Sometimes you need to lance a boil. It may hurt in the short term, but in the grand scheme it is nothing. There are many distros positioned to fill the enterprise void, including Ubuntu and CentOS. Since Novell fell prey to Microsoft's protection racket it has been isolated by many desktop users. So desktop Linux won't suffer at all. The loser will be GNOME which has quarter of its board from Novell, but I am no fan of GNOME so I don't care.
The question of the Novell ownership of Unix is interesting, but it since Linux has been around for almost 20 years it has established it in its own right as a legitimate fork. There are some big names that could step up to the plate and buy that IP. I am thinking of Red Hat, Google and IBM, mostly. Buying it would be cheaper than fighting in court to protect Linux and other derivatives (BSD OS/X). If Microsoft got it then they may use it to try to kill off OS/X and Linux, but more than likely they would develop their own OS based on it. They already quietly use Linux on their servers. The question of cloud computing and the decline of the desktop plays into all of this. With more and more users using android and similar embedded 0Ses in devices to access the internet it may all become irrelevant. People are increasingly not caring about what OS it runs, but about what the device can do. Novell is not the best positioned company to take advantage of the future. It still has vestiges of the past such as Netware and has not embraced cloud computing as much as other companies (Google, Amazon, Canonical, and Red Hat). Being positioned in the middle is not a good thing. Look for Novell to be broken up and pared down if it is to survive. Roy On 12 April 2010 04:25, Robert Citek <robert.ci...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 12:05 AM, hard wyrd <hardw...@gmail.com> wrote: > > It seems that Novell's time is near to become the next company to be put > up > > on sale. > > What do you think will its net effect to Linux as a whole considering > that a > > lot of its IP is directly or indirectly affecting Linux? > > Not sure about the IP angle, but I would not be surprised if articles > came out along the lines of "Novell's fate demonstrates Linux not > viable." We all know that would be pure FUD. But it still puts > uncertainty in people's mind, people that decide where to spend > resources, from the CTO deciding on company-wide infrastructure to the > student deciding what courses to take. > > While I'm no fan of Novell, I would not be too gleeful over its demise. > > Regards, > - Robert > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Linux Users > Group. > To post a message, send email to linuxusersgroup@googlegroups.com > To unsubscribe, send email to linuxusersgroup-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > For more options, visit our group at > http://groups.google.com/group/linuxusersgroup > > To unsubscribe, reply using "remove me" as the subject. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Linux Users Group. To post a message, send email to linuxusersgroup@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe, send email to linuxusersgroup-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit our group at http://groups.google.com/group/linuxusersgroup
