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Summary: Novell's inexcusable servitude to Microsoft is going public and resentment ensues

NOVELL is a dead company and maybe it's something to write an entire book about (more on that in IRC logs). Basically, a lot of people begin to realise that Novell never cared so much about software freedom (the more gullible folks fell for PR). Rui Seabra, for example, writes that "Microsoft paid Novell to fake support for OOXML, *as*well*as* to promote it (not neutral, as claimed)" (Rui links to Groklaw's latest on the subject [1, 2]). Robert Pogson, a GNU/Linux advocate, titles the whole thing "Novell’s Shame" and claims:

Novell agreed to work for M$ to appear to be making OpenOffice.org work better with OOXML when in reality they were making it work better with a subset of Office 2010. They did things like “skip over” unrecognized content. How’s that for improving interoperability? It’s a sweet deal to allow M$ to claim they were interoperable while they were not.

The words of Hawn are not enough to keep people optimistic about OpenSUSE and Jason from The Source writes in response:

My favorite bit: the “intention to establish a SUSE business unit on par with the existing Attachmate and NetIQ business units”. And since we all know how the existing Attachmate and NetIQ business units have lit the Linux world on fire with innovation and contribution, this can only be a fantastic development.

There is not much activity in the OpenSUSE universe these days, but there are exceptions [1, 2]. What will be left of Novell inside AttachMSFT [sic] is probably proprietary software, only a subset of which will stay maintained. Novell serves as a cautionary tale to anyone who considers partnering with Microsoft. ⬆