This item brings together a collection of Novell-related news.

Let us begin with a new Red Hat hire. It is rather interesting that a former executive of SuSE has just decided to work for Novell's fierce rival. Could he be following the same road as Jeremy Allison due to similar sentiments involving bitterness and disdain?

Red Hat Hires Ex-SUSE Sales Exec to Run EMEA Channels

Linux distributor Red Hat said last week that is has brought on Petra Heinrich to be its new director of channels an partners in its Europe, Middle East, and Africa region.

This article's description of his background seems to suggest that everything remains possible. A departure that results from the divisive Microsoft/Novell deal, however, did not seem to repel the co-founder of SuSE.

Moving on, have a look at the worrisome choice of words in the following article:

Novell-Microsoft Deal Is Mixed Bag

"People who read into the Novell-Microsoft pact that Novell has any intention of doing anything other than figuring a way to sell more Novell Linux -- and do it in a way that protects its customers [from patent disputes] -- are seeing hobgoblins," Amy Wohl, founding analyst for Wohl Associates, said.

Yet again, patents are being mentioned as though they have some validity.

On a brighter note, Novell contributes some nice new tools.

Novell Enhances Linux Development With New Open Source Services

Novell today announced the open source availability of the openSUSE Build Service, an innovative framework that provides an infrastructure for software developers to easily create and compile packages for multiple Linux distributions.