In the midst of a certain coversation today, an old story returned to my mind. It's dated September 25^th, 2006. Thus, this happened roughly 4 months after secret negotiations with Microsoft had begun.

Open source software maker Novell said last Friday its board approved the increase of its president and chief executive's base salary to US$825,000 per year.

I feel obliged to quote Mark Kent who said "Always follow the money. Anyway, all those people out there writing code which Novell sell on - your code has been used to provide the Novell Board with pay rises, and they're agreeing that you are in the firing line for a Microsoft legal attack!