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Ray Noorda

June 19, 1924 – October 9, 2006

Ray Noorda passed away on Monday, October 9 2006.  I had the pleasure of getting to know Ray during my 7 year on again/off again tenure at Novell. The heart and soul of the competitive, feisty and aggressive Novell is now gone. His contribution to the software industry should never be dwarfed by Gates, Ellison et al. He, along with Drew Major and others gave all of us the ability to share information from a disk and a network, something we take for granted today.

We all have “Ray” stories. I would occasionally meet him for lunch in the latter part of the 90’s to discuss Novell, Microsoft, his investments and the software business. He was a business man, not a techie. He was a visionary. He was funny. He was a community man, he was a father.

I never had a father. I sometimes wondered what it would be like if he were mine.

Chris

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