Several people have asked when I think Red Hat is going to do a IP protection deal with Microsoft and the answer is that I don't think they will. Certainly not while Microsoft continues to be light on facts and heavy on hyperbole. There is one simple reason why not to do a deal with Microsoft. Red Hat is not desperate. Through bad management and lack of focus Novell totally blew the Suse opportunity, giving Red Several people have asked when I think Red Hat is going to do a IP protection deal with Microsoft and the answer is that I don’t think they will. Certainly not while Microsoft continues to be light on facts and heavy on hyperbole. There is one simple reason why not to do a deal with Microsoft.Red Hat is not desperate. Through bad management and lack of focus Novell totally blew the Suse opportunity, giving Red Hat ~70% (UPDATED–I had 90% which was a typo) market share for Linux. The Microsoft deal is a sad attempt at bringing Suse (which is a good OS BTW) back to the light. Sadly for the Suse guys I think the only way it becomes relevant again is if someone takes Novell private and spins out Suse as a separate company. Otherwise it will continue to languish as a good, but also-ran product. For a long time Red Hat was a company that I loved to mock, primarily because I was annoyed at how much power they have over Linux. But I recently realized that they are the ones that are sheparding the growth of the Linux industry while the rest of these chumps plunder along and take the weak way out. The video of Matt Szulik at OSBC just reinforced this position for me. And made me admire the company’s leader a great deal. Going back to an earlier thought. For all you companies that want to work with Microsoft, I would suggest you get them to acquire you. Anything else is a dead end. Open Source