much of Novells strategy today seems to be selling very high value (expensive) products based around XML and Web Services (see their Silverstream aquisition) to Fortune 500 / FTSE 100 companies. I know as an implemetor for their excellent DirXML Meta Directory in a 100,000 employee company.

    To my mind they would be better forming an alliance of the sort that SuSE and Sun announced yeterday, where Sun support and Distribute SuSE Linux and SuSE use Sun's Java in all their distributions. Novell could add their tools to SuSE and Red Hat, such as Directory Clients and Xen Works clients, concentrate on selling their servers on the SuSE and Red Hat platforms they already support and bundle SuSE and RedHat desktops for Netware customers. This would give them client penetration and server sales opportunities without having to compete with the Linux vendors. They could also leverage the relationship these vendors have with Sun and IBM who would be happy as the Novell server components also run on Solaris and (I think) AIX. Thoughts?
    • Much of Novells strategy today seems to be selling very high value (expensive) products based around XML and Web Services (see their Silverstream aquisition) to Fortune 500 / FTSE 100 companies.

      I'd say their strategy is to sell add-ons to NetWare, of which DirXML is only one example. And, of course, they license per-seat/per-client and offer incentives to pay for support contracts.

      My read is that Novell would rather control the client. In my view their Windows (& DOS) clients have always tried to "ta

      • Re:Chris Stone and Novell Linux Distributions (Score:4, Informative)

        by Red Rocket ( 473003 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @11:14AM (#6615221)

        My read is that Novell would rather control the client. In my view their Windows (& DOS) clients have always tried to "take over" the client machine and duke it out with Windows rather than peacefully coexist with it. That's my personal bias from years of Novell clients on Win boxen, though. (Windows is far from blame itself.)
        That is a backwards reading of how things happened. When DOS and Windows were just desktop OSes, there was no other network client on the box for the NetWare client to "duke it out" with, so there was no conflict. When Microsoft decided to destroy Novell they began introducing dirty tricks into Windows to hamper the Novell client. One example is the NT GINA (the gizmo that asks for your login credentials on boot-up) which will only pass credentials on to the Microsoft networking client. In order for the Novell client to get a login, they had to replace the GINA. While this appears to be a "take over", it's actually their only choice if they want the client to work without asking the user to reenter their credentials (and then everyone would bitch about how clunky that was.) The Novell GINA is egalitarian in that it passes credentials on to all clients on the box. The "take over" line is FUD.

        I just had an odd thought. You've seen the available Java GUI on the NetWare console, right? I wonder if they'll try to make that the Linux client desktop? . . . Nahhh, they aren't that crazy.
        That would be kind of silly since they just bought Ximian. The Java GUI was just a quick-and-dirty implementation used to impress the PHBs. I don't know anyone who actually uses it unless they have to (like during the install). It's for people who say, "Man, that Ferrari is really nice...except it doesn't have an automatic transmission."

        Ain't skeerd (of a command line)
        • Oops. I meant to say something in the spirit of "Windows is far from blameless itself" since I know Windows makes life difficult on successful Windows software vendors when trying to take over their innovations. I didn't know the details but was pretty sure Windows was hostile to Novell clients. Instead I goofed up the statement and made it sound like I was promoting MS. I feel ill now.

          Okay, my Java GUI comment was stupid, too. It's just one of those things that popped in my head while typing, and Novell s
    • Perhaps they will just use United Linux and leave the technical heavy lifting up to SuSE. Sun eventually got the clue in this regard, after trying and failing with their own gratuitous distro.

    • I doubt if Novell would actually evangelize a new distro. They're more likely to create one that works seamlessly with their server and directory software and include it with those products. That would grease the path of Linux into the corporate environment without precluding the use of other distros. Novell would effectively be saying, "You want to use Linux? Here, we'll make it easy for you. Want to use a different distro? Knock yourselves out, it's a free country and an open OS. More power to ya." It's a

  • For another perspective (Score:5, Informative)

    by wahgnube ( 557787 ) <slashtrash@wahgnube.org> on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @11:06AM (#6615157) Homepage Journal
    Check out this phone interview [osnews.com] with Miguel [ximian.com] on OSNews.com [osnews.com].

    Seems like all is well, for now anyway.

  • Maybe it's time to fork the code in case what Novell plans does not run well with the regular users of Ximian.

    Their plans only talked about bundled versions with novell's products noting about any standalone versions.

    We'll have to wait for the announcements at linuxworld I guess.

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