News
Ximian goes to Novell
- By Jack Vaughan, John K. Waters
- August 11, 2003
Probably the loudest non-SCO buzz at the LinuxWorld conference surrounded Novell's announcement that it has acquired Ximian, a privately held Linux applications provider best known for the efforts of its founders, Miguel de Icaza and Nat Friedman. The two played key roles in the Gnome Linux desktop initiative and in the Mono project, which allowed developers to build .NET apps that would run on Linux and Unix.
de Icaza calls Novell's acquisition "a huge step forward. Initiatives like Gnome and Mono will only improve with Novell's resources behind them," he noted.
Friedman said his company is excited to have access to Novell's infrastructure capabilities. "We were shocked to discover that Novell had a really strong commitment to Linux and open source," he disclosed.
Despite its A-1, open-source connections, Ximian has struggled to find a working business model based on Linux. Lately, its commercial efforts have centered on some innovative solutions for Linux system management.
According to Ximian spokesperson John Perr, Novell intends to absorb nearly all of Ximian's 75 employees. Developers will continue to work from Boston under the name Novell Ximian Services, Perr told Programmers Report.
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About the Authors
Jack Vaughan is former Editor-at-Large at Application Development Trends magazine.
John K. Waters is a freelance writer based in Silicon Valley. He can be reached
at [email protected].