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On Novell's acquisition of SUSE
SUSE was bought for $210 million in cash. The deal thus values SUSE at less than one tenth the market capitalization of Red Hat ($2.4 billion as of this writing, down somewhat after Novell's announcement). Since SUSE has never been a public company, information on its finances has been hard to come by; at the press conference, however, SUSE's revenues for this year were estimated to be between $35 and $40 million. Red Hat's revenue will be on the order of three times that figure. So SUSE truly is a smaller company, deserving of a lower valuation. The magnitude of the difference is striking, however.
The press conference was full of upbeat "forward looking statements" on how this acquisition positions SUSE as a proper competitor for Red Hat. Novell's large, global support and training operation was mentioned several times; indeed, having a business on that scale behind the distribution might just help nervous CIOs sleep better at night. Novell and SUSE also have high hopes for Novell's large sales (and reseller) channel. Of course, Caldera/SCO was also supposed to succeed based on its channel... Novell also wastes no opportunity to point out that it now has "the whole stack" of offerings, from the base operating system through its proprietary enterprise products.
SUSE currently has 399 employees. It appears that Novell plans, for now, to keep the technical staff around; there may be some reductions in the administrative area, however. Novell has stated that it is committed to maintaining SUSE's presence in Nuremberg.
Novell's management has learned to say the right things with regard to the open source community - though they accepted no questions from community publications at the conference. Novell, says CEO Jack Messman, "expects to learn a lot" from the SUSE engineers, and plans to continue to be a leader in the development community.
After the conference, we asked about Novell's plans in a couple of areas. Unlike Red Hat, Novell/SUSE does not plan to drop its retail distribution; instead, it will fire up its sales channels and try to create a much larger presence for all of SUSE's products, especially in the U.S. The situation with desktops is a little less clear. SUSE has long been a supporter of the KDE desktop, but Novell owns Ximian, which is rather firmly in the GNOME camp. Novell, apparently, doesn't yet know how it will resolve that difference; PR person Kevan Barney told us "We'll be evaluating how to proceed on the desktop front in the coming months."
The same press release announced that IBM is investing $50 million into Novell. The two companies will be negotiating other deals in the future for the continued support of SUSE Linux on IBM's platforms.
The long-term consequences of this deal could be large. Red Hat is no longer the biggest Linux distributor; it will now be competing with an established, large company with a huge installed base of customers. The upper end of the Linux distribution market looks increasingly like a duopoly controlled by two giants. Despite the wealth of distributions available to Linux users, only a very few of those distributions will ever develop the mass to be successful in the commercial arena.
It's also worth noting that, for the first time, one of the core Linux distributions is owned by something other than a community-based company. It is certainly possible for a large company like Novell to handle such a resource properly and not ruin SUSE's relationship with the development community that supports it. Novell does seem to be trying to do the right thing in this regard. This acquisition might just work, and it could turn out to be a good thing for everybody involved, but the Linux commercial landscape has a different look than it did last week.
(Log in to post comments)
I just hope ...
Posted Nov 4, 2003 18:19 UTC (Tue) by heinlein (guest, #1029) [Link]
... that the staff members who "managed" the WordPerfect buyout are long gone. What a fiasco!
I just hope ...
Posted Nov 4, 2003 22:51 UTC (Tue) by AnswerGuy (subscriber, #1256) [Link]
I'd guess that most of the staff has changed in the last decade.
That's a VERY long time for high tech companies.
On Novell's acquisition of SUSE
Posted Nov 4, 2003 18:25 UTC (Tue) by vblum (guest, #1151) [Link]
Great background information!Why does a takeover make sense? They could have formed a tight alliance if this had been about opening Novell's sales channels and ensuring SUSE as a permanent platform for Novell to operate on. But, what will Novell gain from actually maintaining and selling a consumer-oriented Linux distribution?
Maybe Novell wants to add the Linux copyrights to its portfolio? ;-)
On Novell's acquisition of SUSE
Posted Nov 4, 2003 18:56 UTC (Tue) by utoddl (subscriber, #1232) [Link]
[W]hat will Novell gain from actually maintaining and selling a consumer-oriented Linux distribution?
Um, customers? My father-in-law -- a long-suffering Windows user -- may have provided a partial answer in his response to my pointing out this article to him:
What I don't understand is why if Linux can and does compete well why is there not a better option for non computer literites like myself to use these products on a daily basis,--- or is there?
His issues: Can he do his taxes on Linux? When will his Intel PC Camera Pro Pack USB camera work? Will his scanner work? How will he transfer his email? What is he doing now on Windows that he'll have to live without, and for how long? Stuff like that. Stuff that's going to eat a lot of my time if he switches to Linux.
Maybe a real consumer-oriented distribution coming from a recognized established company (especially now that that upstart RedHat is out of the consumer channel) will provide the kind of hand-holding security that users like him desire when deciding to make the Big Leap.
[I honestly don't know whether he mispelled "literates" just to jerk my chain, but I wouldn't put it past him. :-) Hi, Fred.]
On Novell's acquisition of SUSE
Posted Nov 5, 2003 10:43 UTC (Wed) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]
To be fair, migration from Windows 98 to Windows XP can also be incredibly time consuming, since it's crucial to do a fresh install not a 'Win98 upgrade', for stability reasons, requiring all apps to be re-installed.I recently spent 5 days of 10-12 hours doing this for a friend who has a small business relying on a huge number of specialised educational applications, some of which had licensing floppies and won't work on WinXP. A hardware upgrade (RAM and hard disk) was needed to cope with WinXP, and there were two major issues that would not have happened with a Linux migration (namely inability to set the CD drive letter to D: on the multiboot Win98 installation with a new hard disk, and also a parallel port ZIP drive taking over the C: drive on Windows XP!).
Migrating to Linux would not necessarily have been that much more time consuming, since such major issues are much less likely to happen - in fact just buying some new hardware and apps would have been quicker and less costly, since the basic hardware upgrade would have been cheaper...
As for the Novell acquisition - a competitor of my employer was taken over by Novell a few years ago, and that was the last we ever heard of them... Hopefully Novell's focus on Linux is significant enough that they'll make a success of this acquisition.
On Novell's acquisition of SUSE
Posted Nov 5, 2003 19:42 UTC (Wed) by thompsot (guest, #12368) [Link]
As for the Novell acquisition - a competitor of my employer was taken over by Novell a few years ago, and that was the last we ever heard of them... Hopefully Novell's focus on Linux is significant enough that they'll make a success of this acquisition.I was a sysadmin in a Novell shop for a few years, then our management team decided to consolidate on one platform, and because of no other reason than the fact that they were bombarded with MS advertising, they chose Microsoft. I know this because of subsequent meetings with them, where I asked point blank why MS was chosen to replace a technically better system. It was because the market was buzzing more with excitement over Microsoft Exchange (read: MS was pumping massive amounts of cash into the advertising game), and if we adopt Exchange and have to run MS Windows for it, why not run MS Windows on all the other servers? (these managers were not the technical type at all... just the type of people MS sales people go after). It was a miserable time and a massive downgrade.
But all that is said just to make my point: Novell has always had technically superior products, but they don't market worth a flip. MS has always had technically inferior products, but they advertise so aggressively that the average person would think the world might stop spinning if MS products were to go away. There's really no telling what fine software Novell has to offer. We'll never hear about it.
I hope they get it in their heads that technology alone won't do it against the worlds most aggressive marketer (read: most willing to lie, cheat, or steal to make money), Microsoft.
MARKETING IS KEY!
On Novell's acquisition of SUSE
Posted Nov 4, 2003 18:35 UTC (Tue) by rosie (guest, #4418) [Link]
Between Microsoft backing SCO, and IBM backing Novell and Redhat (I think this link's story is still correct), I'm starting to think that the whole GNU/Linux/OSS community is nothing but a few pieces on a big chessboard.....
On Novell's acquisition of SUSE
Posted Nov 4, 2003 19:13 UTC (Tue) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link]
Certainly "corporate america" is probably incapable of perceiving it as anything else.A community-based project with a groundswell of grasroots support not controlled by any corporate interest... it just doesn't make sense. Early on, it's dismissed as hobbyists and not serious. (It still is by many.) Once it clearly becomes a force to be reckoned with, either it's all part of a clever chess game, perhaps (as SCO would assert) IBM pulling a sham on the rest of the world, or perhaps a bunch of companies pushing around naive programmers. But there is this base assumption that it simply *couldn't* have become so important and influential if there weren't corporate maneuvering behind it somewhere. Nobody can believe that it got big just because it was good, just because it was free, and just becuase the people behind it wanted to make it good.
Sort of a sad commentary on our society that so many assume that there must have been a corporation behind it all for it to have become important. We are not people; we are merely consumers in somebody's economic model.
-Rob
On Company000's acquisition of Company001
Posted Nov 4, 2003 20:20 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
Ah, less of that negativity. Reading too many press releases can be bad for you health. Free Software will win. I am certain of this.Stuff is going to get worse before it gets better, SCO won't be the last attack on the community.
But GPL'd software is always Free. GNU/Linux has gotten too big to be ignored. The mega-corps say "GPL is not business friendly", hoping they can convince us to give up on the goal of freedom. But reality is that of the Free unices, the mostly-GPL'd one is the one with the most business interest.
Then they say "software can't be profitable *and* free". While ignoring that only 6% of M$ income is from software sales. Also ignoring that the software *using* community is currently answering to a microscopic software producing market. This is not a stable industry model. The infrastructure will have to change, but it will be Free Software that wins in the end.
On Company000's acquisition of Company001
Posted Nov 5, 2003 10:35 UTC (Wed) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link]
> While ignoring that only 6% of M$ income is from software sales.I've seen statements like this (with the percent value varying wildly, though). Is there a solid reference?
Regards,
Evgeny
On Company000's acquisition of Company001
Posted Nov 5, 2003 19:18 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
short answer: No :)Despite seeing it just last week, I can't find/remember where I heard it.
But even with this data removed, my point stands.
Companies can give users freedom, and still pay wages. RedHat, CodeWeavers, g10code, MySQL AB, Ada Core Technologies, etc. have been doing it for years.
On Company000's acquisition of Company001
Posted Nov 6, 2003 10:13 UTC (Thu) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link]
> Despite seeing it just last week, I can't find/remember where I heard it.>
> But even with this data removed, my point stands.
>
> Companies can give users freedom, and still pay wages. RedHat, CodeWeavers,
> g10code, MySQL AB, Ada Core Technologies, etc. have been doing it for years.
Right, and I have no doubt that one can build a successive business based on the free software. However, saying that only 6% of MS's income comes from the software sales you in fact imply that the other 94% of its multi-billion assets are legal (in the sense of FLOSS spirit). It allows MS to cry loadly: "See, we get our money in the same way these dirty commy hypocrites want (and use) themselves! Why should you (business) bother considering using free software? Why should you (senators) consider using the antitrust laws against us?"
I believe the 6% number related to the desktop OS sales only (and still I'd expect it to be higher). Other rumors say that desktop OS + Office sales amount to roughly half of the yearly MS income.
If it were 6% or so indeed, MS would happily made its software free (as in beer), since the neglible 6% would be easily compensated by a jump in the installed base (and hence, support fees).
On Company000's acquisition of Company001
Posted Nov 6, 2003 17:10 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
> 94% of its multi-billion assets are legalSource of income cannot justify holding power over computer users.
> Why should you (business) bother considering using free software?
Because without software freedom, you do not fully own your data. And with file format lock-in, you cannot choose the best tool for the job.
> Why should you (senators) consider using the antitrust laws against us?
Because monopoly status of the OS has been used to gain monopoly status in the Office software realm as well as other realms.
> If it were 6% or so indeed, MS would happily made its software
> free (as in beer), since the neglible 6% would be easily
> compensated by a jump in the installed base[beer]
I don't know much about Windows anymore. There could also be business motives for putting a high price on the box. One thing to remember is that their install base couldn't get much higher no matter what they do.
As mentioned, I can't put up a decent defence for this statistic, but I can still defend that software freedom does not have to destroy profits.
On Company000's acquisition of Company001
Posted Nov 6, 2003 21:21 UTC (Thu) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link]
> I can still defend that software freedom does not have to destroy profits.Well, it does destroy profits - _unfair_ ones.
On Company000's acquisition of Company001
Posted Nov 6, 2003 23:04 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
> Well, it does destroy profits - _unfair_ ones.Ok, I'll concede this much :)
On Novell's acquisition of SUSE
Posted Nov 4, 2003 21:09 UTC (Tue) by rheggs (guest, #4737) [Link]
I called one of my contacts in SuSE this evening. She had been in a meeting all afternoon, and had missed the public announcement. One of the first things she asked me was 'Has it been on Slashdot? What do people think about it?' Seems to me that SuSE at least, care for the opinions of the community.Time will tell what Novell is trying to achieve, but if their current front page is anything to go by (2.5 inch banner across the top of the page saying 'LINUX' with a red N), they seem to be making their position quite clear.
Will be interesting to see how things pan out in the coming months.
True valuation
Posted Nov 4, 2003 18:39 UTC (Tue) by freeio (subscriber, #9622) [Link]
The interesting point is that SuSE is going for $210M in cash. Valuations based on market capitalization or on the value of stock traded can be a bit deceiving. When one pays cash money, it is a far more accurate benchmark.The fact that a Linux distribution company can be worth that much cash, in spite of releasing basically everything but YaST under GPL, is a testament to the utility of what they package and sell. Their product "just works" and represents a great example of just how easy Linux can be to install, run, and administer. No wonder Novell found them attractive.
True valuation
Posted Nov 4, 2003 20:20 UTC (Tue) by error27 (subscriber, #8346) [Link]
RHAT stock price has doubled in the last 3 months because <some financial firm> rated their stock as a "buy". Red Hat make 3 times as much revenue as Suse. Suse has had lay-offs and financial troubles in the past. RedHat made it through the past couple years pretty well compared to most tech companies.I think these things explain the differences in the prices.
True valuation
Posted Nov 5, 2003 0:13 UTC (Wed) by vmole (subscriber, #111) [Link]
Let's see, based on the number in the LWN article above (very roughly, pickingspecific values to make the numbers come out even, do the variations
yourself!):
SUSE: P/E = 210/35 = 6 - about right, maybe a bit of bargain.
RH: P/E = 2400/(35*4) = 17 - Woah!
Looks like a good time to get out of Red Hat stock.
(Which *should* have nothing to do with the success of the company,
unless they get more hung up on maintaining the P/E than on long term
profitabilty.)
Re: True valuation
Posted Nov 5, 2003 2:13 UTC (Wed) by larryr (guest, #4030) [Link]
E in P/E is earnings, not revenue, and a P/E of 17 is not high.And RHAT P/E is a lot higher than 17.
Larry
True valuation
Posted Nov 5, 2003 21:36 UTC (Wed) by dkite (guest, #4577) [Link]
What did they buy? A name?Watching this industry adapt to open source and free software is very interesting. And I grow
in respect for IBM, who instead of 'buying' something, spent money to contribute to projects
that mattered to them.
Why didn't Novell do that? $210 million would finish up a whole lot of desktop projects.
Derek
KDE vs GNOME
Posted Nov 4, 2003 19:11 UTC (Tue) by dwalters (subscriber, #4207) [Link]
It'll be very interesting to see how the GNOME vs KDE issue plays out, since Novell clearly now have an interest in both camps.It seems that SUSE is the biggest distribution that supports KDE, and if Novell decides to switch to Gnome for the default desktop, it could be a bit of a blow for KDE.
KDE vs GNOME
Posted Nov 4, 2003 19:48 UTC (Tue) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]
Or it can be the beginning of a merge between GNOME and KDE. The most likely scenario for the merge is creation of libraries that can be used in both GNOME and KDE and moving more and more functionality there. Both Ximian and SuSE employ hackers with strong influence in both GNOME and KDE communities.
KDE vs GNOME
Posted Nov 4, 2003 19:57 UTC (Tue) by bradh (subscriber, #2274) [Link]
A lot of base libraries are already used by both KDE and Gnome (and othersystems) - for example most of the XML stuff.
Doing the higher level libraries is much harder. Glib/GTK is
fundamentally different to Qt as an object set. The only way I can see
this is one team or the other abandoning their technology, and while a
few people might switch, a whole-sale swapout is almost inconcievable.
KDE vs GNOME
Posted Nov 5, 2003 7:53 UTC (Wed) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]
Also, isn't Gnome written in standard C, while KDE is C++? That's a wholelanguage/programming culture difference, there!
One other difference of interest.. While I use KDE on my desktop, I'm involved in
PAN, the GTK based news client (not as a developer, yet.. but certainly as a
regular on the PAN lists). PAN recently made use of the MSWormOS GTK
libraries port to extend itself to the MSWormOS platform. That's something a
KDE app could never do without serious costs involved, due to the license for Qt
that's only free on the Linux/Unix side, but NOT on the MSWormOS side. I left
MSWormOS behind when I switched, but there are potentially a lot of folks that
could start their switch with apps such as Mozilla, OOo, and PAN, available on both
platforms. That's a potentially large mind-share that gives Gnome a boost, over the
apparently more popular in the *ix desktop world KDE. That too will provide an
interesting catalyst if thrown into the mix with Novell perhaps helping to encourage
a bit more liberalization of the Trolltech Qt license. As well, one can see where
Novell would be wise to encourage it, as it could be a rather unpleasant pain in the
side for them otherwise, given their MSWormOS platform mix at least presently. It
could certainly prevent or discourage a lot of platform agnostic porting they might
otherwise sponsor or at least encourage, if it weren't for the license issues.
Duncan
KDE vs GNOME
Posted Nov 4, 2003 21:17 UTC (Tue) by mdekkers (guest, #85) [Link]
I can almost guarantee you that Novell will go with a merge of Ximian technology (read: GNOME) as opposed to maintaining support for KDE. Think about the events so far, and you will realise that there are few other options.They now own Ximian, and thus some of the key GNOME development force. That means they mainly own the desktop - the connector isn't very good since it does stuff the wrong way around, and the red carpet stuff can't hold a torch to the kind of management environment SUSE brings to the table. For those who not witnessed the awesome powers of SUSE's management framework: it blows anything out of the water. So that leaves only the desktop stuff as the key strategic asset that Novell owns in Ximian.
Their support for KDE is probably going to be lacklustre to say the least, and good management sense (although I don't accuse Novell management to have any of that) would dictate that Ximian would serve the desktop duty, while SUSE would serve core OS duty. GNOME wins, and I am currently in the market for a good, stable, usable, but cutting edge KDE based distro. SUSE was the only one, and will never be the same.
I think that Novell will probably start dropping the vast majority of packages that come with SUSE - SUSE is truly a massive distro, and the hundreds of bundled games (just to point out a particularly mission critical example) will probably be exit stage left soon. I don't think they will kill it off, but rather go for a "petering out" kind of thing.
Finally, my main concern goes to the lack of commitment Novell has shown so far towards Free Software/OSS. Yes, they publish snippets and some bits and bobs on their site, but as far as I can tell, nothing major, and nothing that is not ultimately self-serving for Novell - all API's etc. to their own products. Let them OSS directory, or some other of their core technology, and I'll believe. So far, all the Novell success stories seem to have been how successful Novell has been in utilising FLOSS, rather then how good much they have given to the community.
Novells corporate Mantra has always been "achieving customer lock-in through technology" and a quick but deep look at some of their products will show a tendency to "embrace and extend" rather then implementing truly open standards. Look at the iFolder stuff for example - all the hallmarks of WebDAV, but not really so - it is Novells *alternative* to WebDAV.
I truly hope that I am wrong, but see a bleak future for the distro I love.
KDE vs GNOME
Posted Nov 4, 2003 21:38 UTC (Tue) by vblum (guest, #1151) [Link]
> Let them OSS directory, or some other of their core technologyOn Heise, there is a c't interview snippet with Novell's vice chairman Chris Stone (in German); he claims they were going to release an "Open Source Edition" of their "Nterprise Services." You're right - let's see...
KDE vs GNOME
Posted Nov 4, 2003 21:57 UTC (Tue) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]
I think that Novell will probably start dropping the vast majority of packages that come with SUSE [snip]Probably. I expect a lot of stuff will be moved from the main installation discs to a set of "extras" (which is to say, unsupported) discs, or available via FTP only, etc. KDE might end up there too, at least in the US market.
Software support is expensive, and from the point of view of a commercial software vendor the only software worth supporting is that which generates significant revenue. This would tend to work against software packages that duplicate the functionality of other packages.
KDE vs GNOME
Posted Nov 4, 2003 23:28 UTC (Tue) by wolfrider (guest, #3105) [Link]
> I am currently in the market for a good, stable, usable, but cutting edge KDE based distro. SUSE was the only one, and will never be the same.--You should try KNOPPIX. Debian-based Live-CD, but can be installed to HD if you have 2300Meg free. After that, apt-get to your heart's content.
ftp://ftp.uni-kl.de/pub/linux/knoppix/
http://torrent.unix-ag.uni-kl.de:6969/
KDE vs GNOME
Posted Nov 5, 2003 8:13 UTC (Wed) by hingo (subscriber, #14792) [Link]
I can almost guarantee you that Novell will go with a merge of Ximian technology (read: GNOME) as opposed to maintaining support for KDE. Think about the events so far, and you will realise that there are few other options.They now own Ximian, and thus some of the key GNOME development force. That means they mainly own the desktop - the connector isn't very good since it does stuff the wrong way around, and the red carpet stuff can't hold a torch to the kind of management environment SUSE brings to the table. For those who not witnessed the awesome powers of SUSE's management framework: it blows anything out of the water. So that leaves only the desktop stuff as the key strategic asset that Novell owns in Ximian.
The No 1 reason to buy Ximian was certainly Mono. No 2 was Evolution and No 3 Red Carpet, or the other way around.
SUSE on the other hand has just sold *KDE* to Munich for 32 million and will do so again and again when other german cities and the government catch up. They are not going to abandon KDE.
But other than that, you are right. Ximian is *the* company behind GNOME, I doubt they will abandon that either.
Right now the official party line seems to be, that they will actively continue to support all projects they have bought themselves into: "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. " (From the press release).
henrik
Achieving customer lock-in through technology ?
Posted Nov 14, 2003 0:01 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]
Hmm... That's what SUSE did all along, you know (YaST). They published sources - so what ? This still is lock-in. So it makes sense Novell who plays lock-in games will buy the only major distribution which played lock-in game.
You got what you asked for, you know: SUSE always was distribution without ability to create proper fork if needed and now Novell using it. Good thinking for Novell! You can not do it with RedHat customers. Not really - that's how Mandrake started. But Novell can and thus will do it with SUSE customers.
KDE vs GNOME
Posted Nov 4, 2003 21:54 UTC (Tue) by elanthis (subscriber, #6227) [Link]
They could also start phasing out GNOME from Ximian. I quite firmly believe they bought Ximian for Mono, Red Carpet, and Evolution, not the Ximian Desktop. Evolution works fine as is in KDE, Red Carpet may be ported to Qt in the future, etc.I'm not saying it will happen, or even that I think it's likely, only a possibility. None of us are going to know until Novell/Ximian/SUSE announces something. ;-)
A tale of two channels?
Posted Nov 4, 2003 19:16 UTC (Tue) by maney (subscriber, #12630) [Link]
Of course, Caldera/SCO was also supposed to succeed based on its channel...As I was just said in another venue, one big difference is likely to be the attitude of the channels to Linux. From what we've heard, the old SCO channel and its customers had little if any interest in Linux. I'm not sure how much interest Novell's customers have in Linux per se, but Novell has been using Linux in at least a few tools (such as their system imaging solution, which is usually run from a CD that boots a Linux kernel) for some time. So while there may or may not be great enthusiasm for Linux per se, it's seems unlikely there's active opposition to it as there seemed to be with old SCO.
A tale of two channels?
Posted Nov 6, 2003 1:37 UTC (Thu) by Peter (guest, #1127) [Link]
From what we've heard, the old SCO channel and its customers had little if any interest in Linux.
Dunno about the SCO retail channel, but apparently its customers have or had a great deal of interest in Linux. That's what got SCO into the mess it's in now, remember? The fact that everyone seems to be upgrading from OpenServer to Linux these days?
Anyway, Novell has said before that their customers are asking about Linux. As, indeed, any customer of business server solutions should have been doing, for the past two or three years now at least. And I believe Novell when they say they intend to ship a Linux-based Netware server product real soon now, as an alternative to running Netware on their own Netware kernel.
It is essentially the same conclusion SGI reached when it came time for them to upgrade to IA64 [and, say what you will about IA64, it is an upgrade from MIPS64]: would it be cheaper and easier to port IRIX to IA64, or to adapt Linux-IA64 to SGI's customers' needs? Answer: the latter. Likewise, I expect Novell to phase out their own rather limited kernel over the next couple of releases, for essentially the same reason: it's cheaper, in the long run, to leverage Linux kernel development and build on that. Plus, it gives them brand name relevance for the crowd whose reaction to the big red N is "didn't we replace that with NT back in 1997?" (forgetting perhaps the cost/benefit ratio usually associated with that transition).
On Novell's acquisition of SUSE
Posted Nov 4, 2003 21:20 UTC (Tue) by marduk (subscriber, #3831) [Link]
The thing that scares me about this is...Novell once "owned" Unix, and they didn't know what to do with it. Now we have to Linux-friendly companies (Ximian and now SUSE) that, prior to their acquisitions, seemed to have a lot of potential. I just hope that Novell doesn't drop the ball on these guys else Ximian and SUSE can be added to a long line of Linux has-beens, which would be a big blow to the community.
On Novell's acquisition of SUSE
Posted Nov 4, 2003 22:41 UTC (Tue) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link]
I am beginning to think that corporations by definition cannot own a Free software project without changing its fundamental character and cooling its momentum (what some might call "screwing it up"). :-) It all comes down to the different motivation the corporation has (again, by definition, not because of any nefarious plot within any given corporation) to make "products". The strength of a community project is that it is amorphous--its edges are ill-defined, and this allows people to help change and improve it through the discussion/flamewar/incremental process :-) whereas a corporation needs to have a well-defined entity that has sharp edges, so they can say, 'this is Our Product v28.0, please buy it from us'. Customers want to know what they're buying. Community members are more flexible, since there's no money changing hands and so what is Mine and what is Yours (the boundary line) doesn't matter so much.The problem is, sealing down the edges to make a Product tends to quiet down the (dare we say it?) "innovation" at the edges and the project tends to start to calcify. It seems to take a really charismatic and very clued-in corporation to keep the momentum going the way it does naturally in a community project.
Anyway, just my observations/blathering. Feel free to ignore...
On Novell's acquisition of SUSE
Posted Nov 5, 2003 5:05 UTC (Wed) by foo@share-foo.com (guest, #7940) [Link]
Modded +2 InsightfulI hope the Novell execs read your post.
On Novell's acquisition of SUSE
Posted Nov 5, 2003 0:58 UTC (Wed) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]
If they just keep paying the employees and don't interfere more with the projects, that would be fine in the cases of SuSE and Ximian, while it wasn't wise in the cases of projects that were originally more corporate. The projects these people are working on are not under Novell's control, anyway, due to having other members, so Novell's lack of direction with respect to its acquisitions isn't a problem.My suspicion as far as SuSE is that they want to sell Netware with Linux internals, and they therefore want to ensure (and assure their customers) that Linux won't dry up. Unless they actually have some sort of Linux branch, they have to worry about waking up one morning to find that all of the Linux developers have decided to go to grad school. But with a Linux branch, they can be confident that the projects will continue even if everyone else working on them decides to work on something else instead.
On Novell's acquisition of SUSE
Posted Nov 4, 2003 21:24 UTC (Tue) by android (guest, #5013) [Link]
>Since SUSE has never been a public company, information on its finances has been hard to come byThere is an interesting article with background infos at heise news (sorry german only): http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/odi-04.11.03-000/
Color me suspicious ...
Posted Nov 5, 2003 0:44 UTC (Wed) by brugolsky (subscriber, #28) [Link]
... of any business based in Utah. I'd love to hear Jeff Merkey's thoughts on these acquisitions. While Novell has seen a bunch of turnover, the cast of characters that have passed through management there is a rogue gallery.On a less conspiratorial note, it is of some concern for the duopoly of commercial Linux players to both be U.S. corporations, given how ridiculous the laws of this country have become in the areas of patents, copyright, reverse-engineering, etc. Not to mention the "what's good for Microsoft is good for America" mindset of our sly and/or dull-witted politicians.
Color me suspicious ...
Posted Nov 5, 2003 4:03 UTC (Wed) by scripter (subscriber, #2654) [Link]
I live in Utah. I've worked here for several years. I can assure you that most tech businesses here have people with far more integrity and sense than those of SCO. Most programmers here hang their heads in shame at what SCO has done.
Color me suspicious ...
Posted Nov 5, 2003 13:48 UTC (Wed) by hingo (subscriber, #14792) [Link]
I live in Utah. I've worked here for several years. I can assure you that most tech businesses here have people with far more integrity and sense than those of SCO.Could they have any less??
:-)
henrik
Color me suspicious ...
Posted Nov 6, 2003 2:42 UTC (Thu) by Peter (guest, #1127) [Link]
I'd love to hear Jeff Merkey's thoughts on these acquisitions.
Uh, I'd take anything Jeff Merkey said with a grain of salt too. Not saying Novell didn't screw him and Timpanogas, in some way, but the guy's obviously got his own issues. Which is not to downplay his obviously considerable programming talent, I'm just sayin'.
Color me suspicious ...
Posted Nov 6, 2003 12:49 UTC (Thu) by brugolsky (subscriber, #28) [Link]
Yeah, well I take Andre Hedrick with a truckload of salt too, but through all the bluster and rants an occasionally discernible hard truth emerges. And, IIRC, Merkey would admit to having had a few drinks before posting his nastiest rants. :-)I didn't mean to tar all of Utah. Novell is a rather central part of the tech industry there, and I'm rather suspicious of the management (not the engineers!) of the whole constellation of investors and business partners around them, and a lot of seemingly one-sided legal outcomes, always in favor of the folks standing in the shadows ...
Things change, do they remain the same?
Posted Nov 6, 2003 3:00 UTC (Thu) by krice (guest, #1749) [Link]
Searched Novell for Canopy, 1 of 2 hits was this:http://developer.novell.com/research/appnotes/2000/march/01/apv.htm
OK, it's ancient, posted in 2000, but some quotes, I know it's from a year 2000 Canopy employee, wherein "Netware 5 Saves the Day":
His "attempt" at using Linux as a Web Server:
"Another problem arose in the area of security" .... "It wasn't long before Unix-savvy hackers discovered that I had a hidden upload directory that they could access (a common oversight!). In a matter of a couple of days, my hard drive was filled with illegal and pornographic software".
I hope someone else enjoys some of the incredible comments therein.
Sorry, just feeling a little diminished, am/was a fan of SUSE for its developers, backing of open-source projects, ...
I do wonder how the "king" instigator/initiator of Certifications (CNE) will bring those forward, also. (Uh oh, I have a colleague or two who are pure-red Novell...). If you "ain't" got a CLinuxE, "you can't really work on a Linux-Novell system", the clueless CIO's/CTO's/PHB's may say, helpfully informed by "mis-"information provided by Novell.
Well, all is not lost, GNU/Linux is too open for that.
But I wish SUSE had told me the going price, that seems cheap to me for what they've developed, the Oracle on Linux certs, etc., contracts they've achieved....