d2r: novell buys ximian

novell buys ximian

I go out for an hour, and when I come back Novell has announced the acquisition of Ximian. Wow. Why would Novell buy Ximian at all? Why would Ximian agree to be purchased by Novell? Is this a repeat of the Wordperfect/Quattro Pro situation? Or is this something else? Oriented towards services?

In other words: What does this mean? Too early to tell. Nevertheless, interesting no?

Categories: technology
Posted by diego on August 4 2003 at 3:52 PM

Comments (please see the comments & trackback policy).

I am an employee (intern) at Ximian and have obviously been closely watching the aquisition. Novell wants to get into the Linux space more as they feel it's the next big thing. It's publically known that Novell NetWare 7 will work on Linux. That's just one example. They feel that Ximian is the leader in the Linux desktop and Linux services and want to leverage that.

Posted by: Kevin Breit at August 4, 2003 8:12 PM

Without wishing to sound too cynical...

1) Novell have purchase Ximian - that in turn means that someone has received a not insubstantial consideration in return... and
2) Will now receive a salary paid by someone else to continue what they were doing anyway

This is almost a definition of happiness (-:

Which still begs the question "what's in it for Novell?" To be honest I'm not sure but that's partly because I'm not sure what Novell are trying to achieve any more...

Posted by: murph at August 5, 2003 7:24 AM

My first thought was "isn't Novell dead?" I'm still baffled.

Posted by: eliot at August 5, 2003 5:18 PM

Novell has been involved with Linux for many years and has been steadily including Linux features into their products. Ximian is best known for its GUI - so it is curious what Novell is planning.

Posted by: Marc at August 11, 2003 1:18 AM