I disagree! Microsoft and Novel partnership will be huge, upgrades are already coming in for the partnership!

This only shows that Red Hat thinks of themselves as the Microsoft of Linux. "...there won't be any other Linux players." It's comments like these that lead customers away from Red Hat.

Except Red Hat hasnt pissed off the community like Suse did with their patents shenannigans, licenses as well as the veiled threats by Ballmer about other distro paying their microsoft tax.

Red Hat might be the big Linux distro but its support of the GPL is now clearly superior to Novell's.

If the following moves of this game end up curtailing the principles open source works on, then SUSE has no chance to live past next year. Open source without the people who make it happen means nothing.
No one owns Linux and those distros who dont respect the GPL will be left by the wayside by those people.

"Red Hat thinks of themselves as the Microsoft of Linux" - come on, you might not be a lover of Red Hat but that is just silly.

Centos proves Red Hat's commitment to free software.

I've no reason to love or hate Red Hat, but with Novell's sell-out we all need a bit of unity.

I personally think it's Novell's support network and unprecidented contributions to both what opensource and opensuse can do for the community. By "community" I mean human beings like Mark shuttlesworth means it. Is what's relevant.
I think what is being done at opensuse's build service is going to help make RPM distro's so usable that both RH and Novell's corporate customers will continue to invest.
opensource zealot's sometimes don't even know where the butter comes from.
All this agreement means is that MS's internal beancounters predict a quick end to the msoffice tax and need to replace the revenue or have msoffice be a loss leader or both, I bet the Novell version of OOffice is getting to close for comfort.
I would put money on a package coming out from Novell with "Real Player" fully MM enabled with w32codecs in toe. but only on the pay per seat version. Like SLE 10.
Every generation or so a new "service industry" appears. it's time for local shops to be able to "localize" each and every network to exacting business needs.

It's difficult to speculate what the future holds for any of us. Webbink's comments, including much of his entire interview with Searchopensource.com, sounds like a teenager upset at the world. Then again, he is a lawyer.

Red Hat sales, technology and service offerings has not kept pace to that of Novell's since the acquisition of SuSE. I think Red Hat would admit, it was much easier when they were the only shop in town. Opposite to what Webbink states, Novell is passionate about customer concerns. An example of Red Hat's poor listening to concerns from their customers is evident in the following remark by Webbink, 'Okay, fine; if you really need indemnification, you've got it, and if makes you feel better, so be it.' Novell listened to customers and offered indemnification years ago.

I like the actions that Novell is taking to make Linux more "enterprise ready". The GPL is clear in the intent and purpose of the agreement, however I don't see that hindering what Novell and Microsoft can provide for their customers- choices. Regarding the comment that Novell will not be here in a year...come on. I put my money on Novell. They have heard that comment many times and are still running strong.

I think the largest threat to Linux, customers and open source advancement is that from Oracle. I don't want to see Linux as a commodity. I do want my Linux server and laptop to work well with my wife's laptop running Windows.

Red Hat's statement is surely over optimism. Linux will always have multiple distributors. Regarding Novella, I was never a SUSE fan. But it won't benefit much from deal. It is going to be a guiena pig for microsoft paying huge royalties to it. And of course community support for it going to be over.

Novell and Microsoft can provide their customers the best service ever with varius options to choose from. As a South African I believe we will still be using Novell in the next comming 20 years with or without Microsoft.