03.08.07
It’s Gonna Take More than Coupons to Get Ya Saved
(It’s a Kanye West lyric)
Every analyst has pointed out that Novell’s Linux business "soared" while every other unit was hemorrhaging awfully, supposedly this is a good sign for Novell’s future. One problem is, Novell has publicly stated they are a "Mixed-Source" company, not Open Source like Red Hat meaning they are not letting go of those proprietary concrete shoes anytime soon.
Another problem is, as was already pointed out, most of the money they did make was Microsoft’s payment for the now infamous deal - the one where Microsoft picked up 350,000 3-year SUSE support coupons to "sell or otherwise distribute" over the next 5 years.
Novell at this point has outsourced their sales and marketing to Microsoft and has settled in in its position as Microsoft’s Linux division, supporting and developing a complement to Windows. Novell has stated that Microsoft is distributing the coupons for free, so how are they going to compete with Microsoft on price for their own services?
Novell will play its role in antitrust dog and pony shows, touting Microsoft’s pro-interoperability stance (and reaffirming the need to respect their portfolio of legally invalid software patents by paying royalties to interoperate with Windows), and slowly whither away.
Unfortunately, they will likely also continue to be complicit in Microsoft’s FUD campaign against Free Software, let’s just hope they don’t thrash around at the end like SCO did.
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.