Non-fiction: Ximian

Clarification
I'm not aware of a published non-fiction work titled "Ximian" from 1999 by Nat Friedman. Ximian is the open-source company co-founded in 1999 by Nat Friedman and Miguel de Icaza, originally called Helix Code and later renamed Ximian. If you meant a specific article, talk transcript, or archival piece, please share a link or more details. In the meantime, here is a concise summary of Ximian’s origins and significance.

Summary
Ximian emerged at a pivotal moment for Linux and the GNOME project, aiming to transform a promising but fragmented desktop into a polished, user-friendly environment suitable for both enthusiasts and enterprises. Co-founders Nat Friedman and Miguel de Icaza, already prominent figures in the GNOME community, set out to professionalize the Linux desktop with a company that could blend open-source development with product discipline, usability focus, and reliable distribution across multiple Linux variants.

Under its original name, Helix Code, the team packaged and distributed a coherent GNOME experience known as Ximian GNOME, making installation and updates far simpler than piecing together components by hand. That packaging ethos led to Red Carpet, an updater and package management system that tackled one of Linux’s most painful issues at the time: dependency chaos and inconsistent upgrade paths. By providing a reliable channel for delivering tested builds, security fixes, and new features, Ximian made GNOME more approachable to a wider audience and set expectations for modern Linux update tooling.

Ximian also invested deeply in flagship desktop applications, most notably Evolution, a full-featured groupware client that integrated email, calendaring, and contacts in a way that could rival Microsoft Outlook. The Ximian Connector for Microsoft Exchange extended this further, bridging Linux desktops into corporate infrastructures that were firmly anchored in Exchange. This blend of open-source core and paid enterprise add-ons illustrated Ximian’s pragmatic model: sustain open development while funding it with commercial offerings that solved real enterprise problems.

Design and usability were central to the company’s identity. Ximian’s brand, visual polish, and attention to interaction details were unusual in open source at the time, when engineering excellence often outpaced user experience. The company emphasized consistency across distributions, installer simplicity, and coherent release engineering. That focus helped GNOME gain traction among users who expected out-of-the-box reliability and reinforced the idea that open-source software could compete on refinement, not only on freedom and cost.

Strategically, Ximian also incubated the Mono project, an open-source implementation of Microsoft’s .NET framework. Mono aimed to attract a larger developer ecosystem to Linux by enabling modern languages and libraries across platforms. This was a forward-looking bet on cross-platform development that would later echo in subsequent ventures by the founders and collaborators.

In 2003, Novell acquired Ximian, bringing its technologies and team into a larger enterprise Linux strategy. Red Carpet’s concepts influenced enterprise management tools, Evolution became a pillar of the GNOME stack, and Mono continued to mature, eventually helping catalyze downstream efforts like Xamarin. The Ximian story demonstrates how an open-source startup can bridge community ideals and commercial realities, professionalize a fragmented platform, and seed innovations whose effects outlast the company’s independent life. It helped establish norms for how desktop Linux should look, feel, and update, and it showcased a sustainable path for funding open-source development while expanding its reach into the enterprise.