There’s a growing body of evidence suggesting that Novell and Red Hat could soon face new competition in the Linux server market. Something new from Microsoft? Nope. Another attack from Oracle? Not quite. This time, the competition could come from tiny Canonical and the company’s latest Ubuntu Linux release.

Europe's competition commissioner Neelie Kroes delivered a thinly veiled warning to Microsoft Tuesday that the software giant's behind-the-scenes maneuverings to secure industrywide standard status for its document format, Office Open XML earlier this year "risk falling foul of the competition rules."

Red Hat Inc and Novell Inc will soon face more competition from a small rival, Ubuntu Linux, in the market for open-source software programs that run server computers.

Microsoft's media push for its VMWare rival and exclusion of all competition except Novell.

Poland’s Office for Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) claims that selling laptops with obligatorily preinstalled Microsoft's Windows operating system constitutes a monopolistic practice and is restrictive to competition.

SCO Group CEO Darl McBride says competition from the open source Linux operating system was a major reason why the company was forced to file for Chapter 11 on Friday. The slump, McBride said, "has been attributable to competition from alternative operating systems, including Linux."

A lot of people view Windows as Linux's main competition, largely because Microsoft has, by far, the majority of the market and is considered "the standard' by most people. Mark Shuttleworth and I disagree.

Numerous industry observers have long-called for the adoption of policies by competition regulators which will spur competition in the personal computer operating system platform market - a market which has had a Microsoft choke-hold, gained through legally dubious business practices, over the past 20 years.

Thanks to the EU, and contrary to much media speculation from both sides of the water, we can now hope for a positive expansion of innovation and competition on the desktop. All the evidence suggests that control of all aspects of the market by one company is neither healthy nor conducive to innovation or competition.