Novell today announced it will acquire SuSE, one of the leading enterprise Linux companies, expanding Novell’s ability to provide enterprise-class services and support on the Linux platform. With the open source expertise of SuSE Linux and Novell’s world-class networking and identity solutions and support, training and consulting services, Novell will be able to deliver Linux and all its components –- from the server to the desktop. Press release can be found here. This isn’t the first news of these companies interoperating. Update: C|Net News has a nice round-up article on it too.
Novell to Acquire SuSE
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Now this is some news. I knew Novell were thinking of rolling there own distro. but actually buying SuSe :-O
Watch out Redhat!
First Microsoft goes IBM, then Red Hat drops Linux distribution support, and Now Novell to Acquire Suse.
Next Bill Gates is the next Dalai Lama…
A tad bit off topic, but SuSE has always been a KDE-centric Distro. Ximian, obviously, is Gnome-Centric. It will be interesting to see what happens when all is said and done.
This is big news for linux on the corporate desktop. Imagine the potential of eDirectory + Mono + Ximian patched OO.org + YasT…
Things are going to get really interesting in the corporate desktop arena
When IBM anounced years ago that there’s a official suport to Linux, we think we where got a revenge for they stolen OS code those became know as Microsoft Windows. Isn’t true. But now we see a new chance to costumers and developers got better inovations in software. Without a competition any bussines in the world can be freezed in time, like Windows, with no relevant inovations at all. Linux was a water division, but its revolution was a little slow. I mean to the final end costumers. Sure Linux, BSD, Unixes, perhaps MacOS aren’t competitors to the giant MS, but we really think a reborned Novell will make diference for better.
Now all we need is IBM to declare all of it’s IP under the GPL including UNIX, after they buy out the SCO. Than the distro’s have to invent some kind of system that is centered around learning where the most experienced and the best people are provided with resources.
SuSE
This is great news! Now Novell can build their service directly on top of Linux and have all the resources they need to do this right! Amazing, an incredible network solution on top of a very powerful and advanced Operating System with a great software development group, Ximian, as well. This combination could be deadly, I wonder if they will capatilize on it or destroy it through weak execution. Only time will tell….
world going mad…
I wonder if Xandros saw this coming. They were the only other serious company aiming squarely at the corporate desktop. Especially considering Xandros Server and Xandros Desktop 2.0 are due out soon.
Mmmm, this should be interesting…. They have a fight on their hands.
true true
Apple will aquire Lindows, port it to PPC and install it on xbox’s.
I am not optimistic given this company’s history of turning gold into lead.
Well, well. I guess Novell finally figured out that in order for them to survive, they needed to go whole hog into linux.
This is the second good acquisition that they have made, after ximian. Cheap too.
just kidding,
but imagine about it,
Novell+Borland .. they have everything from group up (in software), from network infrastructure, os, app servers, desktops (that can work with MS) and great development tools (that can work with both Linux/Windows, Java/.NET)!!
..it will just like the IBM without hardware things!
Good news for GNU/Linux, but sad for KDE because I think you will see a move away from KDE. Also I doubt SuSE will continue to support KDE with programmers and resources.
I also doubt the german government will be behind SuSE as much now, I mean SuSE becomes a company owned by an American Company, at least one that is traded in the U.S.
This is not a good news regarding European innovation
Yep, I agree. Borland would be another great acquisition. I don’t know what it’s worth at this point, but that would be another smart move, for just the reasons you outline.
Bt why stop there? Why not purchase Corel as well? That way, you can provide a broad spectrum of applications to businesses: Network infrastructure, OS, apps, servers, desktops, office suite…..
Of course, then Novell becomes Sun version 2.0 or Microsoft “Open Source”.
Still, I think that that’s the way to go, long term. Most businesses want to just pick up the phone and say: “I need 300 workstations and a network infrastructure that can enable my e-commerce/crm/web based widget team get the job done.”
They’d much rather go to one vendor and lock in a long-term service contract then go the nickel and dime route with 5 or 6 seperate vendors.
Novell-Keep buying!
I think novell is going to split their linux desktop offerings… xandros might go to home while suse is hitting up the corp world… just a guess…. in anycase its getting very intesting…
hey think about this…. novell will be part of united linux… i wonder what they think about their new business partners… sco for example…
i’m not convonced of the sincerity of Novell. remember their “Linux is immature” comments.
they are not in this for linux. suse, redhat and others largely are in this to make a profit around linux. i don’t think novell are – they will drop it as soon as it appears that linux is no longer profitable. i’m sure redhat could make more money selling paper caps… but they don’t. novell might.
“i’m not convonced of the sincerity of Novell. remember their “Linux is immature” comments.
they are not in this for linux. suse, redhat and others largely are in this to make a profit around linux. i don’t think novell are – they will drop it as soon as it appears that linux is no longer profitable.”
No commercian company is in it for Linux, including Red Hat, SuSE, etc. All of them are in it to make money.
This was a good move on Novell’s part. Basiclally, Netware is a dying platform. It’s day has come and gone. The discussion these days is all about whether Linux or Windows 2003 will dominate the corporate server arena. No one ever talks about whether Netware will dominate the corporate server arena.
Novell’s purhase of SuSE is a good business decision that will allow Novell to adapt to the changing IT market. And it is also good for Linux because once again, ir provides the corporate credibility that Linux so desperately needs, and has a hard time getting because of its origins and some of the history behind it.
Following RedHat’s lead, I have a feeling Novell is going to kill the SuSE distribution for home users. The boxed set will be nixed or maintained by enthusiasts who will call it “Geeko Linux” or something like that.
What will happen to kde???!!!
I wanted to cry when I read this announcement this morning. I think its a load of crap and I think SUSE was stupid to even let Novell talk about a buyout. I was a full fledged SUSE supporter but as one poster stated, Novell has a long history of flopping out an now they will take the greatest Linux technology in the world and destroy it. I for one will be looking for alternatives even if it means Windows, I just dont care anymore. They have until January and if Im not impressed, Hello Longhorn, Open Source software will run just as good on Windows as it does on Linux.
Well, I did not see this one coming.
I wonder if it is good or bad for Linux in general. Of course Linux will get even more credibility in the corporate sector but will it benefit the home user?
After IBM, Red Hat and Sun there is now a fourth big player aiming for corporate servers and workstations. SUSE always aimed at both the corporate as well as the private sector. What will happen to the SUSE Linux Distribution now. Will SUSE 9.0 be the end of a great era?
Without a Red Hat or SUSE distro, more home users will switch to Mandrake or possibly even Lindows/Lycoris/Xandros.
For the geeks there will always be Gentoo, Debian and Slackware of course.
That would be terribly stupid, considering that one of its competitors exited the market just now. If we take into account that they have been able to offer a retail solution without having quite as large of a backing as they do now, it is clear that Suse has gone from strength to strength.
And guess what, if Suse exits, that’s fine. There will be Mandrake. And if Mandrake exists, that’s fine, there will be a commercial debian to take their place.
That’s the beauty of Linux, an operating system that has returned freedom to its users, freedom to tinker, to understand and learn, and has brought competitiveness to the marketplace.
Fist I`ll start saying this will be a long post:
This can be very god as a matter of fact, let me first use that as a basis for my post. Novell and Suse can bring alot to linux. Novell have a lot of large companies who have used them for a long time. Nokia, fortune 100 etc. What can Novell bring to linux? Well they have ximian (not going to list it all here) They will have a easy GUI based set of tools to get linux into the enterprice. Remeber that not all MS IT departments are very god at anything else than GUI based tools! And there are a lot of em out there. Ximian/Novell might go for Gnome since, well Ximian is built for Gnome. However the possision they now get will shurly get KDE or Novell to have KDE/Gnome as a ONE project. By this I mean I hate/love to have 2 major desktops to choose from, however inst em bout on a corperate network is a pain. Different ways of doing things. What I`d like to se is a merge of these to- to be able to work togetter on the tools/settings for the user, however have the posibbilty to choose wich GUI to use! Theme or whatever you wanna call it. I personally use windowsmaker, but can you se a corperate firm implemnting that? Linux needs a player like Novell to give us all the tools, to have KDE and Gnome to work more as one, fist then will there be standards and still choice. What`s the pros and cons:
Pros: Linux will be a more serouis choice for businesses because more gui admin,better stability (if KDE and Gnome work more closly) A standard to develop apps for that gui. Home users can still make/build/fiddle on their own- businesses don`t want/need this. There will be alot of other options if one don`t want this (home user). As one KDE/Gnome can work more closly with Xfree to close bugs.
Cons: Linux might be to standard, well it`s still opensource, Novell might have to much power.(Don`t think Debian nor Redhat will go under though).
A little note at the end:
Novell might just have the power to also make linux so frendly to fit on my mom`s computer and give that away for free! Novell might also have the money to make the LSB (Linux Standards Base) come through sooner, wich will bring Debian/Suse/Redhat etc more as one migty giant to bring MS down for god! As more snadards come into the scene- we`ll se alot more god comming out of this, cause standards don`t have all the different distros make their own verion of the wheel again and again.
KDE’s KIOSK mode seems to make it a better option for corporate environments. Also, why should Novell care about GTK vs QT when they can’t possibly care about QT’s licensing model.
Mono will have QT.net so that is not a consideration. Who knows maybe Novell bought Ximian for Mono and bought SuSE for the corporate desktop. On merits I find it hard to believe anyone can say that Gnome is in a better position right now to provide a corp. desktop than KDE.
This is a great opportunity to see Linux really grow. Novell offers the following which will make implimenting Linux even easier than before:
eDirectory (NDS) – mature, stable, and easier to deploy than OpenLDAP.
GroupWise – mature, stable groupware application with a fully functioned java based client that runs on Linux, Windows, & OSX
RedCarpet – working off of their experience with ZenWorks this will be sure to be a superior method of Linux administration both on the server and desktop
Novell file and print services – they do this better than anyone
The list keeps going, but you can read it for yourself on the Novell website.
With the combination of Novell, SuSE and Ximian, Microsoft are really going to have to deliver with Longhorn when it comes out in a few years time.
Think of it: what should a business go for? Novell, with its reputation of delivering very good business solutions and good support and an existing, mature product with a proven track record, or for an MS that is still in alpha?
No flames intended, but MS has promised a lot in the past, and maybe business people in 2005/2006 will not want to hear any more hype, but would rather go with something “standard”.
Does this mean that Linux is ready for the enterprise if not the desktop?
(btw – Novell stock has risen 45% in less than 1 hour)
” for one will be looking for alternatives even if it means Windows, I just dont care anymore.”
Well, there is always FreeBSD. Still is, and always has been free. No “Enterprise $1,000 per year: edition, etc. That’s one reason I moved to FreeBSD. I just got sick of all the politics, corporate buyouts, and product discontinuations in Linux in favor of licensed, overpriced enterprise products. I didn’t like having to change distros because, for example, Red Hat decided to tell the home user to go to hell and instead, focus exclusively on the enterprise market.
FreeBSD has never had that problem.
I said it when the rumoue about this was about a wee while back and I think this is fabulous.
Novell networking, Linux desktop backends, Ximian or Ximian useability experience brought to bear on KDE (which I think needs it) GUI, Mono application server backend… what a mix.
And yeah if they could pick up Borland (and really that shouldn’t cost more than a large fries and coke) they would have just about a complete end-to-end business service. Given the open source nature of large chunks of that organisation I can’t see anything but benefit to linux as a whole and competition in the corporate world as a whole.
I am betting that Sun will be a bit taken aback by this move given their recent commitment to linux (such as it is) on the desktop.
Fingers crossed but in prospect this could be fabulous.
“I wonder if it is good or bad for Linux in general. Of course Linux will get even more credibility in the corporate sector but will it benefit the home user?”
Nobody cares about the home user. No commercial Linux company can make money caring about the home user. The market is too small. And the average home user who uses Linux is a hobbiest who is technically savvy enough that they are going to download and burn their own CD, not pay $80 for it.
Most commericial software companies have pretty much relegated the desktop market to Microsoft and have focused on corporate markets. This is especially true with Linux. Why? Because the GPL forbids you from selling a Linux distribution. You can only sell support for that Linux distribution. The problem is that home users generally don’t buy support contracts. So if you are a commercial Linux company, you make money by selling a several thousand dollar per year support contract that has immediate call answering, etc.
I think this will give Linux more traction, credebility and strength. I beleive that this will pour more money into R&D into the kernel will push Linux more into the future.
I *really* wish I could have seen Bill Gates’ / Steve Ballmers face when they heard this news!
http://www.amex.com/?href=/equities/nasdaqUTP/NqSingle.jsp?symbol=N…
Funny, I run my gentoo box here with no cost at all, oh, what I see here, no, not a Debian box free of charge?
Seriously, Linux is as free as FreeBSD. It’s not because some company sell Linux solution that Linux is not free anymore.
If you stick with free distribution from the start ( Debian, gentoo, Slackware, etc ), you will have no problem.
“Because the GPL forbids you from selling a Linux distribution. You can only sell support for that Linux distribution.”
Not true. You can charge what you like for a Linux distro. You just have to make the source code available upon request.
“Nobody cares about the home user.”
Except for all those games companies. What’s the games market worth these days? How many $billions? Besides, MS made a fair bit of cash from the home market.
I think it will be good for both business and home/end user.
Novell as a name is recognized in the US. SUSE, not really. So brand is already in place.
I think it’s good all the way around. Really bumps up Linux a notch with all segments of the market. Now m$ has two major commercial competitors to fend off.
The only remaining question is wether Novell will ‘free’ the software as downloads or will it all be pay as you go. My guess paid only.
tb
“Not true. You can charge what you like for a Linux distro. You just have to make the source code available upon request.”
That’s not what I get from reading the GPL. What I get is that you can only charge for the cost of the media, materials, packaging, etc. You can, however, sell a warranty with the software.
“Except for all those games companies. What’s the games market worth these days? How many $billions? Besides, MS made a fair bit of cash from the home market.”
Yeah. But I am talking specifically about OS vendors here. There simply isn’t any money to be made in the OS market for the home desktop unless you are Microsoft. If any company ever had a chance of succeeding on the home desktop, it was BeOS. And they failed. Other companies learned from that.
Will you people finally stop repeating that stuff about the gov? — They have no investment into it.
“If you stick with free distribution from the start ( Debian, gentoo, Slackware, etc ), you will have no problem.”
True. I did look into those as well. But I had two problems.
Debian: The technology always tends to lake behind the other distros. Example, Debian was still on kernel 2.2 many many months after other distros had gone to 2.4.
Slackware: I don’t have time to deal with the fact that it doesn’t have package management, and also with the fact that Slackware’s idea of an upgrade system is to clean off the old OS and reinstall.
Debian is OK. I just prefer FreeBSD because I can always be up to date on the technology.
“That’s not what I get from reading the GPL. What I get is that you can only charge for the cost of the media, materials, packaging, etc. You can, however, sell a warranty with the software. ”
That’s for access to the source code – someone distributing GPL’d software to a third party can only charge a reasonable amount to the requester.
(from the FSF’s GPL FAQ): “Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.) ”
You can make your own distro and charge $1 trillion if you wished. Of course, noone would buy it, but you have the right to do so!
@AndrewG:
You may think that KDE is better for the corporate desktop because of Kiosk. But it’s not legally speaking in the US at least, because it isn’t Section 508 Compliant, while Gnome 2.4 assuredly is. Accessibility is far more important at the moment legally speaking of course. KDE only has the mere beginnings of this…
That`s the debian/redhat/suse`s way when it comes to servers- use “old” known to work software, debian also have a 2.4 kernel etc and backports. And would you run new frech off the press Mandrake or debian`s tested for 1.5 years+ packages?
“That’s for access to the source code – someone distributing GPL’d software to a third party can only charge a reasonable amount to the requester.”
Ah… Your right. I just re-read it. I missed that the paragraph talking about that a subparagraph of paragraph 1 which talks about access to source code.
Thanks, I was not ware of the accessibility stuff.
look at sco…$699 a seat.
so to anonymous coward…download fedora…rebadge it…sell it for $3000/box.
doesn’t mean anyone has to buy it….
Nobody cares about the home user. No commercial Linux company can make money caring about the home user. The market is too small. And the average home user who uses Linux is a hobbiest who is technically savvy enough that they are going to download and burn their own CD, not pay $80 for it.
This is a “Which came first” scenario. They need to care about the home user. What people use at home determines what they will use at work for the most part. In more and more companies the IT departments make recommendations, but it is the end user that determines what software, including the OS, they will be using for thier job. System Administrators are no longer the ones who decide for the most part. On the server side yes, but on the desktop, no. That is why the home market is important. Even when presented with the cost savings of going to Linux, the powers that be in organizations generally say no, as it will not run the software they use at home, mainly entertainment software, such as games. Gaming was the primary item that prevented Apple from taking off, as most games were developed strictly for the IBM PC. In all th ethreads this is always discounted as rubbish, but if you ask people why they did not go with a Mac back then, the answer will be “There were no games for it”. Now there is more software for Macs and they are holding with a small percentage of 4% of the desktop market. Businesses only use them for graphics mostly, not for general desktop use. Obviouisly this is just my opinion, but one that has been formulated over many years.
I need to get this straight. If Novell is the original owner of UNIX, then what happens to the SCO and the “stollen code” claim if Novell says its really our code and we want it in there — the linux kernel?
?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ?
German Linux Enginiering at it’s best.
Yeah, SuSE ruls. You bet. It’s gonna kig ass. Go a way, you red hat loosers. We come to compete (or is it kompete now
. So it’s day of a celebration. We all love it hurray hurray hurray. You seized my day.
Hungokack
I hope Novell does not destroy SUSE with their software licensing scheme. Is Novell headed in the direction to become another Microsoft?
“I need to get this straight. If Novell is the original owner of UNIX, then what happens to the SCO and the “stollen code” claim if Novell says its really our code and we want it in there — the linux kernel?”
Novell is no longer the owner of UNIX though, so Novell has no vested interest in SCO’s lawsuit. If by some chance, SCO would win, Novell would be bound by the terms of the ruling just as the other Linux vendors would be.
Actually, I am quite sad about it. Most of comments at the German news pages I read (heise.de prolinux.de golem.de) are quite sceptical, too. It is seen as a buyout of one the most successful German Linux distro to a US corporation. Most people are already waiting for the day when Novell drops out Linux or turns Novell “Linux” – filled with proprietary programs – into a quasi-standard-vendor lock in.
I hope we sceptics are wrong and it’s just our hurt pseudo-national pride, though.
You should remember that at one time Novell was king of the hill in the pc server market. I don’t think that they will destroy SUSE, but rather make it better by offering those solutions that SUSE as of yet cannot offer, ie. directory services integrated with groupware, desktop management, single sign-on, portal service etc…
As for licensing, if you want the ease of use, corprate backing, and integration for the high end services you will have to pay for those. If you don’t mind putting in the extra work and have the skills, I am sure you will still be able to pickup some version of SUSE for free and if not, use one of the many other distros and use the vast range of open source solutions.
“Most people are already waiting for the day when Novell drops out Linux or turns Novell “Linux” – filled with proprietary programs – into a quasi-standard-vendor lock in.”
Very Good Point!
linux companies are running from the consumer segment like it is an infectuous disease = big time opportunity for apple, openbeos, and zeta.
I hope openbeos learns from this and adjusts their offering to include less complex operation, less fragmentaion (none is preferable) and support for a business model that will encourage consumer use and sales.
the idea that the consumer market is small is ludicrous. Its a pain in the rear from a support perspective but small it is not.
zeta should thank redhat and suse for making their commercial software a more viable alternative for schools and home users.
Everyone is so skeptical!
Novell had, and still has, if you ask me, the best NOS out there. As they port NDS to Linux and get NetWare running on a Linux kernel, and then create their own desktop identity, we may see a real full fledged alternative to Microsoft. How is this a bad thing?
SuSE has been fantastic, but does anyone think they could ultimately accomplish what Novell can?
Am I the only one both excited by this news, and at the same time, worried that this could end up like the Word Perfect Suite?
I suppose, to my knowledge, the CEO of Novell has changed since those days.
I really hope they are successful with this. We are starting to see a mounting offensive against the bully of the software industry (i.e. Microsoft). Novell and IBM teaming up behind this is going to make something happen. And that’s not even considering Sun and RedHat, which have plenty of resources as well.
I guarantee it’s only going to get more interesting from here on out folks.
linux companies are running from the consumer segment like it is an infectuous disease = big time opportunity for apple, openbeos, and zeta.
That’s not entirely true. The big Linux companies are running away. Take Xandros, Libranet, Lindows, Mandrake for example. They are “stayers”.
No, you are not. The sceptics mostly haven’t posted here.
I’m a little late to this forum, but I just wanted to say that I purchased suse 9.0 yesterday. This is the first linux distro I have ever bought, and so far I love it.
They would have to get WordPerfect back from Corel. You know, another Linux vendor that tossed their Linux distro into /dev/nul/.
http://boston.internet.com/news/article.php/3103951
Novell also announced a $50 million stock investment from technology giant IBM
http://www.ciol.com/content/news/2003/103101409.asp
Novell is betting heavily on open source software. We are committed to open source because we believe that it offers freedom of choice to customers.
http://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/2003/05/pr03033.html
Novell is an ardent supporter of Linux and the open source development community. … It was in this context that we recently received your “Letter to Linux Customers.” Many Novell business partners and customers apparently received the same letter. Your letter compels a response from Novell.
Importantly, and contrary to SCO’s assertions, SCO is not the owner of the UNIX copyrights. Not only would a quick check of U.S. Copyright Office records reveal this fact, but a review of the asset transfer agreement between Novell and SCO confirms it.
Funny, I run my gentoo box here with no cost at all, oh, what I see here, no, not a Debian box free of charge?
Seriously, Linux is as free as FreeBSD. It’s not because some company sell Linux solution that Linux is not free anymore.
If you stick with free distribution from the start ( Debian, gentoo, Slackware, etc ), you will have no problem.
Hey, Guess what… Free doesn’t mean at no cost when people with a clue talk about the GPL/ BSD license. It means freedom, free to look at the source, free to redistribute the source, free to sell the source, free to sell the binarys (as long as you keep to the clauses of the license’s, that being “People who make binarys from GPL software must also make the source for that software available too”, and “Keep our BSD notices in the software”
Note: grossly simplified, but hell, some people need a small amount of education at least!
re: Novell + Linux – SCO = ?
Thanks, bagdadbob! This answers my earlier question and stirs the imagination.
Because the GPL forbids you from selling a Linux distribution.
This is completely untrue. The FSF specifically states the contrary on its web site:
“Does the GPL allow me to sell copies of the program for money?
Yes, the GPL allows everyone to do this. The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software. Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.)“
And all this time I was hoping Novell would just vanish.. now they’re going to take SuSE with them.. *sigh*
“Good-bye scare-crow.. Good-bye Chocolate-mous, I’m going to miss you most of all.. “
“Hey, Guess what… Free doesn’t mean at no cost when people with a clue talk about the GPL/ BSD license.”
People with a clue also know that in the corporate world, everything is related to cost. So in this arean, yes, free does mean “no cost”. Corporations don’t care about open source. They care about the bottom line. So yes, it is all about money if Linux wants to play with the big boys.
“This is completely untrue. The FSF specifically states the contrary on its web site:”
And if you had read my followup comment, you would see that I had already corrected myself. I didn’t realize that the paragraph talking about that was a subparagraph of a paragraph dealing with source code.
I just want to know how this will effect Ximian Gnome and whether SUSE will switch to Gnome.
Sorry, I somehow had the feeling that I was at the end of the thread. I subsequently read your correction but there was no way to edit my post…
This sucks. I hope Novell will tell us whether or not they’re behind KDE or not.
Some think that this is the end of European innovation or that all the innovation has happened in America. Well with open soruce technology there is an opportunity to create a system of learning, in which innovation is can come from anywhere through co-operation.
I think that we can learn something from FIDE where they rank international competitors through a points system. That would be cool if there was a system of learning where individual programmers were ranked.
The deal is a great news in the Linux community, but the game is not over yet, I heard from reliable sources that Oracle is working on a deal to acquire Redhat too. so Novell will not be the only $1 billion Linux distro for too long, because Oracle is worth billions too.
Maybe this is payback for DaimlerBenz swallowing up Chrysler Corp. (small joke) Seriously, though, I just hope Novell doesn’t start gutting the product line like Daimler did. I use SUSE at home and I’d hate to see that distro go away.
Apple should have purchased a linux distro instead of NEXT! They are missing the boat once again! They have the best UNIX desktop yet still are not taken seriously. OSX is REALLY GOOD! They should create a gui for Redhat.
Novell ignoring their intellectual property claims, IBM investing in Novell. I mean don’t these companies to SCO seriously.
Iy you were worried a CIO worried about the SCO lawsuit, I think you would probably increasingly less concerned. With these announcements of major companies investing so heavily in Linux despite SCO, Linux continuing to gain market share.
I think we’ll see another SCO press release tomorrow.
I predict that Novell will buy Trolltech. Just like Sun should have.
KDE is far more mature as an application framework and SuSE has so much invested in Qt for its admin tools and also its proprietary offerings.
I think Novell bought Ximian for Mono, solely.
and both Ximian and SuSE’s products..
I think you’re quite likely to see this:
1. SuSE’s main distro for the desktop/home market, running SuSE’s conventional KDE desktop on SuSE’s distro. This is EXTREMELY critical for Novell, because the last time they tried to battle Microsoft, they did not have a desktop for the home market, and lost big time. SuSE makes a pretty polished distro that, with further development, could be quite good for home users.
2. Ximian’s XD2 for the enterprise/buisness market, running GNOME on top of a SuSE distro. Also critical for Novell. They must compete with RedHat here, and potentially subvert it through Ximian XD2, which also runs on RedHat. I’m not sure if there is a future of XD2 for RedHat though. They’ll have a combo of Evolution and XD2 nonetheless here, it’s really targetted at this market.
3. SuSE’s server oriented distro for the server market, running their conventional KDE desktop on SuSE’s server distro, with YaST2 and KIOSK, which are SuSE’s great server tools.
Both SuSE’s and Ximian’s technology is going to be key to Novell’s future. They wouldn’t have bought both companies if they hadn’t though so. There really isn’t a need to worry in either desktop’s camp, in fact, Novell was trying to buy SuSE even before they bought Ximian, but the deals feel through several times.
http://dot.kde.org/1067849710/1067961074/1067963033/
It’s a comment from SuSE/Novell developer and kde hacker Waldo Bastian
The major European OS has become US property. US is not
a safe area for software development because of uncontroled IP
laws.
DG
If Novell only bought Ximian for Mono, they should open source the Connector and move Evolution development out of NXS and into the ether.
Mark my words: these developments (Novell+Suse+Ximian+Mono) will accelerate the adoption of Linux as a viable dektop alternative to Windows in the next few years. Linux today might be at 75% (give or take) of Windows’ strength or eye-candyness, but it will make a quantum leap in the next few years to come. The good news for consumers is: cheaper Windows’ products; it’s currently cheaper by $50-$100, but imagine Windows OS retailing for $50 (with a generous license to install it upto 5 computers/laptops) in a few years. Finally, no more monopoly.
.. in the market as they are. Everybody calm.
Through UnitedLinux.
I think you’re right. I wonder what impact Novells acquisition of SUSE has on Trolltech. I have not seen a comment from Trolltech yet. Neither from SUN. Maybe SUN’s desktop will include KDE?
I agree. Novell is a company that never seems to be able to make up its mind nor follow through on a lot of things. They already had Unix and they blew that opportunity, sold it a for a loss. Now they’re trying their hand at Linux? They want to overcharge us for XDE.
Somebody should have bought them and dismantled the whole corporation. They’re losers in the software industry.
I don’t know how you can consider a company that has a complete solution, available today, that allows you to integrate and manage security on Netware, Linux, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, and Windows a loser when it comes to writing software.
They may have made some poor business decisions in the past, but when it comes to writing software they are anything but losers.
Well, companies have been seducing Windows users to jump to their free versions and thus, created a bigger mindshare and extended their userbase… Now, one by one, they are kissing us goodbye… they have every right to do it, but I still don’t like it.
I’m not at all sure this is a good thing. I hope it is but a previous writer’s comment struck home with me. He said something like, Novell has a knack for turning gold into lead.
Boy! That would top it all. Debian here I come. There will always be a place for people who like good software.
Sounds perfect. Too much the best couple to put together. If Novell takes some user-wisdom from GNOME/Ximian and market-wisdom from SuSE we’ll have the best thing to run on.
My God.
It’s always the same here and on /. … the participants always focus on the failures and never on the successes.
Their acquisition of Perfect Office wasn’t a loss — Groupwise came from it directly and they have made mountains of money with this product already. It is the best groupware solution on the market, PERIOD. Not exactly a prime example of ‘turning lead into gold’ is it?
The Unixware fiasco was from a different era, a different CEO and a different focus. GIVE IT UP ALREADY.
eDirectory is mint. Netware itself beats Windows 2003 and Linux in the enterprise where it counts (security), is only second to Linux in stability and nobody can match its features. ZENworks is the ultimate desktop management solution, Bordermanager is a decent firewall, Groupwise can handle all your Groupware needs AND MORE, their Intranet and Internet applications (DirXML, iChain, Portal Services, Certificate Server) are damn good too. Novell is a successful company with a successful track record. If they were not they would have gone out of business years ago.
The only reason Windows has taken their market share away from them is twofold: application support and MARKETING.
Netware does NOT run on top of DOS, IPX is NOT the primary (or only) protocol that Netware supports, Novell is NOT going anywhere anytime soon and, contrary to popular belief, will NOT spell the end for SUSE Linux.
Other fears to put to rest: KDE will still be alive and well in SUSE Linux, at least according to Novell’s management team (heard during the conference call earlier today) and they will still be involved with United Linux.
Jim
<edit>
End of 3rd paragraph should state ‘turning gold into lead’ not ‘turning lead into gold’
</edit>
Sorry.
This is a great move by Novell. If we stack up what they have so far, they can create an end to end solution which can compete with Microsoft head to head.
Sharepoint is based on the .NET framework and allows Office to hook into it. What do we have on the Novell front? Mono + OpenOffice.org + Evolution 1.4 + Interface Tweaks. Active Directory is definately out paced by eDirectory/NDS, Groupwise can replace Exchange and with the Evolution Groupwise plugin, there is no longer any need to wait for a Groupwise client for *NIX/*BSD which has evolution available.
I am sure people here can come up with more comparisions, however, some have bought up Novells legacy of turning Gold into lead. Sure, in the past they have, however, compared to what stuff ups SUN has done, I have alot more confidence in Novell.
Just look at SUN’s buy out of Cobalt, had they bought it out and let it run as a side operation, allowing it to dictate how they wanted to sell their servers, we would today have a vibrant SUN subsidary. What did SUN do? they tried to ram their sales model down Cobalt and basically killed off the reseller network and isolated themselves from the customer base.
The customer base who bought Cobalt Cube were not Fortune 500 companies, they were Mum and Dad small business. The problem with SUN is that they suffer from IBM’isms, the most notable, “if you aren’t going to spend a million on SUN equipment, piss off!”. SUN is a perfect example of turning Gold to lead and continues to do it to this day. Stumbling from one balls up to another with no coherient stratergy to not only exist but to grow. All they have been pre-occupied with so far is “cutting costs” and I am sorry, they have achieved diddly squat.
A JDS with no desktop applications required for business, servers that are old and crusty being outpaced by the so-called “inferior” Intel based servers, Solaris x86 has a cringe factor so bad that there is hysterical laughter if anyone mentions it as a viable server operating system, then there is the marketing; SUN would have difficulties selling water to a person dying of dehydration.
After I got over the shock of this announcement, the first thing that hit my stomach was a knot of fear:
Does this mean that RedCarpet will not be developed to support RedHat/Fedora in the future?
Now that it is a community based project, I’m sure that apt4rpm will more likely become a reality… At least, that’s what I’m hoping!
Novell execs say they haven’t yet figured out how things will work with Suse. Whenever I spend a substantial amount of money on an item, I carefully think about it. Apparently, Novell is suffering from a compulsory buying habit, otherwise they would know what they’re doing before coughing up millions of dollars.
“Apparently, Novell is suffering from a compulsory buying habit..”
What else is new. They paid $1.4 billion for WordPerfect and sold it for a $120 million. They paid $350 million for Unix and sold that for $60 million. And what did they do with WordPerfect and Unix while they had them? Well…
“Yeah. But I am talking specifically about OS vendors here. There simply isn’t any money to be made in the OS market for the home desktop unless you are Microsoft. If any company ever had a chance of succeeding on the home desktop, it was BeOS. And they failed. Other companies learned from that.”
I’m sure Michael Robertson would be interested to hear you say that since he’s building a (seemingly) quite successful commercial model from servicing the home user with Linux…