Ximian Acquired By Novell

Yes, they can provide an end-to-end solution - a proprietary end-to-end solution. If they operate as they have in the past, you can expect that they will add on some freebies and then start charging for a better client or one that is complete or some crap like they used to. They have touted all their commitment to open source recently, but I haven't seen any contributions by any Novell people to get gnome-vfs to handle Netware services (until that screenshot from Michael popped up _today_. Smoke and mirrors is what I expect from them, I hope the disappoint me in the regard.

I've been around a long time and I remember a time when you were nothing in the SMB (small-medium business) computing world if you didn't know Netware. I also remember trying to get support from them - even paid for, my client is fully licensed support. They were complete a$$holes and completely closed. "problem? We see no problem." Then it would be magically fixed in the next Netware client release some months later. As a consultant, it really drove me to start recommending WindowsNT because it's file and printer sharing just worked. Now, maybe novell was getting screwed by Microsoft (and it is my opinion that they were), but that is no excuse for the crap they put everyone through. Now, hardly anyone I know even remembers Netware and there certainly aren't any new people in the industry rushing out to get books and learn all about Netware or NDS.

And as you said, their biggest screwup was not having more control over the client-side - true, but do you want to cede ANY control over your desktop to Novell? Even a Ximianized Novell? I certainly don't. I removed Ximian GNOME from my systems this weekend because I got sick of fighting with the dep problems and now I have an nice desktop from Redhat. It isn't as polished as XD2, but it sure works better. XD2 isn't what Ximian GNOME was and you can now get anything they have from other sources. I appreciate the work they have done, but will use those other sources.

I expect Novell's Ximian Services will be no more in a few years. I agree with the post above - it's incredibly pessimistic, but having worked with Novell for the last 10+ years, I see nothing to be optimistic about.