Anyhow, once Suse got together with Microsoft, I dumped it anyway.

Googles OS that you can run on a netbook and quickly boot to a browser, has a real shot at hurting microsoft in the netbook world…especially for people who only need to get to the internet. It is genius in that aspect.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/compare/windows-server-vs-red-hat-linux.mspx

Now Microsoft owning SuSE Enterprise would force a rewrite of that. ;-) Personally, I think the logical owner for SuSE Linux is the Intel / Nokia MeeGo partnership, or maybe just Intel. And I don\’t know what else is in the Novell portfolio.

I\’m an extremely happy openSUSE user, but if it went to Microsoft, there would be so much FUD that I\’d walk away regardless of how much MSFT tried to re-assure me that they had no intention of killing it.

Hell would likely freeze over if MS did buy Novell. Open Enterprise Server would be canceled; do not pass go. MS has no interest in competing with itself in the directory space.

Secondly, it may want some Novell talent. At one time Novell had talented engineers at its Utah location. I don\’t know if they still do. Their business and marketing acumen was always troubled, however.

As for SuSe, likely MS would probably keep it around, not really killing it, but not actively doing much to continue selling it. It will remain a skunkworks project in one person\’s lab.

Likely the main MS would buy Novell is to shore up its copyright of the Unix code. According to SCO-Novell lawsuit, Novell still owns the copyright. With the copyright to Unix, there\’s little telling what MS could do with it.

Lastly, one of the better buyers would be IBM. IBM is a big user, contributor, and seller of Linux already; a big win in my book. According to many Novell already acts like IBM internally. Their prices are already enterprise, though, a major problem.

Oracle would be okay. Oracle is a huge Linux user and seller of Unbreakable Linux (Based on Red Hat, not SuSe, though). With its Sun Microsystems merger, Oracle has its hands full with Solaris and SPARC. I don\’t think Oracle would buy Novell, unless it was really discounted.

But, the more I think about the market that Microsoft can\’t enter now, and the sales they are missing for software like MS Office, MS Internet Explorer, SharePoint, MSSQL, MS Exchange (the list goes on), the more I see a place for Novell in the Microsoft realm.

Microsoft, as the bastion of Windows OS, a commercially licensed offering, would be hard-pressed to support free software, but if OpenSUSE were brought under Microsoft\’s wing, there would be a plausible case for porting other licensed software offerings to OpenSUSE – opening up a growing market. Just think of the opportunity for MS Office in a market presently only addressed by Open Office (many organizations are chomping at the bit to roll out MS Office to their non-Windows and non-Mac users, even if they have to cough up money for software licenses).

I am surprised that the paranoia in Redmond hasn\’t been overcome yet by at least a toe in the water – wouldn\’t it be nice to run Internet Explorer (just think of the vulnerabilities that Microsoft could open up for Linux users) on our Linux boxes? Perhaps this would be the much needed push back against growing market share from rivals, Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Safari (can we see the day when Apple jumps into the fray with a Linux port for Safari?).

If anything made more sense for Microsoft, and help grow OpenSUSE and the Linux market, in general, than the acquisition of Novell, please let me know.

Something about Ballmer says revenge is high on his todo list.

As far as it killing Linux/GPL/OpenSource altogether, I don\’t think that will happen. Even though openSUSE is one of the main distros out there and probably the best all-round distro, I don\’t think Microsoft\’s acquisition of Novell would change things for the worse.

http://opensuse-linux-blog.blogspot.com