[ Thanks to Kelly
McNeill for this link. ]
“Ray Noorda should be sad that all his efforts to save the world
from the onslaught of the lumbering giant he so valiantly battled,
are about to be resigned to the annals of networking and computing
history. The story will become fodder for a select few economics
professors in American universities. The war is drawing to a close
and his former generals sit and wonder what they should do as the
opposing forces advance….”
“I fear this might be the slow painful death bell for
Novell, unless they act now. I cannot think of a more robust
combination of technologies than Linux at the desktop coupled with
Novell Directory Services for connectivity to networked
resources. But client connectivity provided by the open source
community through the use of SAMBA does not support authentication
of credentials to NDS. And Novell has not yet released an NDS
client for Linux, under a proprietary nor an open licensing system.
Doing so would be Novell’s most powerful way staving off the
current assault of their traditional nemesis. Novell has indicated
in the past they are looking at open sourcing some of their
technologies. At this point, an open license is not required. What
is required is a client for a Linux desktop unit, which can
validate its credentials to the NDS tree….”