Twins separated at birth?

The City Council at Leicester (England) has just signed a Microsoft/Novell contract. Here are the details:

Leicester City Council is the first public sector organisation to sign-up for the joint Microsoft/Novell support contract to support its Windows and open source infrastructure.

[...]

Leicester City Council is the first UK local authority to sign up to Microsoft and Novell's joint support contract for Linux and Windows Interoperability. The year-old technical and support agreement between the two rivals is designed to make it easier for users to run a mixed IT environment comprising Windows and Linux servers.

”This might force people to install a patent-encumbered Mono for which Novell offers exclusive ‘protection’.“The article does not speak about patents, but it mentions a few other discriminatory terms. It would not be surprising if Microsoft tried to keep Novell afloat just so that Novell continues to support Silverlight and OOXML, among other things. It's akin to Microsoft's money injection that was granted to SCO.

Meanwhile, Novell makes progress on its 'Silverlight for Linux' project, essentially assisting Microsoft's fight against Adobe and against a standards-based World Wide Web. This might force people to install a patent-encumbered Mono for which Novell offers exclusive 'protection'. Here is the latest:

The Mono development team has announced the official release of Mono 1.2.6, the latest version of Novell's open source .NET implementation. Mono 1.2.6 includes numerous improvements to both the Mono runtime engine and development components.

One particularly notable feature in the new release is support for developing Silverlight 1.1 applications.

Remember that Mono is a Novell project. Moonlight is Novell's gift to Microsoft, just like OOXML support, which the deal with Microsoft had them obliged to do (watch the redacted SEC filing). Novell has become the marionette of Microsoft (some have called it the "new shill") and it would be risky to approach anything like this without caution.

It is no wonder many SUSE developers have left the company while Novell hires some .NET skills set. ⬆