Press release on Ximian.com. What do you make of this, and how do you think it will affect the SCO case? I haven't ruminated enough to have an opinion yet. [Edit: Closed tag.] [edited by - Oluseyi on August 9, 2003 2:52:03 PM]

Don''t see how it will bother the SCO case, Novell still hasn''t gotten involved.

Though, RedHat and IBM are both suing SCO now. Personally, SCO better have something up their sleeve if they want to go at it with IBM. I''d put money on IBM''s intellectual property and patents before SCO''s.

Have to wait and see, its all pretty silly now.

Though I think the Novell direction towards a Linux distro is interesting. It''ll be interesting to see if they can bring solid LAN management based on eDirectory, as well as a solid calendering/email program (Groupwise?).

They already have netware client for Linux and I believe NW6 started running on Linux? I try to avoid Novell usually, but would love to see someone try to get Linux under a solid directory management that isn''t an afterthought.

Int.

quote:Original post by Interim
Have to wait and see, its all pretty silly now.

Word.

quote:Though I think the Novell direction towards a Linux distro is interesting. It''ll be interesting to see if they can bring solid LAN management based on eDirectory, as well as a solid calendering/email program (Groupwise?).

Throw in what Ximian''s done with Evolution and the Exchange Connector and you have some powerful enterprise desktop potential. Plus Ximian''s obvious experience with GNOME...

quote:Original post by TMAN
I dunno, maybe there will be a real contender to Microsoft, but then does anyone still use any Novell products?

Do you have experience with the enterprise (just asking)? UNCG uses Novell, as do several other institutions. A fair number of corporations use Novell NetWare and its other offerings as well.

quote:How many people on this forum have any experience with Novell products?

Client-side, I do.

quote:As for SCO.. well Novell definately has gotten involved (haven''t they?) They''re using IP that SCO claims to own.

SCO purchased the IP from Novell. The only way in which Novell can be construed to be involved currently is in backing up IBM''s claim to an irrevocable license; Novell isn''t party to any legal action yet.

Heh,

A lot of people still use Novell, and yes it is actually worth a damn unfortunately. People value this LAN management/groupware/directory services stuff. I'm not a big Novell fan myself, as I'd rather see something like it come to fruition that is open-source.

Personally, I don't like the big LDAP/directory services push. LDAP was never meant for most of the things people are trying to do with it, and thus it tends to do a shitty job at a wide-variety of tasks ( or rather it can be crap to mold some specific functionality into the LDAP model ). I had some bitter experience with using it in a failed nextgen NIS project years ago, in addition to small functional purposes over the past few years as well.

I digress. I hope SCO finally burns in hell. They have been pulling this sort of bullshit for so long now that it just plain old. They should also be made to suffer greatly for Unixware. Bastards.

*EDIT* -- more to the point of the original question/topic:

As far as the Ximian stuff goes, I don't know how it will directly affect the SCO case. All I see here is SCO trying get a big pump and dump scheme going. I wouldn't be surprised if SCO ends up being ran through the ringer by the SEC in addition to oweing a pissload of money to the likes of IBM and Red Hat.

.zfod



[edited by - zfod on August 10, 2003 12:36:52 PM]

BTW,

I''m still waiting to actually see an environment where I can put my Exchange Connector license to use with Evolution. No place I have been has had the Exchange web shit installed ( Exchange 2000 I believe ) so I''ve been stonewalled for the past few years with my connector license.

That would be the only way I''d even use Ximian anymore, is if I could put that license to use. It''d be really neat if they could get something together that doesn''t need to pull some web-based hack stuff together and just do the on-the-wire MAPI.

Or better yet, an entire solution that is 1000 times better than Exchange is done with open standards........



.zfod

Novell still has plenty of deployments in large financial companies and some other industries. For a long time, no one could match Zen Works IMHO, but Active Directory does just the job. MS put their marketing muscle and sales muscle behind it, now its slowly replacing Netware from what I can see.

I think Novell will never replace Microsoft. However, I think there is a good market for a Unix/Linux user and computer directory system. iPlanet is good, but you need something with auto-deployments and easy to use user accounting.

I do think Novell has just become attractive to companies toying with the idea of Linux, particularly the European gov''ts and corps switching to free up the yolk of US-Microsoft products. Since Novell has Win32 clients, it might also provide a strong migration path for companies on the switch path to Linux, or just want to have more diverse LANs (either to give MS some chills in negotiations, or just to get access to Linux technologies).

I think they said they''ll have something out by the end of the year, it''ll be interesting to see. I haven''t heard much of Groupwise in ages, so it''ll be interesting to see if they can revive it on Linux.

I think one thing is for certain, its doubtful Linux will just be a fad in the market like OS/2. (though I have seen people who still use OS/2 *grin*).

Either way, it all depends on Novell having the resource and power to get people to buy Enterprise Management on Linux. I think Linux is still a network server/specific function platform at this point, no one seems to be converting basic operations and looking for AD or ZenWorks on Linux. Well, maybe the German gov''t =). However, it might be a sort of chicken-egg move. You get Ent Management, you get more general Linux networks.

I still think the first group to provide a corporate supported desktop distro with Ent management, consistent interface, and administrator based remote management that isn''t based on months of custom scripts, will be in a good position should Linux explode instead of trickle into the market. Particularly if they provide software distribution (which I think Zen Works currently supports on Linux..haven''t check.)

Either, way, good news for Linux fans and proponents.


Int.