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Payback time for Novell
Posted on Wednesday, December 13 2006 @ 07:14:34 EST by linuxwiz |
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The Novell/Microsoft pact might just be a plea bargain to avoid Novell's wrath over SCO
SCO group is going down. Microsoft, Sun, and the
greedy investors that abetted SCO in its campaign to loot Unix and
Linux vendors and their customers have abandoned ship. Microsoft’s
public endorsement of SCO’s legal action against, effectively,
Microsoft’s enterprise competitors and their customers, gave SCO the
leverage to mug said vendors’ customers for license fees when vendors
refused to drop their wallets in court. Sun and Microsoft animated SCO
as the prototypical litigious IP boogeyman in order to terrorize
competitors’ customers into switching to Windows or Solaris to avoid
being hauled to court. That’s how I laid it out in 2003, and I stand by
it now.
Today, I’m
overjoyed that with Microsoft, Sun, and greedy investors bailing out of
bailing duty, SCO’s ship is sinking fast from the holes it punched in
its own hull. IBM’s role as anchor is finally proving effective, but
the torpedo boat is captained by Novell’s frighteningly accomplished
legal team, ably assisted by the SCO litigation squad, F Troop.
Novell
has exhibited the patience and cunning of a trap door spider. It waited
for SCO to taunt from too short a distance. Then Novell would spring,
feed a little (saving plenty for later), inject some stupidity serum,
and let SCO stride off still *****sure enough to make another run at the
nest. That cycle is bleeding SCO, which was the last to notice its own
terminal anemia.
When it became
clear that SCO wouldn’t prevail, Microsoft expected only to face close
partner IBM. Microsoft did not brace for Novell, an adversary with a
decades-long score to settle with Redmond. Through discovery,
Microsoft’s correspondence with SCO is, or soon will be in, Novell’s
hands, and it’s a safe bet that it will contain more than demand for a
license fee and a copy of a certified check. .
When
I consider Novell to be the party of advantage in the Microsoft
partnership deal, the tone of the agreement changes. Microsoft is
handing 70,000 copies of a primary competitor’s operating system to
existing Windows customers, introducing Windows-only shops to the
advantages of the heterogeneous enterprise. Microsoft will be bringing
Novell along on sales calls, which is somewhat like a punished teenager
agreeing to bring her dad with her on future dates. The word
“indemnity” that Microsoft wielded so freely has turned on it, with
Novell demanding indemnity against future Microsoft IP action. A final
touch of irony is Microsoft’s issuance of a press release on a deal
that would ordinarily be made on the QT. That harkens back to
Microsoft’s self-congratulatory capitulation to SCO, no?
I
allow that there are at least two facts that weigh against this theory.
Red Hat stated that Microsoft offered it the same deal, and the
Microsoft/Novell partnership announcement makes mention of a payment by
Novell. To counter the first argument, Red Hat lacks Novell’s
storehouse of Microsoft IP and intelligence that would make
indemnification profitable. As for the payment made by Novell, it
validates the arrangement as a business contract by setting up an
exchange of consideration. I’m not a lawyer, but I believe that if
Microsoft just handed a bouquet over to Novell to prevent Novell v.
Microsoft, Microsoft could later welsh on the deal by contesting the
alleged misdeeds that Novell used as leverage. This is all conjecture,
of course, but two absolute truths remain: Payback is, indeed, a *****,
and Microsoft is entitled to a share. And at present, it sucks to be
Steve Ballmer.
Source
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