Novell may nix NetWare development | CNET News.com

Novell may nix NetWare development | CNET News.com " day after networking-software maker Novell announced that it had bought Ximian, a firm that helps businesses adopt Linux on the desktop, Novell executives said it's likely that their company's own NetWare operating system will go fallow in favor of Linux.
Novell plans to run its NetWare services--such as eDirectory and Secure Identity Management--on the Red Hat and SuSE Linux distributions. Novell currently has products that run on Linux, Unix, Windows and NetWare.
"NetWare will continue to exist with a large customer base, and we will continue to maintain it as long as customers want it," said Chris Stone, vice chairman at Novell. Stone said he thought NetWare support would continue for the foreseeable future, even if development does not. "There are still people using (the) VMS (operating system) and minicomputers. Just because development stops, doesn't mean people stop using it."
Novell also announced on Tuesday that it would be porting its entire GroupWise collaboration software, a product that significantly overlaps with Ximian's Evolution client, to Linux. The applications handle e-mail, scheduling and contact information to keep employees organized. Although Novell intends to support both software packages, the eventual goal is to have only one, said Stone.
The moves indicate a major shift in strategy for Novell, which only a year ago positioned Linux as the enemy and didn't show up at LinuxWorld. Now company executives are saying open-source software is the future for the industry and their company."

$.07 says: suicide... Novell's long-suffering Netware-focused installed base is the only thing that has kept the company on life support over the years, and they're apparently now putting the entire base into play. Must be lots of people smiling in Redmond over this Novell "strategy" shift.