Re: Novell buys Ximian

[Robert Threet <rthreet@yahoo.com>]

--- bob@evilkat.com wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 19, 2003 at 01:28:52PM -0700, Robert Threet wrote:
> > Uh, remember WordPerfect?
> > 
> > --- john doe <ophidian_snake@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > I second.  This is a very good thing IMO and I tip my hat in their 
> > > direction.
>  <------------------ snipped for brevity ---------------------------->
> 
> please explain robert, as i've already said your looking at a very different
> company, a company thats beaten, this is not the novell with 80% market share
> in it's industry, companies that are at their height usually aquire other 
> companies to add revenue stream and other opportunities even if they aren't
> very familiar with the market they are entering, unfortunately this usually
> ends up being a bad thing for the product/company that is acquired because
> the main company can always get rid of it's acquisition if it doesn't need it
> anymore, the thing with the novell-ximian deal is that novell needs linux 
> coders and they desperately need to get away from the windows platform that
> has beaten them so badly, their only hope of survival right now is to move
> to linux/unix where the strengths they do posess are appreciated (excellent
> user management, complex/powerful file rights system, desktop management,
> groupware and user based firewall management), i know i would love to have
> all the benifits i had when i was working with novell with the power and
> flexibility of the linux desktop, if novell fails with this effort i'm afraid
> they aren't going to get another chance, on the other hand ximian can always
> be disolved and a new company to do comercial work on the gnome project can
> always be created, if i'm not mistaken gnome and evolution are both gpl (or
> something fairly similar) in which case the code will go on even if ximian
> is gone, i would love to hear your take on this robert, do you think novell
> has some wierd idea to stop developement of gnome? 

All true.  I just think at this point, Novell is the kiss-of-death for the many technologies they
buy up.  (Don't forget DR-DOS).  It's sad.  Their Zenworks (App Launcher) would make a lot of
people lives a lot easier if people would just consider them.  I still have meetings where the
need for this technology is discussed but when they find out it actually exists and it's a Novell
product the issues are dropped.  Having good or even excellent ideas doesn't seem to help Novell
at this point.  

And yeah, the "weird idea to stop developement of gnome" has crossed my mind.  I'm not saying I
buy it.  It is strange, though.  "Why buy a cow when milk's free"?  Novell seems to be saying
"Here's some free milk.  If you do buy a cow - buy ours."  Linux is undercutting their product
line too.  Firewalls and Squid Proxy eliminate the need for Bordermanager (for the most part). 
SAMBA eliminates the need to buy print and file share.  OpenLDAP...  Portals...  The Novell angle
is a strange one.

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