[Discuss] different perspective on Novell-MS

[Arthur Ralfs]

Like most of you probably I've been studiously reading lots of 
commentary about
the deal for the last few weeks.  Being a Suse user I have a particular 
interest in
deciding whether or not to switch to another distro.  In all the 
commentary I've
read I don't think I've seen the possibility mentioned that the brains 
at MS are
just covering their asses in case their own product fails.

I first started using linux late in 1998, Red Hat 5.2 I think it was, 
and I had some
trouble getting it installed.  I had just bought a computer, my first 
home PC,
with Windows 98 on it and immediately made it into a dual boot box.  I had
trouble getting X to work.  About a year later I tried out the latest 
Mandrake
issue and had a jaw dropping experience owing to the tremendous advance
made in the course of a year.  My reaction was Microsoft is f****d, there's
no way they can compete with this FOSS stuff.  I was somewhat naive back
then and wasn't thinking about FUD, MS using their billions to influence 
lawmakers
to pass unfair laws, and collusion and bullying of hardware manufacturers to
obfuscate and conceal their interfaces.

Eight years later I still believe that there is no way MS can compete 
but with
the proviso that that competition is on a level playing field.  Probably 
everybody
on this list knows that MS undertook a complete rewrite of Windows after XP,
and that this is why it's taken them so long to get Vista out the door, 
even with
significant feature cuts at the same time.  We won't know what the 
verdict is
on Vista for some months, but I suspect MS knows they're in trouble, and are
bracing themselves for the eventuality that they may have to dump their own
proprietary system and offer their services on top of linux, or maybe 
BSD a la
Apple, sometime in the next few years.  If so then it's almost certain 
they would
look to buy a linux company rather than build their own and in that case 
I guess
that Novell might look, from their perspective,  like the best one to buy.

Arthur Ralfs