Novell-SUSE Sponsors Openswan

hsjones writes "Concerned about the demise of FreeS/WAN? Well, looks like Openswan is going to be a good, strong open source IPsec project going forward. Novell and SUSE have jumped in with Astaro to back the project and move it along. See the press release. The Openswan project is at http://www.openswan.org. SUSE Linux and Astaro Security Linux both use FreeS/WAN in their current releases. It will be very interesting to watch what they do now with Openswan!"

Novell fumbled the ball - again and again...

[WIAKywbfatw]

Novell got complacent, made some dumb moves (eg, buying WordPerfect) and hit some real competition when Microsoft started muscling in on their traditional turf. Whilst the competition was coming right at it, Novell just looked on, doe-eyed.

A littany of bad management decisions is why they are where they are today. Maybe Novell can regain some of its lost market share but you'll have to wait a very long time if you want to see it regain market dominance.

Re:Novell fumbled the ball - again and again...

[coupland]

No offense, but you don't remember the timeline particularly well. WordPerfect had the poop beaten out of it long before Novell bought it -- caused by their failure to release a Windows version while they still had the superior product. By the time Novell bought it they were a steal. Agreed, not a brilliant move, but not what killed them, either. What really killed Novell was Windows 3.11 (Windows for Workgroups) which had built-in networking. Windows NT followed and sealed Netware's fate, despite the fact that NW4 was years ahead of NT. Both instances where the OS was leveraged to strangle the market for a superior product.

Novell didn't look on doe-eyed, the Wordperfect aquisition (which came much later) was a desperate attempt to save themselves once they realized Microsoft could leverage the OS to beat them, *no matter how superior their products were*. It was desperation, not stupidity.

Novell's Commitment to Free Software

[soren42]

I'm so very pleased by this news. My biggest concern from Novell's acquistion of SuSE and Ximian was whether or not they would continue to support Free Software. With other major Linux vendors (well, vendor) seemingly moving more and more toward closing their software, and locking users into their products, it's refreshing to see Novell opening more software up and supporting community projects.

We've seen it now with their support of OpenSWAN, the open-sourcing of YaST and iFolder, and the continuing free releases of SuSE 9.1.

As I said, I'm very pleased to see this, and I suspect we'll see even more support of the open source and free software community from the reborn phoenix that is Novell.

Re:Novell fumbled the ball - again and again...

[flinxmeister]

I disagree. The OS was not leveraged more than Novell dropped the ball. Remember TCP/IP? Remember how slow Novell was to adopt it? Remember how hard it was to write NLMs for Novell vs. apps for NT? Remember how cryptic working on the server console was? Granted, you didn't have to do it often but next to the GUI most small offices went the logical way. Bottom line, Novell got complacent, then got the pants beat off em fair and square with a more market friendly product. Microsoft is vulnerable to the same thing now.

Re:Somewhat off-topic

[wolfdvh]

I don't know, but I certainly wouldn't complain to see Novell take back a sizeable bite of the business that was stolen from them.

It was not stolen from them, they gave it away. They lost market share with arrogance and poor support that at the time made Micro$oft seem a breath of fresh air. Their support devolved to where didn't want to even talk to you if you weren't a CNE. The whole certification racket they pioneered was a brilliant stratagem. It got people to pay Novell for the privilege of doing their technical support for them. It was so successful that Microsoft later copied it.

Novell's near ruin was largely the result of thinking that a 90% market share makes you unaccountable to you customers. The ash heap of the industry is littered with companies, Digital Research (CP/M), Lotus, Ashton-Tate (dBase), WordStar, who made that same mistake.

I know that all those old players are gone and only the name is the same, but I was struck with real pangs of apprehension when I heard they were buying SuSE. It was the irrational fear that they would do to SuSE what they did to WordPerfect.

Legally, a corporation is a person, and I suspect this person has changed. I truly wish them well.

Re:Novell fumbled the ball - again and again...

[coupland]

See my last comment to parent, where I point out that your hypothesis is completely impossible. Microsoft didn't go IP until years after the competition, and they had no hand in OS/2. I feel like I'm arguing history with a 12-year-old. You were obviously not there, dude, so stop making up stories about what happened. Anyone who was there knows you are wrong.