Last month at O'Reilly's Open Source Convention (OSCON), it seemed like Microsoft was everywhere you looked, avouching its interest in open source. Thanks to the company's history -- including some very recent history -- a great many in the open source community viewed the company's presence with mistrust, suspicious of Redmond's motives and apprehensive of what would follow.

One of the biggest gripes the FOSS community has with respect to Microsoft's business tactics is that its longstanding exclusionary agreements with hardware vendors has stifled genuine competition. This is the very issue of one of two claims Novell will be allowed to press against Microsoft in their anti-trust lawsuit.

A man has been in the dessert for a week without water and comes across three different groups of people who have water to spare [a group of software engineers, a group of sales reps, and a group of open source zealots]. Will he be able to quench his thirst?

Can you believe it? Given Microsoft's history of antagonism, It's hard to believe anyone - let alone the Linux Foundation - would call on the FOSS community to respect Microsoft. No, if Microsoft wants respect, they should get it the 'old-fashioned' way - by earning it.

Novell's restructuring moves may be costly, but they are necessary to ensure the company can execute well as it competes with Red Hat for direct Linux sales, SunTrust Robinson Humphrey analyst Terry Tillman told LinuxInsider. Novell had been benefiting from a partnership with Microsoft, which is eager to make its products more compatible with open source options, but sales from that agreement have been waning.

With recent news about Internet Explorer 8's imminent beta, Microsoft's long and checkered history with web standards compliance has been hurled back into the harsh, unflattering spotlight. Even though IE8 will have a new "standards compliant" mode, it won't be perfect, stirring up a new wave of grumbling about Microsoft's attitude and position in the browser market.

Everybody's talking about Microsoft - the hot topics are interoperability, exclusion, standards, and the doubts of a Red Had and the European Union about their alleged about-turn.

Granting that the open source players are starting out from a small revenue base, simple math tells us that if they keep on growing at their present pace they will sooner or later put some real hurt on the sales of incumbent closed source vendors like IBM and Oracle, who have long dominated enterprise middleware and database sales.

Claims made by Microsoft that Linux violates its software patent have not affected sales of Linux-based hardware, according to Dell's CEO Michael Dell.