06.18.08
Microsoft-Novell at a Different Scale?
Why compete when you can buy the competition?
An article with the headline “Third Brigade buys open-source rival” truly stood out from the headlines yesterday. Why would a company acquire its rival, let alone an open source rival? Why would this be approved? Would consumers benefit from less competition? This had shades of XenSource.
Third Brigade has bought OSSEC, an open-source competitor to its host intrusion detection and prevention system.
Ottawa-based Third Brigade said it had bought the OSSEC project and related trademarks, as well as copyrights held by the project’s creator and primary developer, Daniel Cid, and the OSSEC.net domain, website and website content.
[…]
No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.
The press release announcing it is here. It seems like a case of stifling competition by simply buying it. The Microsoft-Novell deal too was a sort of non-compete agreement. Novell got paid handsomely for it. █
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.