12/13/2006 -- At first glance, it may appear to be one of the seven signs of the Apocalypse: Microsoft has agreed to support SUSE Linux. On closer evaluation, however, it may not be all that surprising or significant for the Linux community.

Fast on the heels of Oracle's announcement of support for Red Hat's Linux distribution, Microsoft held a news conference last month to announce that it is working with Novell (the company that now owns SUSE Linux) to support SUSE on systems running Microsoft operating systems. Supposedly, this will allow systems running the proprietary Windows OSes to also run SUSE, and those running SUSE to also run the Windows OSes. If it sounds a lot like VMWare without the middleman, you're absolutely right.

Virtualization is only part of the agreement, however -- Web services management and Open Document Framework being two other components. According to Microsoft, this deal is yet another bridge to supporting open source software, having greater interoperability between the operating systems, and so on. A deal between Microsoft and Sun had a similar tone two years ago but doesn't seem to have gone anywhere since the announcement.

The big issue I have is the whole concept of including support for Novell products in Windows. A little over a decade ago, Microsoft included NetWare support in Windows by reverse-engineering the IPX/SPX protocol, calling it NWLink, and including it with every version of Windows that shipped. That move marked the beginning of the end for NetWare --no longer did you need to license the proprietary IPX/SPX protocol to talk to the network, you already had it. While this looked like Microsoft's bridge to interoperability at the time, it also opened the door to building entire networks without using anything from Novell -- once you didn't need it for the desktop, you learned that NT could be the server and Windows could do it all.

As Novell watched their protocol slip into obscurity, they joined the rest of the world and turned to TCP/IP for use in NetWare. Years later, faced with a declining demand for NetWare altogether, they took a huge gamble and turned the company into a Linux distributor by purchasing SUSE and a number of other companies and focusing almost exclusively on them. One of the mandates pushed throughout the organization was that every employee had to switch from Microsoft products to open source – Linux replaced Windows, OpenOffice.org replaced Microsoft Windows, and so on.

Their last chance at survival as a company has been to become the Microsoft alternative as opposed to the Microsoft complement they once were. To that end, they have refined SUSE to the point where it is arguably the best Linux distribution on the market. They've supported the open source movement and as many – if not more – initiatives for the community than anyone else.

Given all of that, I cannot understand what Novell hopes to gain from this relationship.

I can understand Microsoft's position -- they show the world that anything will run on their operating system and if you won't make them your only operating system, at least make them one of them. They also get the endorsement and support -- not to mention payment from -- one of the last alternatives to their juggernaut.

But what's in it for Novell? Are they so desperate that they need Microsoft to promise to deliver 70,000 coupons a year for them to names they are too lazy to acquire on their own? Have they reached a point with SUSE Linux that they are frustrated with the slow adoption rate and have no idea what else to do with the product? Are they clutching at straws, reaching for a lifeline, or seeing something that I am missing completely?

I suppose there is the possibility that Microsoft's move could convince someone to try SUSE in the enterprise that may not have done so before and then like it so much that they adopt it. This has to be the possibility that Novell is seeing that I'm missing. I truly hope they are right, for if they are wrong, I don't know what else the company has left to fall back on.