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Novell Signs Linux Deal with Australian Government 127

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the foot-in-the-door dept.
truthsearch writes to tell us ITWire is reporting that Novell has just signed a deal with the Australian government to become an approved supplier of Open Source software and solutions. This deal, believed to be the first of it's kind, "places Novell on the NSW government panel of preferred open source suppliers. This is the first panel contract of its kind by an Australian jurisdiction that contains provisions specific to open source software, giving government agencies and departments formal access to Linux solutions."
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Novell Signs Linux Deal with Australian Government More

Novell Signs Linux Deal with Australian Government

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  • Why don't all governments... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Eightyford ( 893696 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @06:37PM (#14879164) Homepage
    Why don't all governments switch to Linux? Microsoft's Vista release should be the perfect opportunity for government agencies to get out of this vendor lock-in. What programs are government agencies using that can't run on Linux? Open source word processing on linux should be ready for primetime soon, and until then wordperfect is still available. Any non-activeX web app should not be a problem either.

    I just hope that any new government created is not made with Microsoft SQL and .NET. That would be stupid.

    • Re:Why don't all governments... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jimmyhat3939 ( 931746 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @06:43PM (#14879202) Homepage
      Personally I think the biggest problem is users being so used to the Windows/Office environment. I know some companies such as Linspire have tried to make Linux/OOo an easier transition. I don't think they've really succeeded to the point where a company/government can make a seamless transition. At the same time, most developers (myself included) would rather not spend hours converting Linux/OOo to look just like XP or Vista. So, the current state of affairs is unlikely to change much in the near future. I do believe that if some enterprising group/company decided to make Linux/OOo look and feel 95%+ like Windows, getting organizations to switch would be a no-brainer.
      • Just today I had someone say to me, "I don't think I can switch to Mac or Linux because my job requires Excel and MS Access." Sixty seconds of research refuted that unreasoned belief, but there's plenty more where it came from.
      • Why does it have to look like XP or Vista?

        • Re:Why don't all governments... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Baricom ( 763970 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @10:38PM (#14880315)
          Why does it have to look like XP or Vista? [emphasis in original]

          Because if it doesn't, employees have to be retrained, and retraining incurs significant costs. You have to pay the salaries of both the trainer and the trainees. You have to be accept the decreased productivity of those workers, both during the actual training and for some period after, while they feel their way around the new software. Remember, most Windows and Office users are not technically inclined, so even small changes like renaming a menu option or having a different icon on a button can cause problems. Many users have learned the steps to complete a task, but won't be comfortable doing so if any of the precise steps to follow are changed. Some people can't even cope with the movable toolbars in Office.

          You also have to train the helpdesk or system administration staff to field questions about the new software. If the replacement isn't completely compatible with the original program, then some employee is going to have to convert and/or recreate documents in the new format.

          At first glance, these costs may not seem significant, but for a medium to large company, the loss of productivity adds up to real dollars. The financial incentive is often significant enough that it makes more sense to pay for an upgrade to Office than to switch to the "free" alternative.

          I agree with a poster further up, however...this is an excellent time to cut over to open source if you're a medium or large company. Vista is going to be different enough that it's going to take just as much retraining to get people back to their same levels of productivity.

          • Re:Why don't all governments... (Score:4, Informative)

            by ross.w ( 87751 ) <rwonderley AT gmail DOT com> on Thursday March 09, 2006 @01:11AM (#14880938) Journal
            The point being though, that this level of pain will most likely be required when VIsta is rolled out in an organisation. That's why a lot of big firms will stick with XP (or even Win2K) as long as they can, but when they finally can't get support for those, or can't get it to work on any new hardware they buy, that's when the opportunity will come to shop around and look at alternatives.
            • Admittedly I don't work for a big firm, I have about 35 users split across two businesses. The reason why we'll still with XP as long as possible boil down to cost, and also the fact that we're working with an OS where we know the ins and outs, and the companies that supply us with (groan) Windows software also want to target a relatively stable, well known platform too. It took us a long time before their software was XP ready. The GUI in MS Windows is a relative non-issue as it's stable enough for most us
            • > that's when the opportunity will come to shop around and look at alternatives

              Except that
              1) Vista will come preinstalled, Linux won't.
              2) Vista will run nearly all the old application perfectly, Linux won't.
              3) Vista will probably be able to look like XP, which many enterprise will use to reduce resource usage and to reduce retraining cost.

              I doubt that there will be significant retraining cost when going to Vista if the users keep the same application and the IT services configure the Vista PC to look lik
          • Because if it doesn't, employees have to be retrained, and retraining incurs significant costs. You have to pay the salaries of both the trainer and the trainees. You have to be accept the decreased productivity of those workers, both during the actual training and for some period after, while they feel their way around the new software.

            For that to be true, you have to assume that public servants are actually productive in the first place.
      • I think you hit it on the head. People just can't get off the current comfort level with Office. I mean even with the quirks, the basics of Office just works.

        OSS companies need to tell customers the truth that it's gonna be either the hardway (cold turkey) or easy way (99% copy, then weeined off) to get away from Office. "What would you like?"

      • I do believe that if some enterprising group/company decided to make Linux/OOo look and feel 95%+ like Windows, getting organizations to switch would be a no-brainer.
        So... You are telling us that there has not been any significant difference between NT4 and W2K or W2K and WXP ?
        The difference, as I see it, is so big that one could as well have changed to Linux or Mac OS X.
        --
        DRM ? I think I can Manage my Digital Rights myself... without the help of Intel, Microsoft, Apple and any other commercial organi
      • I don't think they've really succeeded to the point where a company/government can make a seamless transition

        I don't think there could ever be a truly seamless transition. There will be a little pain here and there. For a good example of how to do it though, Novell has good experience. They did internally a couple of years ago and know all of the Gotcha's. As a matter of fact they have ironed out many of these in thier products, making the whole 'Go with Novell for Linux' push more attractive.

        disclaime

    • Re:Why don't all governments... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by strider44 ( 650833 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @06:49PM (#14879237)
      Yeah that's great and all, but my first thought was "Why the hell are they going with a foreign company?" With the departmentalism of government nowadays noone seems to be looking at the bigger picture - if they go for an Australian company they get almost half the money back in tax straight away (in fact they'd get it all, eventually, if you follow the circulation of money), and they don't add to the list of imports. I like Novell and all, but I'm sure there would be some great Australian companies that could do as good a job.
      • Yes, the govt should look to an Australian supplier - do you know of any Australian company that can come anywhere near Novell's products and support ? Even an Australian distro (surely there must be one or two) ?

      • Re:Why don't all governments... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by dbIII ( 701233 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @07:31PM (#14879475)
        "Why the hell are they going with a foreign company?"
        Grass is greener etc. One of the funniest examples was buying Swedish sonar technology for our submarines at the same time the Swedish were buying very similar technology from an Australian company. One of the least funny examples is that failed managers from other countries are considered superior to anyone local, so we keep importing what can only be assumed to be the some of the worst of US management - who then bring over their friends to feast on the corpse of what was once a successful company.
        • You wrote...
          .... what can only be assumed to be the some of the worst of US management - who then bring over their friends to feast on the corpse of what was once a successful company.

          That's Management By Ashification. Almost all American companies bring in that kind of outside MBA eventually. Those aren't some of the worst -- they're the cream of the crop!

        • Got a another one for you. When they built the new parliament house the decided they wanted Italian marble. An Australian marble miner wanted to sell them his and wanted an advance so he could set up a polishing factory. The Aust govt decided his marble wasn't good enough and they wanted Italian stuff. The Aussie miner sold his marble to the Italian company who cut and polished it and sold it to the Australian government to use in parliament house. Go figure.

      • My guess is that any Australian company would only be a Novell/Redhat reseller (effectively) which would add on a margin that they could avoid by going direct - I don't know of any home-grown distros out there...

        And since when do Govt departments go for Aussie suppliers of anything. It will only get worse with the Aus/US Free Trade Agreement.

        An aside - Does anyone in Australia see the changes to the Patents system under the FTA doing anything positive for the local industry. Most of the changes seem

        • You are spot on with your observations with patents. It's crazy. The US side wanted something in return for thinking about letting us do "free" trade with them (but it's still a bit weird - e.g., IIRC the beef import tarriffs would be applied if we export more than a certain quota because of a provision that won't allow the US beef industry to see a reduction in size).

          are there any large Aus-based software companies - Anyone, anyone?

          Mincom [mincom.com.au] is probably the biggest. Of Australia's home-grown companies, it has
      • The NSW government (which is the relevant one in the article) wouldn't really care about that, as any tax would go back to the Federal government.
      • Why whould you want your goverment to be limited and controled by closed software from other countries?, OpenSource software is not tied to one company or country, even if its Novell or RedHat selling the shrink wrapped package.

        That is what matters, control over the software, Open Source gives you that, if Novell or RedHat goes out of bussines you still have the right to use and modify the software and there will be people to hire as consultants for it.

        Using propietary software (Microsoft) in goubernamental
        • If you are not from the US why do you use a wholly US specific word like "goubernamental" (it's spelled "gubernatorial" for what it's worth) when discussing an Australian state?
          • Not so obvious, but goubernamental does make sense on my native language (Spanish), my confusion.

            I do care if the australian goverment is adopting OSS, I do care if Latin American countries are adoption OSS (Brazil, panama, peru, etc), because I care for my country, and that other countries are going OSS make factible the idea of using it in my country goverment.

            Anyways, you are right, why do I care to even reply to the topic. Better go back idling.

    • Finally, Some Justice (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      After Microsoft nearly killed Novell by using brutal, unfair, monopolistic tactics, Novell now has a fighting chance to just survive. Finally, there is some justice.
    • Why is MS SQL and .NET stupid? I can somewhat understand MS SQl but why .NET? You can use mono...
        • Are you kidding me, that article though correct in some cases is very false in others: Examples: "In addition, ASP.NET requires separate code and HTML files; HTML can not be directly included in code." Uh, no. You have the option. "If .Net's "the future" why haven't the major applications, like Microsoft Office and Exchange, been rewritten on the .Net platform?" The web outlook offered with exchange 2003 is written in completely in .NET. That article is a joke.
          • On your first point, you're wrong. I've written web apps in asp.net and it requires separate html and code files. The old ASP does not.

            Of course web outlook was written in .NET. But no CLIENT applications have been rewritten in .NET as Microsoft promised 4 years ago. If you think the article is a joke then you must not care about facts, because it's not an opinion piece. It's only a summary of facts.

            • Re:Why not .NET (Score:1, Informative)

              by ReverieTech ( 959364 )
              LOL, facts.... http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303247/EN-US/ [microsoft.com] Thats funny, there is code in one file, and in two files just like I said, obviously you know what you're talking about. Really no client apps? http://blogs.msdn.com/vsdata/archive/2004/11/01/25 0823.aspx [msdn.com] Hey, you know what keep believing everything you read and being a misinformed fool.
              • Wow, do you not even understand what you're reading?

                "When you use Microsoft Visual Studio .NET to create ASP.NET Web Forms, code-behind pages are the default method. In addition, Visual Studio .NET automatically performs precompilation for you when you build your solution. Note that code-behind pages that are created in Visual Studio .NET include a special page attribute, Codebehind, which Visual Studio .NET uses."

                So if you don't use VS.NET you may know of inline code. I was using VS.NET and nowhere in the
                • And did you bother to read the other link? Of course web-related stuff is written in .NET. But the only client apps completely written in .NET are internal to Microsoft. 4 years ago they said Office would be completely rewritten in .NET within 2 years. Never happened. So far all they've done is connect to the framework so people can write scripts and plug-ins to some apps.

                  Why on EARTH would they waste all those man hours completely rewriting Office if they don't have to? A major benefit of .NET is how it ca

                • 4 years ago they said Office would be completely rewritten in .NET within 2 years.
                  I'd really like to see a source for this outrageous statement. Like a quote from someone who actually has any influence at MS.

    • Someone to blame (Score:1, Insightful)

      by nurb432 ( 527695 )
      There is value in having a company to blame and hold accountable when things go wrong.

      You buy Microsoft, you get to run bill over the coals.. You choose OSS, its your own ass that goes in the furnace.

      • Re:Someone to blame (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Did you ever try holding Microsoft accountable? If yes, with what result?
        • Every tech uses the "Microsoft is stupid" excuse when they cannot fix a problem, don't they?? If you are not using MS, then you can't say that, and it becomes "my choice of OS is stupid", which is more your problem, isn't it?

          Still, I would love to work in a wholey non-MS shop.

        • Re:Someone to blame (Score:5, Funny)

          by hvatum ( 592775 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @07:53PM (#14879587) Homepage
          A few facts about Microsoft:

          1. If you can sue Microsoft, they can sue you. If you cant sue Microsoft you may be only seconds away from bankrupcy.
          2. There are no bankruptcies. Only people who have met Microsoft.
          3. Microsoft defines competition as the reluctance to be bought out by Microsoft. If your company still exists, its just because Microsoft hasn't gotten around to buying you out.
          4. When Microsoft enters a new field it doesnt join the market. The Market becomes Microsoft.

        • Re:Someone to blame (Score:3, Insightful)

          by nurb432 ( 527695 )
          When you are a government, you will be surprised what they will do for you when things go wrong. And we were talking a government contract in the story.

      • Re:Someone to blame (Score:5, Interesting)

        by killjoe ( 766577 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @07:44PM (#14879541)
        1) When was the last time MS took the blame when their software went wrong.
        2) Please name the CIO who thinks their company can sue MS so I can publicly humiliate him for his stupidity.

        • Re:Someone to blame (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Atzanteol ( 99067 )
          New to the corporate world are we? I'll fill you in.

          It's not about "We can sue them if it goes wrong!" so much as it's "If it goes wrong, it's not my fault!"

      • like...Novell? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Xtifr ( 1323 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @09:24PM (#14880003) Homepage
        > There is value in having a company to blame and hold accountable when things go wrong.

        Right, and this is presumably why they went with Novell, specifically, rather than simply going with "open source" in general.

        > You buy Microsoft, you get to run bill over the coals

        Ha ha, you're funny! :)

        > You choose OSS, its your own ass that goes in the furnace.

        This is stupid; borderline FUD! If you choose OSS, then it's you OR YOUR VENDOR'S ass that goes in the furnace, depending on whether you have a support contract or not. Once again, more options, not fewer. You can try to support it yourself, or you can pay someone else to do it. If you pay someone else to do it, going with OSS means you're not locked in--if Novell turns out to have problems, switching from Novell to Red Hat (for example) is far easier than switching from MS to anything.

        I assure you that people don't usually choose Red Hat over Fedora or Novell over OpenSUSE for technical reasons. They do so purely and simply so that they can have someone to blame! You're right that this is an important issue, but you're an idiot if you think this is a dividing line between OSS and MS. It's the other way around--with MS, you're FORCED to have someone to blame, whether you want to or not; with OSS, it's optional. :)
    • I just hope that any new government created is not made with Microsoft SQL and .NET. That would be stupid.

      You're right. I like my government created with people, not computers. ;)
    • I just hope that any new government created is not made with Microsoft SQL and .NET. That would be stupid.
      I never knew there was a market for government creation software...
    • Why can't our government do this?? Fucking morons waste american dollars.

    • How about ODMA support? (Score:5, Informative)

      by jesterzog ( 189797 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @08:05PM (#14879639) Journal

      What programs are government agencies using that can't run on Linux?

      If you can suggest an Open Source application that cleanly supports an interface with Document Management Systems, such as ODMA [infonuovo.com], I'd be very interested.

      I work in a (non-US) government department, and we're required by law to keep all documents for certain amounts of time ... the exact amount of which depends on the type of document. We also have some legal requierments to protect certain types of documents from some employees. (eg. If two branches of the department are supposed to be providing independent advice on the same topic from different perspectives, we need to be able to demonstrate they haven't been reading each other's work.) This sort of thing is also often very important for law firms.

      We do this by educating staff to save documents into a Document Managenent System (we currently use Interwoven's Worksite [interwoven.com] but aren't locked into it), which requires them to enter some extra metadata about what the document is, and helps to centralise the whole document management thing immensely.

      I use OSS at home for my own things all the time, and at home I've gone without Microsoft products at all for at least 2 years, but last time I looked at the main Office tools (OpenOffice, KOffice, AbiWord, etc), I couldn't find any reliable support for ODMA. To be fair, Microsoft Office also has hopeless half-done support for ODMA, but at least it's popular enough that the main Document Management System providers have grudgingly written their own plugins to work with MS Office. ODMA's an open protocol that's already supported by much DMS software, though, and it's unclear to me why it wasn't supported by open source office and related products long ago.

      • It may not help, but it is a great start in many cases to file bugs for feature requests such as this, especially as you can provide use cases as well as specifications. I'd go file at OpenOffice at least, perhaps at KOffice and Abiword too. Also, it could pay off to file bugs for these kind of features at your distros local bug tracker, as the distros themselves have something to win from this and usually does local development that is forwaded upstream. Ubuntu, Novell, Red Hat or Mandriva for instance are
      • This may not be any help, I used to work for a law firm and we installed iManage, which was a big competitor with PC Docs. iManage was, at the time, in the process of building a java-platform independent client that one could use on non-windows. I don't know if they ever finished it, this was back in 2002-2003-ish. We were a Novell shop, and I was the zenworks guys, among other hats. I built the Zen apps to push out Office XP, and also built the Windows XP images for our windows upgrade from 2000 to XP.
    • See the OSDL desktop Linux survey (http://www.osdl.org/dtl/DTL_Survey_Report_Nov2005 .pdf [osdl.org]) and then you know why end users are reluctant to switch. It's not that easy when there still are inhibitors for adoption. Unfortunately nobody knows how, isn't able to or does't want to tackle the problems.

      O. Wyss

  • why sign... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by noopy ( 959768 )
    ... when you can download for free?

    • Re:why sign... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mikerozh ( 710568 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @07:02PM (#14879324)

      ... when you can download for free?

      Because you can't download a free support :)

    • Re:why sign... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by vertinox ( 846076 )
      why sign a support contract, when you can pay outrageous emergency contractor fees when something breaks?

    • Re:why sign... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Tired and Emotional ( 750842 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @07:09PM (#14879358)
      A panel contract means that the supplier can be used to "purchase" software without having to go through a formal tender process or get a waiver. The contract sets pricing and levels of service expectations.

      PCs have been purchased on panel contracts for at least 20 years. You don't want to have to go to tender to buy a single, or a handful, of PCs - even if it weren't expensive for all concerned you would have people twiddling thumbs for months until their PCs arrived. Nor would you want to do large numbers of such purchases with waivers, with the invitations to corruption that would create.

      So this really is quite a big deal.

      Of course, any group that has sufficient compute savvy to do their own support will still be able to download and do their own support. They quite likely also have the level of expertise and size of project to purchase software via tender.

      Its the small non-technical groups that would make small purchases using panel contracts that benefit from this - a high barrier for them to adopting Linux solutions has been removed.

  • This could be bad for Linux (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jimmyhat3939 ( 931746 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @06:46PM (#14879217) Homepage
    I've only used Novell setups a bit, but in my experience, they don't have nearly the functionality or sophistication of some of the other Linux configurations out there.

    Also, a little known fact is that NSW used NetWare up until 1999 I believe. That could have had something to do with their decision to allow switching.

    • I've only used Novell setups a bit, but in my experience, they don't have nearly the functionality or sophistication
      of some of the other Linux configurations out there.

      Also, a little known fact is that NSW used NetWare up until 1999 I believe. That could have had something to do with
      their decision to allow switching.

      SuSE? Not sophisticated or functional? Where have you been?
    • Enterprise managers are ol' timey folk, they know a few brand names and they will stick to them: IBM, Sun, Novell, Microsoft, SCO, and so on. So when they want to cut cost and try this "crazy new Linux thing" they'll go to a company like Novell because it evokes the warm fuzzy feelings from back in the day -- early 90s. Strange african sounding names or colored hats are way too much for them to handle...

      This is the biggest advantage of Novell. They'll milk their brand name for all its worth -- and they nee

    • WRT "a little known fact is that NSW used NetWare up until 1999 I believe" - the NSW Ministry where I am a contractor is *still* using Netware (Groupwise, eDirectory, iPrint, ...) and are (AFAIK) quite happy with it. Any mention of bringing replacing the Novell products with Microsoft ones is met (figuratively) with fingers held up in the sign of the cross!

    • I've only used Novell setups a bit, but in my experience, they don't have nearly the functionality or sophistication of some of the other Linux configurations out there.

      Honestly, you're quite entitled to your opinion, but if you're going to criticize something as less than the other distros, you should really make sure you're up on what you're criticizing.

      For example, what's better (real-world examples would be best) in your preferred distro and worse in SUSE?

      I work with both SUSE and RHEL daily, a

    • Lots of people here will say that Novell is a nice nostalgic name to hang a linux distro on.

      The fact is that Novell knows networking. Novell knows reliability. Novell's reputation on those two factors is legendary for a good reason. Historically their stuff works so well that Novell servers have been mistakenly bricked up into a closet and forgotten for --years--. Yes, it can be a little cludgy, a little arcane. Compare them, though, to a company that measures the uptime of their server software only w

    • As far as I know, Sydney Water still uses Netware, and have done since about 1993.
    • first, any facts on that supposed lack of functionality ?

      second, we still have novell 3.x and 4.x running (and only now are swapping them out). nice, i would say.

  • The Australian Government? (Score:5, Informative)

    by UoNTidal ( 442382 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @06:53PM (#14879258)
    ...tell us ITWire is reporting that Novell has just signed a deal with the Australian government...

    As much as I like to think that my state is a little more important than the others, it's pretty obvious from the title of TFA that the deal has been signed with the New South Wales state government, not the Australian federal government.

  • Overrated (Score:5, Insightful)

    by glowworm ( 880177 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @06:57PM (#14879288) Journal
    While this is a good thing the summary overstates things a little. It is, in fact, just one department of one state. A mere chink in the armour.
  • You had me all excited there, turns out it's only the NSW government, only 1 of the 8 States and Territories, nice but hardly the whole of Australia.

  • State, not Federal Govt (Score:5, Informative)

    by wylf ( 657051 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @07:00PM (#14879305)

    The article clearly states that the contract is with the New South Wales State Government. So this covers New South Wales only, not the entire country, as the slashdot title indicates.

    Also, just because Novell is now an approved supplier doesn't mean that NSW State Government can't implement non-Novell solutions, or purchase OSS (solutions) from anyone other than Novell. AFAIK, it merely means that some paperwork can be skipped in the procurement process. For instance, I think that when dealing with a non-approved supplier, evidence of comparative offerings from at least 2 other suppliers is also required. At least, that is what it would mean in a Federal Government context.

  • Get it into schools (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Freaky Spook ( 811861 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @07:10PM (#14879360)
    I don't know how much the State Government of Victoria wastes on Open Software licencing with MS. For the cost of a CD schools can buy open licences for Windows Server Products, Windows XP, Office.

    A primary school I was administering for a while was had open licence copies for Win2K3, WinXp, Office2k3, Exchange 2K3, SQL 2000, ISA server and all that was used was WinXP & Win2k3 Server.

    It seems a waste of money, moving to linux could help cut costs on resources and and put it into what should matter in schools. TRAINING!!!
    • It costs the school about $7.50 for a CD of whatever MS product they want. That's posted to them. What it's costing the State in terms of a software licence is another question altogether. BTW, in Victoria at least, Linux is used for odd jobs like firewall/proxy (Smoothwall) etc. But since that is a turnkey install the Dept techs don't have to get their hands (or minds) dirty.
      • Just before I left we got the smoothwall box, it was really good I found it. It is progress, but apart from myself and the DEET Tech who was looking after the school, no one else had any idea what it did, or what Linux was.

        Because its a backend service users don't care about it at all.

  • Novell are doing a lot of things right (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gregluck ( 668236 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @07:55PM (#14879589)
    A year ago Novell seemed to have lost its way with its SuSE initative. The executive who had directed the open source strategy had departed, and much of the rest of the company just didn't get it.

    Then they decided to release OpenSuse. OpenSuse is now more popular than Fedora Core. That won back the devs like me who had not been listening. And OpenSuse is polished.

    This announcement of itself is not that huge. But when taken with the other things they have been doing I can see that Novell can gain mindshare amongst developers and their traditional corporate base. That bodes well for them.

  • Maybe first in Australia (Score:5, Funny)

    by hdparm ( 575302 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @08:07PM (#14879649) Homepage
    They've done it last year in New Zealand - govt. contract to supply OS/software (SuSE of course) to nz primary and secondary schools.

    So, mainland first, then west island :o)
  • zdnet [zdnet.com.au] reported it last year in April.

    From the article: The NSW Minister for Commerce, John Della Bosca, on Monday announced -- after a six-month tender evaluation process -- 11 companies would be offered positions on the panel. Companies which made the cut included CSC, Dell, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Novell, Red Hat, Sol1, Starcom, Sun Microsystems and System Integration Services.

    The agreement was subject to "final negotiations", but was not just an agreement to supply one agency, as one comment st
  • The cameleon would have had a nice time in the Desert.

  • "Novell has just signed a deal with the Australian Government" and from the article "Novell has signed a deal with the NSW Department of Commerce, being a department of the NSW Government at that.

    Contrary to popular belief, Sydney is not the capital city of Australia, and The New South Wales Government is not The Australian Government.

  • The article is about New South Wales, which is only one Australian state. While it's big news that NSW has decided to put Novell on its Approved Vendors list, the summary seemed to imply that the deal was with the federal government. it is NOT.

    This is roughly the same as, say the state of New York or Ohio putting Novell on its approved vendors list. News, but not massive news. C'mon, slashdot editors. Learn some geography/politics.

  • This doesn't suprise me a lot but it does please me. I worked for Telstra (the government telco) for many years and their lan/wan network which is unbelievably huge has been running on Novell since the first lan went in. At that time the workstations were running winblows 3.11 but the network was Novell. I don't know if they still are on Novell but I can't imagine them changing considering the complexity of the network. When it first went in Telstra (then called Telecom) was a government commission. The exp
  • Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda is a 29-year old white male with a stocky build and a goatee. He responded to my ad to be interviewed for this article wearing only leather pants, leather boots and a leather vest. I could see that both of his nipples were pierced with large-gauge silver rings.

    Questioner: I hope you won't be offended if I ask you to prove to me that you're a nullo. Just so that my readers will know that this isn't a fake.

    CmdrTaco: Sure, no problem. (stands and unbuckles pants and drops them to his ankle

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