04.29.07
The Attitude Problem: Competing Against an Enemy of Your Enemy
Last year we saw some Red Hat spoofs which referred to the Microsoft/Novell deal. I don’t know if the following is a spoof or a real commercial, but given Novell’s utter disregard for Red Hat (they clearly forget where Linux came from), nothing seems impossible.
As argued many times before, Novell sees Red Hat as its main rival, rather than stay focused on Microsoft, which is where a large userbase is up for grabs. Novell should have and could worked more closely with Red Hat, not scrutinise them. As a matter fact, a Novell deal with Red Hat did not seem like such a crazy idea back in November, based on what we discussed in the SUSE mailing lists. An enemy of one’s enemy is a friend, but Novell chose to make a deal with the enemy, to hurt what could have been a good friend.
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