[ Thanks to Jason
Greenwood for this link. ]
“In 1999, Novell Inc. conceded that it would never again
dominate the network operating system market with NetWare alone.
Still licking wounds from disastrous office productivity crusades
against Microsoft, the company shed its WordPerfect albatross,
retrenched and embraced what was then an up-and-comer: Linux. It
has been slowly melding its products and services with the
open-source platform ever since.“But Novell dived headfirst into Linux with the acquisition last
month of privately held Ximian Inc., the Boston-based developer
perhaps best known for its GNOME desktop Linux environment and the
Mono project, an open-source implementation of Microsoft’s .NET
Framework. The company has retained all Ximian employees and has
committed to advancing the projects. Financial details of the
all-cash transaction were not disclosed.“‘We concluded that we weren’t going to rule the world with
NetWare,’ said Novell spokesman Bruce Lowry, referring to the
company’s decision four years ago to pursue a Linux
strategy…”