It's been a couple of weeks since Novell's announcement that it was acquiring Ximian. Since then, it has posted its results for the most recent quarter, including a net loss and a number of layoffs. Some of the comments to my previous entry were interesting in that they mentioned Novell's "Linux moves" and I must admit that I was sort of blindsided by this. But as this interview with Novell's vice-chairman Chris Stone makes clear, the Linux play is something that Novell has been working on for quite a while.

Putting two and two together now, it seems that Novell wants to mount a strong challenge to a) generic Linux, by leveraging their NetWare brand and technologies, including Ximian's Red Carpet software and b) complement that with a competitive move against Microsoft at a higher level (UI, messaging) through Ximian products. In the interview it becomes clear that there is a nice interaction between what Ximian and what Novell has, with no overlap. Even the mono project (to create an open-source implementation of a .Net-alike environment) fits: Novel understands development tools, toolkits and environments quite well, since Netware and its Netware Loadable Modules (NLMs) where once an important development platform for networked services.

I have to say: it actually seems to make sense. And all of it, without hype or pretense. Amazing.