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Linux Business Businesses SuSE

Putting Novell's SuSE Purchase In Perspective 331

Posted by timothy from the step-back-for-a-moment dept.
An anonymous reader writes " The editors over at NewsForge.com have combined their efforts to put today's big news about Novell's purchase of SUSE in perspective: what the news means in business terms and to the Linux community, today and in the future. A good read that includes quotes from industry insiders, IRC inhabitants, and NewsForge.com readers." Another reader writes "This is a good analysis piece about how Linux has become Novell's lifeline, especially since NetWare's been dying...and post-Ximian."
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Putting Novell's SuSE Purchase In Perspective More

Putting Novell's SuSE Purchase In Perspective

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  • Why would Novell ever want to buy SuSE? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @10:52PM (#7392776)
    All they need is to revoke SCO's UNIX license and all of Linux companies become Novell's property automatically.

  • The real motivation (Score:3, Interesting)

    by faldore ( 221970 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @11:03PM (#7392831)
    They acted like it was no big deal, but...

    (from article) "Yes, it was admitted there might be some marketing opportunities caused by Red Hat's recent "end of life" declaration for some of its products."

    My guess is that this has more to do with the decision to buy than they are admitting to.

    • Re:The real motivation (Score:3, Interesting)

      by rushfan ( 209449 ) *
      I totally agree that it has to do with RedHat moving away from the home user market. I admit that I loved RedHat's personal Linux, and bought many copies of it (at the stores and from them directly), and never "wasted their time" with support from them. I bought it because I liked supporting them. I haven't looked at SuSE in a while, although I think I will now. I like the "ease of use/install/etc" that the packaged linux distros provided for my work machine (since I'd rather just install linux and have

    • Re:The real motivation (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jasonditz ( 597385 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @11:20PM (#7392928) Homepage
      In all fairness I doubt they could've whipped this buyout together that quickly. There must've been months of negotiations.

      The RedHat thing might've played into the timing of the announcement, but I'm sure they would've done it either way.

      • months ago (Score:5, Informative)

        by mattdm ( 1931 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @12:58AM (#7393591) Homepage
        Red Hat made public its end of life plans at the end of last year. Slashdot's big hoopla the other day was a leeetle delayed. See the original announcement [lwn.net]. Anyone paying even a slight bit of attention shouldn't have been surprised -- there was even relatively-widespread analysis in the geek press [theregister.co.uk].

        Novell could be half a year behind and still have time for "months of negotiations". And it's a big company, so it's not suprising for something like this to take that long.

    • Re:The real motivation (Score:5, Interesting)

      by GerryGilmore ( 663905 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @12:19AM (#7393321)
      To my mind, there can't be any doubt about it being related to Red Hat. Consider:

      While the average user may not have known about RH's dropping of mainstream Linux (the "hobbyist" version in RH Marketing slides), those closer to the major players have known for many months that this was coming.

      SuSE, not being dummies, must have spotted the tremendous opportunity that this would give them in the North American Linux market.

      All SuSE has to do is to keep a mainstream version alive to keep the market fed for their higher-end versions - as RH *had* been doing, and they have the ability to clean RH's clock for them.

      In case you haven't guessed, I consider RH's move to drop their mainstream versions to be a crucial blunder. But, it's their company......

      • In case you haven't guessed, I consider RH's move to drop their mainstream versions to be a crucial blunder. But, it's their company......

        I think RH is shooting itself in the foot by dropping the most popular Linux distro and associated brand, support and backing. Isn't this what made them popular and put them in a leadership position in the first place? They are assuming that enterprise will simply fork over more and more money but they may not enjoy the same rooted admin and developer support as they di

  • Is anybody else worried... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wrinkledshirt ( 228541 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @11:03PM (#7392832) Homepage
    Is anybody else worried that this might turn into another Corel?

    If Novell's got problems keeping up in terms of IT relevence as it is with its own core product, it could be really nasty if some of that starts to rub off on Suse and Ximian.

    I don't mean to troll. I just liked it better when all these things were separated. I'd rather unification through proper standards (eg: LSB compliance) than through pocketbooks.
    • They have always been relevent to the people who have worked with NetWare and understand why it's such a great NOS. But, PHB's have forced them to move towards Linux, because all their fancy PHB Monthly magazines are telling CxO's to go with Linux.

    • Re:Is anybody else worried... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by swordboy ( 472941 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @11:33PM (#7393003) Journal
      Is anybody else worried that this might turn into another Corel?

      Corel died because Microsoft wanted them to.

      Corel had a great plan but, ultimately, management was bought out [wired.com] by Billy.

      People don't seem to be picking up on this. The same thing happened with Apple and OSX [indiana.edu] right after Steve Jobs dumped every last share in the company (aside from the single "symbolic" share that he did keep).

      Microsoft owns each and every one of us. If they didn't, we'd have seen them split up [ft.com] a long time ago...

      sigh...
    • Corel was a different issue. Corel tried to go from commercial graphics house to a quazi open source company while trying to directly compete with MS for retail OS shelf space and could not pull it off.

      Suse and Ximian have great code, experience etc, and are moving from a profitable open source company to another company that may or may not understand open source .

      If there is a major infestation of PHBs in Novell's future, it will not hurt the distro.
      They just pack up the source code and move on, creating

    • Re:Is anybody else worried... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by StarTux ( 230379 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @02:07AM (#7393912) Journal
      No, this is aimed at more the Enterprise, rather than consumer based software...Corel Linux was before its time and as others have mentioned Microsoft.

      LSB is very likely to continue as SuSE was one of the first adopters of it, but LSB will not bring in more sales staff or profit. I may try calling Novell or emailing them about the LSB as I am sure Novell could push this more strongly.

      IBM gave $50m, to me this is just a nod of approval to the deal.

      Really no comparison to this and Corel.

      StarTux

    • Novell now has some solid pieces in place:

      • UI/Desktop skillsets from Ximian. A very nice, clean programming interface equivalent to KDE or Apple's APIs, and far, far cleaner than Win32 GUI APIs.
      • Software distribution via Ximian's Red Carpet. It may not be perfect, but it works and is a pretty decent user interface compared to SuSE 8.0/8.1 YaST update management. Unlike Microsoft's updates, you can also add software with Red Carpet. (Of course seeing as Microsoft doesn't have a few dozen free modules, t

  • The best decision that Novell could make (Score:5, Interesting)

    by micaiah ( 593598 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @11:03PM (#7392834)
    About a year ago I was discussing with my friends this very scenario. It was a great decision on Novell's part, probably IMHO the only thing that could allow them to rebound back to the forefront. If they use Linux (open source) as their desktop rather than relying on Microsoft to be fair players they will be able to make a better product for the desktop.

    I remember when people thought of networking they thought of Novell. I took a Win2k class not to long ago and the only people that knew about Netware was myself, one more person, and the instructor. Hopefully that will change with e-directory on the back end and Linux on the desktop. Although any company isn't 100% idealistic, Novell is far more open standard minded than Microsoft will ever be.

  • Disclaimer? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lshmael ( 603746 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @11:03PM (#7392835) Homepage
    What happened to the standard "Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN" disclaimer that normally appears at the end of items that reference Newsforge articles [slashdot.org]?

  • Thoughts (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sethadam1 ( 530629 ) * <ascheinberg&gmail,com> on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @11:03PM (#7392836) Homepage
    - If Novell bought Ximian just for Mono, they should open source the Exchange Connector.

    - If Novell intends to still support KDE on SuSE, they should say so quickly.

    - Novell should DEFINITELY keep the desktop distro free. This will be key in infiltration and getting techies involved and informed.

    - Novell should rebrand everything "LinuxWare" in following their NetWare line.

    - NDS on Linux should be a huge priority. A successful, non-piecemeal central authentication system for Linux would be fantastic (yes, I know about PAM + LDAP, etc)

    - A Novell client for Linux (even for 5.x and 6.x) should get official support TODAY.

    - They should learn from the past, and invest in the desktop. That's where they'll sell this to potential customers, as and end to end solution.

    • More Thoughts (Score:4, Interesting)

      by corebreech ( 469871 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @11:19PM (#7392921) Journal
      They should also resurrect SuSE's previous efforts in supporting the Power architecture, which more and more appears to be what will be competing with AMD64 (or vice versa.)

      And not only should they keep the desktop distro free, they should create a Live Distro on CD and print up a few hundred million of them and make sure that everybody and their cat has a copy, a la AOL.
      • The only ISOs you could download for free of SuSE have been live CDs. They have done it for years, long before Knoppix existed.

        I have been using SuSE for the past couple of years but I didn't like some of the things I have read about the interface to their tools in SuSE 9. I have even started to look at Fedora, but there is the stupid Blue Curve which has influenced SuSE 9. It maybe time to go fully free and use Debian Sid on my main PC, or Gentoo.

        • Re:More Thoughts (Score:3, Insightful)

          by corebreech ( 469871 )
          My bad, re: ISO's. They should still litter the landscape with these things though. Really, what would be the cost? Then consider the benefit. The live CD's seem to be the best-held secret in the Linux community. Yeah, they're useful for figuring out if a distro runs on your hardware and so on, but their utility in evangelizing for Linux has gong nearly untapped as far as I can tell.
          • It has been tapped in some cases. The German computer magazine c't has already distributed Knoppix with their magazine 3 times. While I really like my SuSE installation, I think Knoppix makes an even better live CD.
            • If your subscribed to c't, chances are you already know what Linux is (hell, you've probably already had a patch or two rejected.)

              I'm mainly talking about people who think the word Windows equals computer. People who won't have a clue what to expect when they boot from that CD, and will go WOW! when they see what comes up on the screen.

              People who, despite their very best efforts, will never be able to screw up the environment the Live CD gives them, unless of course they break the CD.
              • Well c't is *the* computer magazine in Germany, the majority of readers are Windows users. Sure the technical quality is high, but it's by no means a niche magazine.
      • And not only should they keep the desktop distro free, they should create a Live Distro on CD and print up a few hundred million of them and make sure that everybody and their cat has a copy, a la AOL.

        No that'll piss people off. Have a place to order them free on the bnet and stock retailers such as compusa with them.

        • Re:More Thoughts (Score:4, Insightful)

          by corebreech ( 469871 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @01:43AM (#7393815) Journal
          No that'll piss people off.

          The reason people get pissed off by AOL is because a) AOL is crap, and b) they've already received at least a dozen AOL CD's (and they figured out AOL was crap back at CD #1.)

          Most people don't even understand what Linux is. I helped one person with her computer and she kept calling the thing Windows, as in "I checked to see if the keyboard was connected to Windows and it was." The apartment where I live makes available to its tenants a computer station and the manager gets pissed off at all the work he has to do to keep the thing working... he asks me what he can do about it and I tell him to make people boot from a Live CD running Linux and he looks at me as if I were speaking Swahili.

          Boot his computer from a CD -- without changing a thing on his existing installation -- and he understands immediately. Explain how a million people can use that CD and he'll never have to worry about thirteen-year-olds planting viruses or sweet-little-old-ladies who decide to save each and every single picture from Sears' website to the desktop and he gets it, immediately.

          Just put the word "Games" on the CD, and you'll have half of America running Linux tomorrow.
      • They should also resurrect SuSE's previous efforts in supporting the Power architecture, which more and more appears to be what will be competing with AMD64 (or vice versa.)

        I don't think you'll have to worry about that. Remember, IBM helped subsidize part of the SuSE/Novell deal. You can be pretty sure they didn't put up $50 million just out of the kindness of their heart. I'd expect SuSE will be available all across IBM's product line.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:Thoughts (Score:3, Interesting)

        by corebreech ( 469871 )
        Novell sucks at client software, though.

        On Windows perhaps, but I remember using their stuff on Mac and it was actually pretty sweet.

        This is like a decade ago or so though.

    • Re:Thoughts (Score:5, Informative)

      by miguel ( 7116 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @11:38PM (#7393029) Homepage
      Novell will continue to support KDE on SuSE, distribute its packages and maintain this offering which is a prime choice of people.

      We will also integrate Ximian Desktop into their offering, because it is a more fine-tuned desktop than the default Gnome one, and leverages all the enterprise features we added to it.

      NDS is part of the Linux Software Services stack that was announced for Linux earlier in the year. So do not worry about that.

      Miguel.

    • Re:Thoughts (Score:4, Interesting)

      by bruthasj ( 175228 ) <bruthasj@@@yahoo...com> on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @11:42PM (#7393051) Homepage Journal
      And smash YaST, up2date, APT and Yum with Novell ZENworks! Seriously, ZENworks has got to be the best patch pusher I've ever seen. Viruses? Bah! Sendmail holes? Bah! SSH problems? Bah!

      With a click, 1000 computers get the patch and automatically apply it.
      • fyi. there were 5 Marx Brothers :

        Chico, Zeppo, Harpo, Groucho and Gummo.

        Gummo and Groucho performed on stage together but Gummo became the manager of the other four when their careers took them to Broadway and the movies.

        http://www.marx-brothers.org/

    • "Novell should DEFINITELY keep the desktop distro free. This will be key in infiltration and getting techies involved and informed"

      But Suse was never really Free. At least Free in the sense of what got linux to where it was today. Only available by FTP and not redistributable does not count as Free in any opensource book that I've read. If Suse does start providing a truly free desktop then I will be impressed, but until then there will always be a mark against them in my book.

      I also don't see Novell open
      • On one hand the whole distribution could be installed for ree by ftp install, but a part of it wasn't ree.

        On the other hand, they didn't force you to use YaST so it was possible to pay SuSE for a ree distribution, thus making it not ree.

        I always found SuSE intriguing - it certainly looked extremely promising for a rpm-based OS - but never had the time to wrestle with all those weird ree/ree issues. -- Of course, I gave in eventually so that my nVidia card would run properly...:-/

      • Re:Thoughts (Score:5, Informative)

        by adrianbaugh ( 696007 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @12:08AM (#7393233) Homepage Journal
        Only available by FTP and not redistributable does not count as Free in any opensource book that I've read.

        I think you've been misreading your books. The GPL (under which most of SuSE is licensed and which is pretty hot on ensuring distribution) certainly doesn't specify what protocol stuff should be available through - ftp only is fine. They do ask you not to redistribute the CDs or ISOs, but that's okay - they're within their rights to limit redistribution of YaST, which is on the CD, and all the Free stuff is available via ftp and redistributable. There are plenty of SuSE rpms being redistributed on rpmfind, etc. and there is nothing SuSE can do to prevent you redistributing rpms of Free software even if packaged to fit a SuSE distribution.

        There's nothing to prevent SuSE making money from Free software and (with the exception of YaST which you can replace with yum or apt) that's what they do.

    • Re:Thoughts (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Nat Friedman ( 31798 ) on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @12:13AM (#7393279) Homepage
      Since Novell purchased us 3 months ago, we have increased our investment in all of our products, using Novell's resources. And we've been aggressive about driving open source and Linux throughout the company.

      Here's a little evidence, all postdating the acquisition by Novell:

      - My notes on our new desktop development center in Bangalore [nat.org]
      - An article [indiatimes.com] from the Times of India about our new developers there
      - The freshly-published (today!) Mono Roadmap [go-mono.com] showing where we're going with the development platform
      - The first entry in our new Evolution blog [ximian.com], describing the plans for Evolution 2.0, to be released early next year [ximian.com]
      - The announcement [gnome.org] and wiki [ximian.com] for the Brooklyn GNOME developer's summit we are sponsoring this month
      - The announcement [novell.com] that our Exchange connector now supports Exchange 2003

      And this is really just the beginning. As you can imagine, most of the super exciting stuff we are doing is behind the scenes.

      From time to time since we were acquired three months ago I've heard people say things like "Novell bought Ximian just for XYZ," where XYZ has been either: Mono, our Exchange 2000 connector, GNOME, Evolution, Red Carpet, "the name," ...

      I think it should be clear that this is ridiculous.

      Yes, we will still support KDE on SuSE. However, we hope to use this opportunity to provide Linux developers and ISVs with a single stable platform for desktop application development.

      Yes, we will keep the desktop distro free. We will even make things more free than they have been.

      We're only just getting started. Stay tuned.
      • I've heard people say things like "Novell bought Ximian just for XYZ," where XYZ has been either: Mono, our Exchange 2000 connector, GNOME, Evolution, Red Carpet, "the name,"

        There has been speculation all over the internet that Novell bought Ximian for "X." I was just addressing that. Ximian has a host of goods that ought not be lost.

        Most of us are happy. Believe it or not, there are still plenty of us who feel that Novell ha[d|s] the best NOS out there, and enriching their arsenal with the awesome U

      • what Nat forgot :) (Score:5, Interesting)

        by luge ( 4808 ) <slashdot&tieguy,org> on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @12:58AM (#7393585) Homepage
        It's even better than what Nat says ;)

        - for the first time ever, we've been able to open up our Ximian Desktop development process. You can get basically every patch we write on desktop built and applied to GNOME 2.4/2.5 via the xd-unstable channel.

        - if you poke through gnome CVS, we've got skeletal code for a groupwise connector there. Again, something the old novell would never have done- release not only free code, but basically defacto API docs by way of code as well.

        - up until the suse purchase this morning, we actually had a link to gnome.org on the front page of novell.com. Look around for a link to gnome.org on sun's site- it's not on the front page, and it's not in the Java Desktop main page, either.

        So, like I said... it's even better than Nat says it is. :) Of course, I'd be lying if I told you that I can guarantee it'll be perfect going forward- but so far all the signs are very positive for that.
        • up until the suse purchase this morning, we actually had a link to gnome.org on the front page of novell.com. Look around for a link to gnome.org on sun's site- it's not on the front page, and it's not in the Java Desktop main page, either.

          And where is KDE in that picture?
      • I think Novell was the only one listening to MonkeyBoy when he did his dance.
        Netware is a great & stable network operating system but difficult for developers compared to Windows. So Novell can hook into the Open Source community and get access to the largest base of developers
        With Novell's global support & partners they can provide a very nice alternative.

        A eDirectory enabled distributed network of Netware X servers (SUSE) with Desktop X workstations (Ximian) all kept up to date with ZenWorks X

      • "Yes, we will still support KDE on SuSE. However, we hope to use this opportunity to provide Linux developers and ISVs with a single stable platform for desktop application development."

        Translation of market-speak:

        Bye, bye KDE... Ximian is going to decimate SUSE now.

      • We're only just getting started. Stay tuned.

        Yeah you are.. and where are you taking us Nat?

        So according to your post, you are saying:

        1. offshore, cheap labor is a goodthing(tm). Yeah i know helping 3rd world countries with Open Source rocks da house, I wanna do it myself. But...

        2. you also say that mimicing the MS development paradigm is the way to linux salvation. Tell me, why do i want ot hear that .ASP.NET is the BEST development model for web applications? Are you gonna tell me next that IIS on Lin
      • Yes, we will still support KDE on SuSE. However, we hope to use this opportunity to provide Linux developers and ISVs with a single stable platform for desktop application development.

        Can we assume this translates to, "KDE will be de-emphisized and eventually phased out"?
      • Hi Nat, read your blog entry about the Bangalore development center. This sounds great :)

        I live in Chennai, India (just a few hours from Bangalore). I'm finishing school [iitm.ac.in] in about 6 months, and I'd kill to get this job! I've been developing gtkboard [sourceforge.net] for a while, so I think I'm not a n00b and I can qualify. So, are you still hiring? If yes could you tell me whom I can contact to put myself through the selection process?
        Thanks
        Arvind

        • You know, it would look slightly more professional if you asked for details of a job you want to apply for via the contact address on Ximian's website, rather than responding to a comment on /.
      • Hi Nat,

        I was one of those who use to bug you about supporting SuSE on Ximian Desktop (you know I have forgotten the orginal name of Ximian lol, but the original desktop offering took awhile to launchon SuSE).

        Funny how things turned out, from supporting RedHat primarily...:).

        StarTux
    • I agree completely on the name, though of course it would be painful as SuSe has a lot of name recognition right now, especially in Europe.

      The problem is that, although the name sounds great in German (like John Philip [dws.org]), it's pronounced very differently from place to place and person to person, sowing even greater confusion than "Linux" (let alone "GNU/Linux").

      Sad as it may be, English is the default language for tech stuff, and most people around the world will figure out that LinuxWare is like SoftWare,
    • If Novell intends to still support KDE on SuSE, they should say so quickly.

      Well, they haven't made any such announcements, but there is this positive note in their press release [prnewswire.com]:

      "Novell is firmly committed to open standards and maintaining the existing open source kernel development efforts. From advocacy and development resources to events and support of open source efforts like kernel projects, XFree86, ReiserFS, KDE, GNOME and Mono, Novell stands side-by-side with the open source community."

      They
    • - They should learn from the past, and invest in the desktop. That's where they'll sell this to potential customers, as and end to end solution.

      Yeah! Anyone wants to take a bet that Novell might buy Trolltech?

  • Confused (Score:2, Interesting)

    by cca93014 ( 466820 )
    Can anyone explain to me how Novell make money? The last time I saw a Netware deployment was 1999 IIRC. I guess I am answering my own question, in as much as they just bought a Linux distro (and good luck making money with THAT! ;) ), but in the press release they mention that they are a billion dollar company; what are the shareholders valueing here?

    • Re:Confused (Score:5, Informative)

      by cpthowdy ( 609034 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @11:16PM (#7392904)
      You're trolling, but I'll bite. Novell is sitting on a mountain of cash and short term investments, making them a 1 billion dollar company. If their revenue stopped coming TODAY, they would be able to fully operate for at least 3 years. And I just did a NetWare 6 deployment a few months ago, and it is rock solid.
      • Really, I'm not trolling. I've worked in systems development for 6 years and I have not really seen Netware anywhere, other than a couple of netware deployments. What are their main products that generate money for them?

        It's like, whenever I drive through a big city, anywhere in the world, I always see a big Novell building and think to myself "how do they manage that" when their company has been pretty much off the radar for the last few years...

        Really, I'm not trolling. Maybe I'm just ignorant!

        • Re:Confused (Score:4, Informative)

          by cpthowdy ( 609034 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @11:28PM (#7392970)
          Well, eDirectory (NDS) is their flagship product, and is the best X.500 directory on the market. Next is ZENworks, the best desktop management solution according to Gartner Group. And they can both run on at least Linux, Windows, and especially on NetWare. I wouldn't say ignorant, just misinformed or uniformed. Now you can say you are informed. :)

        • Re:Confused (Score:2, Insightful)

          by afidel ( 530433 )
          If you had RTFA you would know that 80% of the Fortune 500 runs Netware in some capacity. The features Netware offers aren't really all that usefull for small companies (other than reliability) but there is nothing better for large enterprises.
        • I work for St. Louis' largest employer [bjc.org] where we have Novell products all throughout our enterprise including NetWare services, Groupwise, exteNd, and the list goes on. Novell products are popular at educational institutions; half the highschools I've visited here in town use Novell products.
    • The company that I might go to work for next week is looking at using NDS as the centerpiece of a single sign on solution. They hope to reduce an average of 9 passwords down to one. At work[-2] they also used NDS for SSO, it was more like 20 disparit systems down to 1 password. Reducing passwords isn't just a nicety, it gets people to remember their password instead of writing them all down on the postit on the side of their monitor. Other than that there is a large installed base of Novell shops that don't

    • Re:Confused (Score:4, Informative)

      by pr0c ( 604875 ) * on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @11:23PM (#7392945)
      Government Contracts.

    • There is still a lot of Novell out there.... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MadAnthony02 ( 626886 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @11:29PM (#7392984)

      There are still a lot of Novell users out there, especially among certain groups (education, government, healthcare, law offices). I recently attended a CNA class, and all of the attendees fell into one of those catagories.

      Novell actually has some pretty cool products out there, such as iFolder (syncs data between computers and a server), NetStorage (lets you access network drives from any computer with a web browser), and iPrint (lets users install their own printers via a web browser). They might not have a lot of new users, but they have a lot of old users who have no plans on changing - and they are coming out with some products that are actually pretty good.

      Plus it's nice that our GroupWise email system resists most of those fun Outlook-based viruses.

    • Re:Confused (Score:3, Interesting)

      by pkesel ( 246048 )
      Why don't you go to the Novell site and look at the SEC filings. You'll see exactly where there money comes from and where it goes. Just like any publicly held company, they gotta tell the public.

      No sense speculating. Just do the research. From teh 2002 filing:

      " We managed to maintain large network site-license revenue at $681 million, approximately flat to fiscal 2001"

      "Novell's revenue, including the addition of revenue from recent acquisitions, was up eight percent to $1.13 billion, and cash flow f

    • Re:Confused (Score:4, Interesting)

      by GSloop ( 165220 ) <`networkguru' `at' `sloop.net'> on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @01:19AM (#7393701) Homepage
      Perhaps few people are still rolling out Netware installations, as such seems to be much of the public demand. But I must say, Netware is much more stable than Windows in vitually every situation I've deployed either in.

      A small medical office I did an installation for had the Netware 3.12 box stay up, for around 1260 days. (Nearly *four* years without a single reboot.) It went down the time before that, only because of a four+ hour power outage that the UPS couldn't outlive. It has been up for like 500 days prior to that. So, total unrebooted uptime, was more than five years. Not a single unplanned outage caused by software failure, and no planned outages/crashes either.

      Heck, in 1992-1993 I'd have killed for a Windows box that could file serve for that long without constant prodding and TLC - along with at least weekly reboots.

      Novell's eDirectory is much more mature, IMHO than AD, and their ability to produce a product that simply works well is light years ahead.

      Finally, Novell, perhaps to their harm always was the kind of company that left lots of space for others to develop products along side them. They made a core product, and let others fill in and provide apps around them. This kind of community is crucial IMHO, and the Novell culture, at least in the past, was good at allowing it.

      I think this may be a great match.

      Cheers,
      Greg
    • My school's library uses netware. Actually the largest single LAN at our school. My far the most extranet traffic.


  • What happened to BSD?

  • Strange Crossroads (Score:2, Informative)

    by Mr Pippin ( 659094 )

    Novell

    The company that is responsible for much of Microsofts power. None too many can remember the early nineties when Microsoft Office was not the lock-in it is today. In those days, WordPerfect was THE wordprocessor.

    Along comes Novell, replaces the marketing staff, and flushes that leadership down the toilet.

    This is the same company that flushed their unquestionable dominance in the server market, too.

    Too be honest, I am more concerned with Novell being an anchor to drag SuSE to the bottom with th

    • The management team that dragged Novell down in the mid-1990s is long gone. The current leadership has had the company on a solid footing and a clear path for the past few years. NetWare 6 and 6.5 have gotten great reviews, there is still a large install base of NetWare, and most importantly, I think they have learned from their past mistakes. I doubt we'll see Novell take on MS on the desktop next week or even next year.

      Novell needs to position SuSE Linux primarily as a server OS and continue to marke

    • In those days, WordPerfect was THE wordprocessor.

      Along comes Novell, replaces the marketing staff, and flushes that leadership down the toilet.

      Novell made several mistakes with WordPrefect, but it was already almost dead before Novell bought them.

      This was during the switch from MS-DOS apps to Windows apps. Wordperfect, like several other publishers, came out late with Windows apps that were bloated and wern't that good (Lotus 123 and dBase are more examples of really bad transitions to Windows).

      Novell

      • Re:Strange Crossroads (Score:3, Insightful)

        by GSloop ( 165220 )
        Strange thing this...

        Everyone was convinced by Microsoft that OS/2 was going to be the next big thing.

        Then MS stabbed IBM in the heart, dumped OS/2 development, poured it on Windows, and got Windows 3.0 out the door, just as memory and VGA based stations were getting out there in mass.

        So, WordPerfect and everyone else had apps ready to go on OS/2, and Microsoft had apps ready to run on Windows. Still, Word sucked, and Excel wasn't much better.

        So, next move in the monopoly game...bundle.

        MS bundled Offic
        • Everyone was convinced by Microsoft that OS/2 was going to be the next big thing.

          Then MS stabbed IBM in the heart, dumped OS/2 development, poured it on Windows, and got Windows 3.0 out the door

          Strange, revisionist history. The MS/IBM "divorce" happened after 3.0 had already shipped. MS didn't stab IBM; they abandoned OS/2 development, and IBM kept OS/2 for themselves.

          I worked at Microsoft while this was going on. When I was hired, in 1990, Microsoft thought OS/2 was the next big thing. Windows was
    • RH isn't that great. IMO, the free RH distros hurt linux. "It doesn't work; it sucks"

      Novell probobly has learned. Companies tend to be smart when they're at the bottom trying to move up. They only get stupid when they're successful. (yes, i'm generalizing)

      drake is fine. They'd be in the black if it wasn't from some stupid deals the made in the ninties by the old CEO. Once they're free of that bull they'll be making money.

  • Novell not out of trouble yet (Score:3, Insightful)

    by thehive ( 698558 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @11:12PM (#7392889)
    Well it is great that Novell has embraced linux big time but whether it is late or not is yet to be seen. Recent SCO drama [arie.org] does not seem to have affected Novell's plans, which is good since it shows positive signs that they are not too concerned about SCO lawsuits. One thing Novell should do is to make sure that they continue devlopment on Mono [go-mono.com]. Why? because this may encourage more developers to work on it which means more application for Unix/Linux. Remember that Windows is not the reason people still use it but it is because of the application which run on it .It also makes the life of the developer easy since maintaining two versions of source code is huge headache.
    • Recent SCO drama does not seem to have affected Novell's plans, which is good since it shows positive signs that they are not too concerned about SCO lawsuits.

      Why should they? Considering Novell owns Unix, and only sold SCO the right to license it to other players, they are the only company totally immune from SCO's lawsuits.

      SuSE users would breathe a huge sigh of relief. Other distro's users too, indirectly, but IANAL.

  • The Corp IT public doesn't trust you all that much, and you've already got a lot of explaining to do.

    Novell is regarded by Corporate IT as a pretty confused (although formerly mighty) company. But definitely regarded as one who let their flagship server platform kind of ... die. They let their flagship directory services get overly complex and .. die. They bought several other companies that they also kind of let .. die. So Novell is respected, but not trusted. What Novell product would you roll out today

    • Re:Novell - move over and let IBM drive (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @11:46PM (#7393074)
      You haven't used much netware have you ?

      Novell servers have a rep for rock solid stability. They have been bricked into walls and run for years. I can't think of any working server that compares with netware for uptime, and when it comes to security take a look at the NSA ratings where novell stands.

      What Novell is known for is reliability. Their directory services work a hell of alot better than Microsofts. This counts for alot in most corporate environments.

      Simply put Novell linux has alot more corporate credibility than any other name except maybe (IBM or Microsoft) linux. This is a tremendous push forward for Linux in general. Especially when you consider they want the desktop and redhat just doesn't seem to care anymore.
    • I am guessing that SuSE thinks Novell can help them into the American market because of their contacts and longevity. I think SuSE could have done better - I don't get it - they are already working with IBM on s390 platform!!

      That was my thought too. SuSE owns the zSeries s/390 space these days. I've never seen anything other than SuSE 7 or 8 installed on the dozen systems I've got to work with. Granted a small sampling, but you would figure someone Stateside would give RH a whirl on the big iron.

      Anoth
  • Imagine, a largely free (or cheap) linux distro complete with Novel tools. ::drool::

    I wonder if this is just the beginning of corporate owned and backed linux distros. Perhaps all major companies will soon want to have their own official linux distro. Novel Gets SuSE, Microsoft Gets SCO(um), Apple has to be all Apple-ish and get a Unix distro, and to top it all off, THE linux company, Redhat, shoots self in foot, outsources healing of foot to opensource community...

    Strange and interesting days for the OS

  • Certification == Money (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Ænertia ( 96622 )
    Just a thought, but now that Novell is offically in the game as a linux Vendor, won't people be scrambling over themselves for their certification products.
    <p>
    I know I considered getting Novell certified a few years ago, even tho I knew netware was dying, I sorta figured it was the best option available which would build on my Linux skills. Now Novell has an investmment in building Linux certification, I think this will be a major money pull for the company. It also benefit's the community as finally
  • I think this is leading to something big. Something big and blue...

    -Now-
    IBM invests $50mil in Novel.
    Novel (Ximian Gnome) buys SUSE (KDE).

    -2 years from now-
    Novel unifies Gnome and KDE into one monster windows-eating desktop machine.
    Meanwhile Redhat and Novel(SUSE) continue to make gains in the server market.

    -5 years from now-
    IBM buys Redhat and Novell.
    Unifies them both into the ultimate Linux Distribution.
    MS finally releases Longhorn but is blown out of the water by IBM's Redhat/SUSE linux distro.
    IBM fin
    • I don't know that you're so far off, but 5 years? I don't see this unfolding in 5 years. I see that as a 10 year drama minimum. IBM buying Red Hat and Novell alone could take a year to go through. Then the rebranding, refining, and marketing...yeah, that's a long term soap opera.

      I hate to say it, but unless Novell does amazing things quickly, Longhorn will be a big winner.

      But Blackcomb [wikipedia.org] is another story.

  • where's my /usr/bin/SALVAGE.EXE? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Clover_Kicker ( 20761 ) <clover_kicker@yahoo.com> on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @12:37AM (#7393441)
    One of the nicest things about the NetWare file system was the built-in undelete functionality. When a file was deleted, it wasn't overwritten immediately, and you could use SALVAGE to get it back.

    If you had a lot of spare disk space, you could still SALVAGE files weeks or months later.

    All I want for Xmas is for the Novell filesystem guys to sit down with Linus or Reiser or somebody and shoehorn this into Linux.

  • The Bigger Picture (Score:2, Interesting)

    by parboy ( 574249 )
    Except for MS, all the bigger and better players in the OS markets are in the process of forming Unix-ish software standards, trying out different business coalitions and combinations, and generally creating a "community" of software products and tools that work together fairly harmoniously and openly.

    This is a natural counter movement to the deeply flawed and virus-infested Microsoft monoculture. Free association, not forced assimilation, is what cooperative and self-reliant people desire. And in the en

  • I haven't worked with Netware for a few years... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Malor ( 3658 ) * on Wednesday November 05, 2003 @01:57AM (#7393866) Journal
    ... but it occurs to me that many of you youngsters may never have worked with Novell products at all.

    If they have preserved their technical culture through the last eight or ten years, then Novell is likely to be a very, very good fit with Linux. Netware was always clumsy and arcane to administer, at least at first; the learning curve was steep. (sound familiar?) But once you understood it, you could see WHY they had done it the way they did, and their solutions were often brilliant. In exchange for up-front learning curve, you got power under the hood. (sound familiar?)

    Windows was all sexy and nice-looking, and it was a lot easier to administer up front, but it didn't have anywhere NEAR the depth of thought behind it. As of NT 4.0, Microsoft's first real competition to Netware, things like print services were a joke. You could share a printer, sure, but what if you wanted to share a pool of printers? What if you wanted an automatic fallback to a backup printer that wasn't ordinarily in the pool? What if you wanted to share the same printer across several print queues? Even several print POOLS? With Novell, any of these things were easily possible, though they did take some time to get set up. (arcane, remember?) Things like this were just flat not possible on NT 4. I'm not sure they're doable even NOW, to be honest. And Microsoft introduced Active Directory, to great fanfare, with Windows 2000; Novell had Novell Directory Services something like FIVE YEARS BEFORE. It seemed to me that NDS was, as usual, better thought out and more powerful, but when I was looking at AD, my NDS experience was several years out of date, so that could be mistaken. (I never got much past beginner-level with either directory service, FWIW.)

    At any rate, the buzz in the NT 4.0 timeframe was all about "application services". This was shorthand for "you can write and run your own server software", which was very difficult to do on Netware. Netware was an EXTREMELY closed architecture. If they have retained that mindset, that's going to be the biggest likely sticking point. Windows was more open and cheaper, so it prospered, just as Linux is completely open and cheaper still. Novell may have a hard time with this issue.

    At any rate, Netware servers were nearly uncrashable. It could happen: I had one customer who could crash his server just by running a particular application. But by and large, you could literally install Netware on a PC, put it in the closet, and forget about it for five years. Or longer. It would just run and run and run and always work and never break. I'm DEAD SERIOUS when I say "five years uptime"; Novell reliability made even Linux look kind of amateurish. You could pretty much expect that once you turned off the monitor and left the room, that the server would continue to run until the hardware broke. It was that good.

    Assuming they've preserved their technical culture , Novell probably knows more about reliability than any other living x86 software company. And they had this directory services stuff figured out six or eight years ago. They've had a lot of time to think about that problem. I've also heard good things about ZenWorks, though I haven't touched it myself.

    This could be very good indeed. I'm seriously thinking about downloading SuSE now; I know it's not going to change over the short term, but if the marriage comes off (and, mind you, MOST tech company takeovers fail), LinuxWorks could become the de facto standard within a few years.
    • Agree wholeheartedly with the comment you made about reliability as I have first hand experience of that sort of uptime in a past life.

      The thing that let Novell down was the quality of third party software running as part of Netware "NLM" Netware loadable modules.

      Interbase 4.0 (or was it 3.0) could reliably ABEND (terminate with extreme prejudice for all you youngsters) just by sending "prepare" twice on the same query using Delphi 1. Took me 4 tries before I realised that was the cause... We did get
  • Mr. Messman, Novell's boss, is completely financially motivated. His longlasting background in Oil made him, in the eyes of a 14% stakeholder in Cambridge Technology Partners (CATP) an excellent new CEO for the company. Cambridge now longer exists but is now part of Novell. My big beef with mr. Messman is that his management style of Cambridge was similar to the management style of a large oil company. Which is to say: Strict cost control on a heavily asset based company. But assets are not the same as tech

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