Some new documents have just been made publicly available owing to the Iowa antitrust case. They reveal Microsoft's fear of Linux, as well as plenty of deceit, if not lies. We believe that Novell ought to read these carefully, reminding themselves who they are dealing with. An (slightly) edited (as in snipped and reformatted) fragment is quoted below.

(Microsoft manager:) I don't like the fact that the report show us losing on TCO on webservers. I don't like the fact that the report show us losing on availability (windows was down more than linux). And I don't like the fact that the reports says nothing new is coming with windows .net server.

I would not release this report with the "sponsored by msft" on the cover. With that, we will have ibm and many customers pulling out quotes about windows 2000 being unreliable compared to linux and being more expensive for web servers. The analysis that linux is great in certain areas and getting stronger with isvs will fuel the fire. If this report came out without our involvement, we would probably write some reponse to defend certina points (ie reliability, the lower web server costs and the enhancements customers will see with .net server). I would worry that hawng this report out there with a "sponsored by msft" would put us even more in a defensive position.

There's plenty more to be found in these memos. Articles that analyse these memos and E-mails are surely going to appear quite soon.