12.07.06
Nicholas Petreley Joins the Criticism of Novell
It is not only Bruce Perens who debunks Novell apologism. Linux Journal has a piece that rebuts some poor argument from Miguel de Icaza.
Who created OpenOffice? Who bought it? Who opened it? Anyone ever hear of Star Division gmbh or Sun? Since when did Novell become the earliest contributor to OpenOffice.org? The earliest and largest external corporate contributor, maybe. I’d like to see some hard facts to back up an assertion like that (not that facts matter, as Miguel admitted), but his hyperbolic boasting of Novell’s contribution is obviously overblown. And is a contribution that doesn’t make it into the main code base really a contribution? After all, in the same blog entry, Miguel himself makes much of the fact that Novell’s OpenOffice.org really isn’t THE OpenOffice.org. It’s Novell’s unique version, patched and modified.
He moves on to criticising Novell’s insertion of Excel VBA and suggests the the community rejects all OpenOffice contributions from Novell. This is very consistent with Nicholas’ previous views on this deal.
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.