– by Joe Barr –
Novell and Ximian dropped the first bomb in the
weeklong battle for headlines at LinuxWorld Conference and Expo with the
announcement this morning that Novell has acquired Ximian.
All current Ximian product offerings for the desktop will continue.
Support for the GNOME and Mono projects will continue. No relocation of
employees from Ximian’s current home in the Boston area to join Novell
in Salt Lake City is planned.
Miguel de Icaza, who will continue in his role as Chief Technology
Officer for
the newly formed Novell Ximian Business Services business unit, said
this morning that “Ximian is going to continue doing what it is doing
today, but we are also going to be working with Novell to have a Linux
strategy for both clients and servers.” To illustrate, de Icaza
explained that Ximian Red Carpet is used both by individual consumers
for their own desktops as well as by corporate systems administrators
with thousands of desktops to support.
He added that “Novell is very serious about Linux, and they wanted to be
a player.” The addition of Ximian to their firm “adds open source to
their DNA,” de Icaza said.
Ximian co-founder Nat Friedman will serve as Vice President of Research
and Development in the Novell Ximian Services business unit. A formal
news conference announcing the acquisition is planned for tomorrow at
Linux World Conference and Expo.
