A Special Nod of Thanks

In 1986 Novell's Ray Noorda was struggling to lift Novell out of financial trouble and was counting on the third version of NetWare to help. It ultimately did, as NetWare came to dominate the network operating-system market by the early 1990s.

But that wasn't Noorda's largest concern. Microsoft was nipping at Novell's heels and eventually became Noorda's biggest foe. Still, staying true to his belief that networking requires openness, Noorda coined the term "co-opetition" and worked with opponents, including Microsoft, to create an open platform for business LANs. His battle with Microsoft continued full throttle, however, and in the early 1990s he acquired WordPerfect, Borland's QuattroPro spreadsheet and Digital Research's DR-DOS in an attempt to compete with Microsoft on the desktop. Finally, in 1993, Noorda acquired Unix Systems Laboratories, which developed and marketed the Unix System V operating system. That acquisition and its subsequent sale of Unix to SCO are at the crux of SCO's copyright claim against Novell.

Noorda, who is retired, went on to create the venture-capital firm Canopy Group, maintaining ties with Novell, but eventually cut off contact in 1996, when he saw that Novell was not recognizing the value in open source technology, including Linux.

Ironically, today Novell is banking on the Linux and open source Noorda embraced to turn itself around.

Article: A Special Nod of Thanks
Wikipedia Article on Novell

- Thanks Ray and Thanks Novell