11.05.08
IBM Vice President: Requires Silverlight? No Thanks.
IBM’s VP of open source and standards says Mo’ “No”
Truthfully, Bob Sutor never liked Mono. He asked about it several times before and wanted it removed [1, 2, 3]. When faced by Mono 'guards', he politely explained at the time, “I don’t want to get into the well-known controversies around Mono in this thread, but for those who decide not to use it, for any reason, it’s good to know how to avoid it.”
A couple of days ago, at the sight of this post, he wrote: “Requires Silverlight? Err, no thanks.”
Since he has Ubuntu GNU/Linux installed on his laptop, it may have been Mono and Moonlight that deterred him as much as it deters Fedora. Additionally, from the comments on this post:
I emailed them asking about Linux support a couple months after the Watch Instantly feature came out because I wanted to take advantage of it, and they responded saying that they were working on Linux and Mac OS support but had to work on security issues, so I stuck with it thinking that I would eventually be able to take advantage of the feature. Over a year later, there was still no Watch Instantly for Linux, so I canceled my subscription. I hope they eventually get around to it.
It was very clear from the start that Microsoft would use Silver Lie (or Novell’s Moon Lie) to harm its #1 competitor, which is also a platform of choice to IBM. █
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.