Novell will (continue to) support KDE after all

[William Park]

On Tue, Nov 15, 2005 at 05:38:53PM -0500, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> William Park wrote:
> 
> >>http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1885694,00.asp
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >I get the feeling that it was just PR exercise.
> >  
> >
> There are real resources that need to be allocated to providing
> "official" support for any software components, and Novell was publicly
> under shareholder pressure to cut out redundancies. Arguably, supporting
> two desktops that perform essentially the same function is exactly the
> kind of redundancy that one would logically want to eliminate.
> 
> What was probably more interesting was the internal politics inside
> Novell of choosing which one; the ex-Ximian people (knee-deep into
> GNOME) fought with the ex-SuSE people (big KDE fans) while the original
> Novellers just sat back and waited to see who was left standing.

Actually, that's what Microsoft does.  Microsoft simply buys out the
winners.

> 
> If this was a PR exercise it wasn't a good one. Having to backtrack on
> what was originally (touted as) a definitive strategic decision is not
> usually good publicity, as it suggests that Novell misjudged the market
> the first time.

Yeah, that's was a bit odd.  Could it be that Novell has no "strategy",
and is simply trying this and that?  :-)

-- 
William Park <opengeometry-FFYn/CNdgSA at public.gmane.org>, Toronto, Canada
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