[wellylug] Novell buys Ximian

[Rob Giltrap - Ubiety Group]

I think this is probably a good thing as there are now two large 
international corporates (Novell & Sun) backing the Gnome UI as a basis 
for the desktop.

I think what this shows is that MS can be supplanted by Gnome as the 
ubiquitous UI. What matters the most is that the UI is open, all the 
plumbing which runs behind the scenes is irrelevant to the end user 
which means that companies like Sun & Novell (and anyone else who wants 
to join in) can compete on the plumbing. The plumbing can be completely 
open or closed or somewhere in between, but as the interface is open 
then the business consumer always has the option to swap providers 
without having to directly impact on the users.

Jamie Dobbs wrote:

>http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030804/sfm098_1.html
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>Hopefully this won't change this too much!
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