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Linux distributor Xandros has confirmed that is has acquired open source email and collaboration specialist Scalix, although few details of the acquisition were available at press time.

By Matthew Aslett

The New York-based Linux distributor, which hit the headlines in June when it signed an interoperability agreement with Microsoft, confirmed the accuracy of a report on DesktopLinux.com that it has purchased Scalix.

Xandros did not shed any more light on the acquisition ahead of an official announcement, and Scalix did not respond to requests for clarification but the DesktopLinux.com report quoted the CEOs of both companies and stated that Scalix is now a subsidiary of Xandros.

The acquisition adds Scalix’s email, calendaring, and integration software to Xandros’s desktop and server Linux products and forthcoming BridgeWays systems management software.

The core Scalix technology started out life as HP’s Open Mail, but was licensed to the San Mateo, California-based start-up in 2003 after HP stopped selling the software to new customers in 2001.

A Community Edition was originally launched in August 2005 that allowed for free unlimited software use, while in July 2006 the company negotiated a new agreement with Hewlett-Packard to create the Scalix Community Edition Open Source project. Enterprise Edition and Small Business Edition are also available under commercial licenses.

Xandros and Scalix were already close partners, having announced in March that Xandros was including Scalix 11 in its Xandros Server 2 distribution. The Scalix Xandros Edition supports a choice of desktop clients including Microsoft’s Outlook, the Gnome Evolution client, and Mozilla Thunderbird, as well as a web client, and is targeted at SMBs.

Scalix is also available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise, and that situation is unlikely to change, according to the DesktopLinux.com report, with the company operating as a subsidiary.

Cross-distribution support has become a watch-word at Xandros in recent months. The forthcoming BridgeWays Linux management software will offer the management of Xandros, Red Hat, Solaris, Debian, Novell, and Oracle Linux servers and desktops, as well as Windows Active Directory integration.

In April the company also announced a Windows-based version of its Xandros Management Console, delivered with both Xandros Server 2, as well as BridgeWays.