Microsoft Corp. is, predictably, not all that impressed by Google Inc.'s demonstration of its upcoming Chrome OS today, but neither were potential rivals who make Linux and instant-on operating systems.

“It’s true that, under the terms of our agreements with Microsoft, only SUSE Linux Enterprise will be able to bundle Moonlight into the distribution”

So there you have it. You can only get Microsoft technologies when you get them from Microsoft, or from Microsoft proxies (Novell).

Novell's (and Mirosoft CodePlex) Miguel de Icaza issues a call to make more software with Microsoft XAML

Microsoft, which will on Monday learn whether a top European Union court has annulled the landmark 2004 antitrust ruling against the US software developer, is warning technology rivals they should be careful what they wish for.

Selling fear. That’s just what Novell does along with Microsoft, but it’s not alone. Novell tries to cause damage to friendly (Free software) rivals for the benefit of Microsoft and increased profit at Novell.

At first glance, Red Hat’s biggest rival is Microsoft. But take a closer look and Red Hat seems to be equally concerned about two other fierce rivals. They are (1) Free Linux and (2) so-called low-cost Linux support offerings from Novell and Oracle. Here’s the story.

I noticed a comment thread on Groklaw about Moonlight, with a link to the license terms on Microsoft's website. They call it Covenant to Downstream Recipients of Moonlight - Microsoft & Novell Interoperability Collaboration . A comment by Microsoft's Brian Goldfarb on Dana Blankenhorn's article about Novell being a lead pony for Silverlight started the discussion originally.

A few days ago we wrote about Microsoft’s defense of RAND (and a bit of its latest slime against Groklaw). Do not be mistaken or deliberately misled to the point of believing that this RAND gotcha only applies to OOXML. It also applies to Mono and — by association — to Moonlight, which Microsoft hopes to infect the World Wide Web with.

AS WE POINTED out early in the week, Microsoft Moonlight is mostly promoted by the Microsoft crowd [1, 2]. This is predictable and consistent with the evidence. Novell just needs to disseminate its DNA inside GNU/Linux and then come along with Microsoft to claim special ownership of it. But who again is Novell with?