The Government has offered Australia's three mobile operators, and vividwireless, renewal of their existing spectrum allocated on 15 year licences in the late 90s and early 2000s at set prices, while the Government expects to rake in $3 billion.
Red Hat does not want to go into a full-on battle with Microsoft on the desktop - that much is clear and has been for a long time. It has got its own niche, is making loads of money in that area and would like that to continue.
The only way Microsoft can get into that niche is via Novell and SUSE - and that is unlikely to happen. More than two years of a pact with Novell have not borne fruit in that direction. Novell is still a struggling Linux company.
Hence, Novell's focus on the desktop with SLED 11. It hopes that "interoperability" (whatever that really means) with Windows will help it progress to the point where SUSE on the desktop begins to make the cash registers ring.
According to the review cited earlier, one can manage SLED workstations with Active Directory, work with Office 2007 files, use both Silverlight and Windows Media videos and audio and operate smoothly with Exchange server.
There is also said to be a Mono extension that allows for the running of .NET-based applications on Linux.
That's not something you can say of any other Linux distribution - though Mono may well lay one open to patent infringement claims by Microsoft somewhere down the line.
Is it surprising that Hovsepian is more optimistic about his desktop chances? Is it surprising that Whitehurst is not?
For Novell, this is more or less the last throw of the dice. If SLED 11 does not work as the company hopes - its server sales are well behind Red Hat - then Novell's future would seem to be very shaky.
Red Hat has no such worries. It has been careful not to gloat, careful to keep to its open source expectations, and continues to pile up its cash reserves. The advantage of being an organic open source company has truly made a difference.
Novell, on the other hand, has been a mite too opportunistic for many people's liking. Signing a patent covenant with Microsoft was a bridge too far.
The behaviour of companies, ethical or otherwise, has been thrown into sharp focus by the world financial downturn and there is considerable outrage at the way some have acted to enrich their own and swindle the public at large.
Novell may well like to ponder that fact as red ink continues to accumulate on its books.
David Bass
| ComOps, a leading Australian provider of business software products and services, has won a competitive tender to deploy its Salvus safety, r…
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