There is an interesting batch of revelations in the news today. The first one stems from an analysis of Novell's filings, which were 'dumped' just before the long weekend and revealed some nasty things. On the face of it, Novell's deal tells a thing or two about Microsoft's future plans.

Revelations made by Novell could add more fuel to the already well-established rumor that Microsoft is working on a hosted version of its popular Office software suite.

Google might therefore wish to take a closer look at these documents.

Amid Microsoft's attack on the legitimacy (or cost) of Free software, ComputerWorld comes up with the folowing article:

Top secret: Microsoft's $6 billion open source play

This month's announcement by Microsoft to acquire digital marketing services firm aQuantive has revealed little on how the companies will integrate their IT, but inside information indicates the deal may be Redmond's largest commitment to free software.

[...]

Whether the businesses are complementary or not, Microsoft's integration work will no doubt involve a lot of open source software used by aQuantive.

Information available from Atlas' Web site indicates the Internet software company employs extensive use of open source software including Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Solaris.

Software engineers at Atlas' Raleigh office do client/server development in C and C++, software maintenance and "scripting", and developing and maintaining custom reporting capabilities.

Interestingly, this is not the first time that Microsoft finds a lot of Linux in its hand. Other than its dependence on Akamai clusters for its Web sites, Microsoft also uses Linux 'in house'. It even likes it.

What the press statement didn't mention is that Aruba mobility controllers run the Linux operating system which Microsoft has aggressively targeted as being inferior to Windows as part of its "Get the Facts" marketing campaign.

[...]

Pandey's appraisal of Aruba's technology is in stark contrast to Microsoft's "Get the Facts" rhetoric which places Windows as a more secure, and higher-performing choice over Linux.

It all comes to show us that Microsoft essentially attacks technology which is very much depends on. This is something to bear in mind whenever Microsoft questions the right of Free software to exist peacefully (i.e. without baseless threats of lawsuit).