As Shane has just pointed out, to Novell, Hula is no more. Allow me to elaborate. The Hula project, one of the most promising among Novell's Open Source initiatives, has been axed for a reason. This probably didn't require much persuasion from Microsoft, either.

The quick synopsis is, Novell no longer has anyone working full-time on Hula. As a team we have spent some time looking at where the Hula project is and the opportunities in the market and in the end we had to conclude that we couldn't justify investing at the same level in Hula going forward. So those of us who have been developing Hula full-time will be moving on to other roles and to other parts of the company.

This particular death knell reminds me of Microsoft's recent deal with A9. It brought down services from A9 that competed with Microsoft directly or indirectly. This is not based solely on word of mouth. Reporters have cited competition with Microsoft services as the reason why A9 services had to be halted and their operation/maintenance retracted entirely. That happened just a couple of months ago. The aggressive new strategy appears to involved acquisition of/partnership with competitors, which in turn takes down competing projects (services and products).

Novell has turned its back on commitments to Open Source projects. I advice the OpenOffice team to find a new home because the only projects that I see surviving or flourishing is Mono (.Net). It does not affect the cash cows and it gives Microsoft control over developers in both worlds.