Bad Scene

Microsoft must be worried about its ability to release Vista in a timely enough fashion to recoup the ridiculous amount of time and money it’s hemorrhaging making it. Maybe it’s the vague threats Adobe is making about suing, though M$ certainly doesn’t need a lesson in saber-rattling. Steve Ballmer discusses M$’s deal with Novell in Computerworld (via El Reg):

“Novell pays us some money for the right to tell customers that anybody who uses SUSE Linux is appropriately covered[...]. This is important to us, because we believe every Linux customer basically has an undisclosed balance sheet liability.”

Now, you know and I know that this is just idle chatter until Ballmer points out what, exactly, is the source of the liability. Novell is just a bunch of idiots who are afraid of getting humiliated by M$ again. And anyway, we’ve been through this once with SCO, who happily watched its stock climb (briefly) during its finger-pointing, wolf-crying infringement claims and frenzied cashing of checks sent in by terrified “infringers” (some of whom later demanded their money back!). Do we have to go through this again?