11.10.06
MS / Novell, My First Reaction
This is MS going after Oracle’s deep pockets, and Novell gets to knock out all competition and secure an up-front payment as well as ownership of the linux market, which MS will allow to remain a small healthy percentage to stave off antitrust allegations- A nice little lapdog for MS, that they actually derive revenue from in perpetuity, brilliant.
MS propped up SCO against IBM, but the sticker was IBM has never distributed linux and Novell claimed its own rights over the contested “IP”. SCO has no case, and is rotting on the vine. Even if Novell gets to finally see SCO in court, there will be no SCO left. Novell has been seen by the community as a defender, and has steadily caught up to and surpassed the
leader redhat in terms of enterprise linux offerings. Honestly, SLED was probably the best enterprise distro out there, imho.
Now, days after Oracle threatens to not only destroy redhat and SuSE in the enterprise space with its Unbreakable Linux and support (including indemnification from ip litigation - $chaching$), but actually threaten MS and its trainwreck Vista in the enterprise (imagine not having to upgrade all of your hardware just to run a slightly more secure OS), we hear about this Novell-MS partnership - expect them to go after the first big Oracle customer, and then when Oracle steps in on their behalf - watch out.