AlwaysOn: Novell Opens Up to Linux

“AlwaysOn sits down with Ximian founders Nat Friedman and Miguel
de Icaza, now respectively VP of product development and CTO of
Novell’s Ximian Services group, and Chris Stone, Novell vice
chairman, for an update on Novell’s open-source strategy.

“AlwaysOn: Starting with Chris, how would you
describe the evolution of Novell since our previous interview with
you? You were really chiming in about the older stodgy Novell
moving more to an open-source model, so perhaps you can elaborate
on that.

“Stone: Sure. When we acquired Ximian it was as
much about acquiring a culture as it was about acquiring a company.
And, I think there’s been quite a significant effect on the culture
of Novell by this acquisition. Nat and Miguel’s team has spent a
lot of time interning with our engineering teams, marketing teams,
and sales force, on getting everyone to understand the culture. We
wanted to take a very methodical approach to how we did this. We
didn’t want to be the big, bad company jumping into open source
trying to get them to understand why capitalism and enterprise is
the greatest thing on earth, because quite honestly the open-source
community supports capitalism and enterprise…”

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