[wplug] Novell to acquire SUSE

[Bill Moran]

Chris wrote:
> There was just a discussing about RedHat and Fedora.  What's everyone's
> opinion about Novell acquiring SUSE?

I think Novell is hoping to save it's butt by jumping on the Open Source
bandwagon.  I don't know how close this acquisition is to the fact that
Novell has decided to make future Netware kernels Linux-based, but it
sure shows a trend.

Factor in the fact that Novell has lost a LOT of business to NT, and is
having a lot of trouble getting new business, and it makes sense for them
to do _something_.  I think the possibility that they're hoping to get
a server+desktop offering together is very possible.  They did it in the
past with Novell DOS, and I think they feel strongly that they have to
have both a server and a desktop to compete with Redmond.

On the down side, Novell has done some stupid things in the past.  When
M$ started stealing their server market with NT4, Novell responded by
_increasing_ the price of Netware (to cover lost revenues).  Thus, they
lost even more market share, and essentially screwed their long-time,
loyal customers.

I'm also not a Suse person, so I don't know what effect this will have
on the Suse way of life.  I do know that most IT folks I know that have
used both Netware and NT will give away all their NT machines for
Netware if given the choice, and my (limited) personal experience with
Netware has been very positive.  This could (potentially) be a good
thing for Suse, and Linux in general.

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com