12.04.06
Novell to Face the South African ‘Jury’
As Shane recently pointed out, Novell is heading toward South Africa where it will confront resistance to its foolish moves. Tectonic has some more details which complement the full schedule.
As a quick reminder, a principal IT chief vowed to extricate Novell products and it seems evident that South Africans are leaning toward Ubuntu, which works in Canonical’s favour. Mark Shuttleworth is, after all, South African. Novell may have given the excuse to many who were looking for SuSE/SUSE/SLED/SLES/Opensuse alternatives. They are the victim of their own tactlessness.
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.