At what cost Microsoft? Novell loses another open-source star to Google. Novell has lost another open source star to the burgeoning Googleplex in Mountain View, as Linux kernel programmer Robert Love announced, Friday, that he was leaving Novell, and joining Google. Love, who is 25, is a top Linux programmer and author of Linux Kernel Development. At Novell for just over three years, he served as Chief Architect of the Linux Desktop.In a final blog entry at Novell, Love celebrated the accomplishments of his team in realizing what he termed Linux’s “first desktop commercial success.” Love will be working from GOOG’s Cambridge, Massachusetts offices for the Open Source Program Office, which manages a number of projects within the company, including the popular Summer of Code, in which Google provides stipends to young software engineers to participate in a variety of open source development projects. Love is just the latest high-profile defection from Novell for Google. In December, Samba programmer Jeremy Allison decamped after just more than a year in protest over the company’s partnership with Microsoft to promote Linux-Windows integration. Technology Industry