Sun Pondering Buying Novell

Krafty Koder writes "ZDNet are reporting that Sun are considering purchasing Novell and thus gain SUSE Linux. 'With our balance sheet, we're considering all our options,' Sun chief operating officer Jonathan Schwartz said in an interview on Sunday regarding the possibility of acquiring Novell. 'What would owning the operating system on which IBM is dependent be worth? History would suggest we look to Microsoft for comparisons,' he said."

Market speak

[jayhawk88]

'What would owning the operating system on which IBM is dependent be worth? History would suggest we look to Microsoft for comparisons,'

Translation: "Look Wall Street and market analysts, we're going to soon own something of value, as far as you know! Please change your rating of us from "Wipe your ass with the stock certificates" to "Eh, keep em around, you never know"!

Re:"Owning the operating system"?

[killjoe]

Just exactly how stupid do you have to be to become a CEO these days anyway. More importantly how come somebody who is that stupid, that clueless gets paid tens of millions dollars per year.

Can I become a CEO if I take a lot of acid and forget everything I know or do you just have to do a lot of coke?

Re:They're in for an unpleasant surprise...

[OverwhelmingAmoeba]

They have to buy SCO in order to do that!

Dear diary

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear diary,

At the friday drink someone suggested buying into Linux in a big way so we can direct it down a path we want. It seemed very logical when we were drunk but now that I'm back at work trying to make a report of the pro's and con's, the bright possibilities seem rather blurry, if not illogical. But how to phrase it so that the rest of the corporation can see the pitfalls? Wait I'l just leak it to slashd....a forum and use their comments as arguments and counter arguments.

-- Jonathan Schwartz

Re:I knew things were becoming too good

[cuzality]

I've really liked where Novell has started taking suse, ximian, and netware, so I'll be pretty sad if sun does buy them...

Hopefully, the improvements that novell had been making with suse, ximian, and netware will never see the Sun.

Er... hm.

Sun buying SCO?

[linuxislandsucks]

Actaully this is a feint..

Sun is buying SCO to stop the current court case and get full legal rigths to make solaris open source..

Re:"Owning the operating system"?

[swb]

Can I become a CEO if I take a lot of acid and forget everything I know or do you just have to do a lot of coke?

I think coke and booze are the CEO drugs. Booze for ineptness and embarassment, coke for energy, irrationality and serotonin deficient tyranny.

If they took acid, they'd look around the office and go "What does it all mean? How can we come here day to day if it doesn't mean anything?" Meaning and philosophical harmony are the enemies of CEOs.

Let's hope they don't get into meth.

Why not make their own distro?

[chiph]

Someone should call up Sun and let them know they can download the sourcecode for Linux --- For FREE!

They probably have all that Microsoft money burning a hole in their pocket...

Chip H.

Re:Doesn't anyone proofread these submissions?

[JLavezzo]

Actually, this is the hand of one of our uncles across the pond. The British (long thought of as the crazy black sheep of the Anglophonic community) imagine that a company must be composed of many people, and are therefore always function as a pleural subject. Since I don't think they do the same thing for countries, I'm surprised they haven't imploded from the inconsistency. Usually the differences between American English and British are attributable to their crazy desire to be French (colour, flavour) but in this case, the French match the Americans. I can't imagine a French newspaper reporting on a new Coke factory like this: Les Coca-colas constuissent une nouvelle usine...

Re:Good Riddence...

[beezly]

$2Bn cash now qualifies as "almost bankrupt"?

Damn, I wish I was almost bankrupt.

Marketing geniuses

[nightsweat]

To reapply an old saying about Xerox and IBM...

If Novell bought KFC, they'd market the product as "Hot dead bird."

If Sun bought KFC, they'd market the product as "Warm dead bird."

Re:"Owning the operating system"?

[Anonymous Coward]

It'd be tough for IBM to sell enterprise worthy software if most of its supporting apps were not certified.

Yeah I can imagine the boardroom discussion right now..

"Who are these IBM guys anyway? Can we really trust them to provide scallable enterprise quality software for our organisation?"

Yeah, IBM had better watch out there. They desperatly need that SuSE brand recognition to keep them in the game!

Re:"Owning the operating system"?

[crackshoe]

Since everyone can just piss away employment like that.

Fork it and get bought again?

[ron_ivi]

highly unlikely that Sun would allow Miguel to continue the Mono project under Sun's employ.

Of course Miguel could fork it, create a company called Yimian, and Sun would have to buy him again.

The beauty of open source.

From THE dept.

[21mhz]

Apparently CowboyNeal was left speechless by the news, to the point of leaving the "dept." field blank.