Quote:
Originally Posted by GofBorg
> Your belief is wrong. Novell made the deal because a) it needed a quick
> $$$ fix badly at that time, b) it thought that by having "protection"
> from MS, it will gain a large amount of customers due to this and c) the
> only way to get the "protection" and quick fix was to agree to a patent
> deal with MS
Not sure that I believe your supposition. Last time I checked Novell had
a boat load of cash in the bank...even before the M$ deal. I don't think
lack of cash has ever been a Novell issue...not spending any on marketing
does have some rewards apparently.
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Novell's real issue is cash flow.
I haven't broken down the key business ratios but from the history I read before crunching the numbers... I'd think Novell has had a decade or more of cash flow issues. The 80s are gone and so are all those billions and the one time position of market domination and Information Technology industry leadership.
I'd think that Novell has a 5 year strategic window to put itself into a position of obvious Linux consumer, small business, and educational institutional workgroup niche dominance... or it might be in trouble. Many people seem to over look the fact that Novell is in direct competition with IBM, Red Hat, Oracle, Microsoft, and other smaller players; there are only so many more NetWare customers who will just blindly adopt new Novell products.
If the last 5 years is a good indication of the direction of Novell's market growth... I'd say Novell has been on the wrong side of the curve. Novell saved SuSE and for that I will be forever grateful; even if OpenSuSE 11.1 bites and some of those Novell engineers won't save KDE 3.5.
I love to make analogies:
This is Novell's & SuSE's "Saga of the Volsungs"!
The company we share makes us all a bunch of adventuring souls. The shared company: called rogues by some, called scoundrels by others; yet explorers we are venturing forth over the stormy seas of Uncertainty. The oceans are rough and all the land falls we've made to date have brought us no closer to the elusive riches of gold. Falling short of the dreams of limitless wealth, and short of realizing the bountiful satisfaction of finding all the answers to our questions and desires... we press on. The dragons are before us and the seas are hard and we need to make land fall and seek plunger and opportunity. Land fall we must to loot and pillage! Yes loot the monasteries and pillage the villages! Take what we can and carry home what we can to our fold.
It's a good time to turn the ship into the waves and get back to shore to loot some more monasteries and pillage some villages. We can't lay protracted sieges to fortresses or cities. We can't stand fast and hard against the armored cavalry supported by their infantry. We must pick the fights we can win and win them we must... or the our efforts are lost and our dreams are as meaningless as stones which turn to dust.
So... in English... I believe Novell has to find a way to pick key market niche opportunities and then to make a strong push to get recognition and differentiation from it's competition in those niche markets. Personally I'd like to think that Novell's marketing team and our wonderful OpenSuSE community could find a way to live with the reality of taking Microsoft's money while we face the Juggernauts of IBM, Oracle, Red Hat, and Ubooboo. I really don't like Ubooobooo.... over a pure question of ethics. Mark Shuttleworth cut his own deal with Microsoft and started to call the kettle black after he'd fried his own steaks on the burning coals.
As a customer I want Novell around for a while because it has our baby! OpenSuSE, SuSE, RePMtile, Lizardnix, Toadnix, what ever the detractors want to call the distribution... we all want it to gain market share and presence in a difficult venue which is shared by some serious players.
If we have to throw in the towel.... let us toss it towards Red Hat and Fedora. Cut some deals with the competition which can give both parties a temporary edge in a really nasty environment.
I'm hoping we can have some fun with this discussion.