We became Novell Gold resellers when that program was first announced, and were grand fathered into it because we were selling and supporting NetWare when version 1A hit the street long before marketing got into the picture. That was a lot of years ago in the early 80's. Novell was a marketing and support arm for a group called Superset that actually designed and wrote NetWare. Superset held the brain trust that produced the successful Novell branded products. We watched Novell prosper while Ray Norda was at the helm. When he bailed out to form what today is the SCO/Caldera mix of entities, Novell started to die due to lack of vision and execution. We worked with Novell for a lot of years after Norda left, but it was all down hill; not too steep at first, but looking back, it was down hill the day he left. The small print in one of their manuals for their BorderManager product mentioned something called Squid as being an integral part of the product. That reference led me to find out what Squid was and that led to Linux. Therefore they already have a history of using open source products, probably under license, and look at how successful BorderManager has been. How many of you ever heard of it? Novell pinned its future on NDS and wanted to become the Directory Services Company to the world. It never happened. Now with NetWare revenues dwindling, it is using its cash to buy what it never developed. I can't fault them for that. However, using Novell support and the quality of their products in recent years as a guide, I don't hold out a lot of hope that they can capitalize on their acquisitions. I would have liked to see Borland or a real software house get their hands on Ximian. Now that Novell has it, history tells me it won't go anywhere but down hill. Even hinting at integrating things with NDS and Zenworks sends shivers down my spine. Bill Gradwohl (817) 224-9400 x211 www.ycc.com SPAMstomper Protected Email -- Shrike-list mailing list Shrike-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/shrike-list
