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Linux veteran tries again (News.com)

News.com talks with Ransom Love, former CEO of the company now called The SCO Group. "It's so ironic, the turn of events. (Caldera began discussing) what we can do through UnitedLinux to indemnify people who had used both Unix and Linux. Apparently Darl took that in a little different direction than we intended."
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Linux veteran tries again (News.com)

Posted Nov 20, 2003 20:46 UTC (Thu) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link]

"they need Linux, and Linux needs them."

...uh, just what is it that most of us Linux users need from Novell?

(Not a rhetorical question, really. I mean, I don't think I need anything from them, but maybe I'm wrong.)

-Rob

Linux veteran tries again (News.com)

Posted Nov 20, 2003 22:02 UTC (Thu) by havoc (guest, #2261) [Link]

Maybe you don't need them, but as a small company specializing in deploying Linux solutions to small businesses who have been long time customers of Novell, Novell brings HUGE (this should not be understated) legitimacy to Linux for those people for whom technical superiority is not enough.

Linux veteran tries again (News.com)

Posted Nov 21, 2003 0:13 UTC (Fri) by stumbles (guest, #8796) [Link]

Hmmm I'm glad your beliefs did not apply to token ring and a few other now
obsolete (or at least niche) topologies and protocols. That cannot be understated.

Linux veteran tries again (News.com)

Posted Nov 21, 2003 0:25 UTC (Fri) by gallir (guest, #5735) [Link]

How is IBM's token ring related to the thread?

Linux veteran tries again (News.com)

Posted Nov 21, 2003 0:32 UTC (Fri) by stumbles (guest, #8796) [Link]

Well he was talking about novell technologies.

Linux veteran tries again (News.com)

Posted Nov 21, 2003 6:05 UTC (Fri) by havoc (guest, #2261) [Link]

How do you translate "legitimacy" into "technologies?"

Linux veteran tries again (News.com)

Posted Nov 21, 2003 11:35 UTC (Fri) by JohnBell (guest, #12625) [Link]

What I think you mean is "How do you translate technologies into legitimacy?".

With corporate backing and a budget ;-). That's how IBM did it anyway...

Linux veteran tries again (News.com)

Posted Nov 21, 2003 16:32 UTC (Fri) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]

IIRC token ring started as a university research project that was later taken up by IBM.

Linux veteran tries again (News.com)

Posted Nov 23, 2003 21:38 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

This is perfect example. Just perfect. Token is ring is mostly irrelevant now. As well as some other technologies from IBM. IBM is not irrelevant. And why so? Simple: they had huge number of technologies back then. Ahd they were able to use them to pull customers. Now they switch to open technologies, old technologies are obsolete but peoples are still with IBM.

SCO tried to do this. And failed. Let's see if Novell will pull it off or fail as well.

Linux veteran tries again (News.com)

Posted Nov 21, 2003 0:33 UTC (Fri) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

If a company like Novell can work with hardware manufacturers so that, when someone goes into a computer store, lots of peripherals come with installation instructions for Linux users, I'd take that. Even if the instructions specify that only Novell/SuSE Linux XYZ is supported, if I know that the thing works for one Linux flavor I know it can work with the others.

I could ask the same with Red Hat, but they've given up on the retail desktop market. Maybe Novell will give it a shot.

Linux veteran tries again (News.com)

Posted Nov 21, 2003 16:31 UTC (Fri) by XERC (guest, #14626) [Link]

...provided, that the sowtware, for instance, drivers, are not closed source and specific to only one distribution.

Linux veteran tries again (News.com)

Posted Nov 21, 2003 2:51 UTC (Fri) by X-Nc (guest, #1661) [Link]

Their legitimacy and their resources are the two biggest things. Contrary to popular opinion, NetWare is still widely in use but that's not even the issue. With the distribution and sales force that Novell has they can push Linux out in ways that RH, et. al. just can't match. Caldera could have done the same thing with the resources that they got from SCO but they decided to go in the complete opposite direction. With a little luck, Novell will see the mistakes and avoid them.

Linux veteran tries again (News.com)

Posted Nov 21, 2003 7:08 UTC (Fri) by error27 (subscriber, #8346) [Link]

It's interesting to see what was going on inside Caldera after they bought SCO. There is still good money to be made in PoS systems. Caldera could have made a profit.

It's also interesting that people are already talking about how they knew the SCO lawsuit would go south... Is it almost over or do we have to wait until 2005? We'll know more when we read SCO's quarterly report in December. I doubt that it actually is "fun" for Love to watch how the SCO saga all turns out.

I'm glad that Love appreciates the good relationship Progeny has with Debian.

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