10.07.08
Legal Blow for Novell: Astrum’s Lawsuit Goes Ahead
Microsoft-esque tactics deserve appropriate treatment
Back in May, Novell got sued by a former partner for its resorting to a Microsoft-like betrayal (embrace-and-replace tactics). Novell’s response to this did not impress and we have just found out that Novell lost all motions to dismiss the case. It is therefore headed for a hearing on November 13th 2008.
That’s another pretty major blow for Novell, more pressing issues being the sinking market cap which descends and approaches just $1.6 billion now. Novell realises now that the judge sees merits in the plaintiff’s (Astrum) claims, so this could go on for quite some time and prove costly, not just distracting.
There is also a very interesting development in the the Novell vs. Microsoft antitrust [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11], suggesting that Microsoft’s dirty secrets are alive and well. We wrote about this before.
Guess what? It turns out that 158 boxes of documents from the Caldera v. Microsoft litigation still exist, and Microsoft is trying to get them. This drama is playing out in the Novell v. Microsoft antitrust lawsuit, and Canopy has been drawn into it too.
This is getting ever more fascinating. If all that material can be obtained, documented, and put on-line, it would be hugely damaging to Microsoft, which paid a lot of money (in part to Novell) to bury these past crimes. █
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.