It is rather relieving to see that Microvell's plan to sabotage Red Hat's business is not very effective. According to UBS analyst Heather Bellini, the Novell/Microsoft deal has had little impact.

She says that the Microsoft/Novell alliance “has not really changed the competitive dynamics in the Linux market.”

According to Jefferies & Co. anlyst Katherine Egbert, Red Hat has suffered no financial losses.

"She noted that Oracle Corp. and Microsoft Corp. announced plans for Linux products four months ago, which hurt Red Hat's shares, but said the plans have had little financial impact on Red Hat so far."

Alas, some people are paying more, but they are doing this behind the scenes.

Allison: Yes, that's true, actually. I mean I have had people come up to me and essentially off the record admit that they had been threatened by Microsoft and had got patent cross license and had essentially taken out a license for Microsoft patents on the free software that they were using, which they then cannot redistribute. I think that would be the restriction. I would have to look quite carefully. So, essentially that's not allowed. But they're not telling anyone about it. They're completely doing it off the record.

The problem with the Novell deal is -- Novell gave Microsoft what Microsoft dearly wanted, which is a public admission that they think that Linux violates the Microsoft patent.

So, people are paying Microsoft for the use of Linux and GNU utilities.