04.29.07
The Attitude Problem: Competing Against an Enemy of Your Enemy
Last year we saw some Red Hat spoofs which referred to the Microsoft/Novell deal. I don’t know if the following is a spoof or a real commercial, but given Novell’s utter disregard for Red Hat (they clearly forget where Linux came from), nothing seems impossible.
As argued many times before, Novell sees Red Hat as its main rival, rather than stay focused on Microsoft, which is where a large userbase is up for grabs. Novell should have and could worked more closely with Red Hat, not scrutinise them. As a matter fact, a Novell deal with Red Hat did not seem like such a crazy idea back in November, based on what we discussed in the SUSE mailing lists. An enemy of one’s enemy is a friend, but Novell chose to make a deal with the enemy, to hurt what could have been a good friend.
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.
Russ Dastrup said,
April 30, 2007 at 9:52 am
This particular video was one that was submitted by a college student in a Novell sponsored College student video competition. Novell did not give the students any content guidelines other than the direction that each video had to be Novell related. This video was very well produced and was humorous and did well in the competition. We did not base our judging criteria on what we felt was politically correct at the time. This was not a political statement just an attempt by a student to create something unique and clever and win a prize.