Once More unto the Breach

Acacia Patents, Red Hat, and Novell

Groklaw reports a patent infringement suit has been launched against Red Hat and Novell over Linux.

Take a deep breath. Be calm.

When the SCO Group suit was first launched, I was still at Microsoft. A number of people in the strategy team where I worked were excited because "finally the free and open source world was going to understand the importance of intellectual property." (These Microsoft employees didn't appreciate exactly how careful the community is about IP.)

I pointed out the following logic back then: IBM was investing a billion dollars in Linux. IBM could therefore allow a certain amount of legal debate to occur to determine how real a case SCO Group may or may not have had. A few millions in legal fees pales in comparison. In an absolutely worst case scenario, IBM could acquire SCO Group for O(US$150M) or less after a couple of years of legal punishment and the problem would go away. Again, a few millions in legal fees would be a cheap exploration. The SCO Group suit was NEVER a threat to Linux growth and deployment. Did the FUD slow the adoption curve, no doubt. But did it make any material difference in the use and growth of Linux? Hardly. And it's over now.

Microsoft should itself understand this business calculus around IP. They offered a lot of money to settle the Eolas suit. Eolas got greedy and refused the settlement. They "won" a half billion dollars in court. Now, when you're about to pay out a half a billion dollars, you can afford to spend a few millions more contesting the decision. Indeed, with that sort of money at stake you can afford to hire the cream of the graduating classes of Harvard, Yale, and Stanford Law to spend some time getting creative.

The U.S. Supreme Court continues to involve itself in the broken patent system. The Linux Foundation and the Open Invention Network are both geared for this particular fight. I have confidence that the Groklaw community will step into the breach of reporting and investigation again. IBM, Intel, and HP have a vested interest in the outcome, and nobody plays IP games the way IBM does. Over the next few weeks, lawyers will come together behind the scenes from all the interested parties on the defending side. Hopefully egos won't be too large, and a coherent plan of negotiation will emerge.

Some of the more interesting questions for me will be:

• Why Red Hat AND Novell?
• Why not Microsoft? (Acacia went after Apple who settled. Microsoft would seem to have deeper pockets than Red Hat or Novell. It would seem to be the more interesting business discussion.)
• If Microsoft is not involved, should they be? If Apple settled, and then this suit settles, Microsoft should know they're next on the list. Or are they trusting IBM et al to win this one for them?

To quote one of my favourite lawyers in this space:

“If the F/OSS community wants to be in commercial space, community members will have to learn to deal calmly with IP litigation. The F/OSS production model will work where it makes sense, and it will not work where it doesn’t. It’s really just that simple. Particular claims in individual suits—even one against a flagship program such as the GNU/Linux OS—will not determine the fate of the community. Such cases present factual issues that will get resolved one way or another; they do not represent a crisis for F/OSS production as a whole. Norm entrepreneurial rhetoric that plays off such cases should be treated as entertainment. Enjoy it if you like it, take inspiration from it if you must, but don’t confuse it with the way things actually get done.”

I'm sure some former colleagues at Microsoft are excited. Mr. Smith and Mr. Ballmer most assuredly. But just as with the SCO Group litigation, there is no reason to celebrate. They shouldn't confuse this with "the way things actually get done." Pax.

SCO Group Finale!

Stephen Shankland says it all. 

Copyright ©  Despair, Inc.

Update (24-Sep-2007, 19:35):  A friend pointed this comic out.  I got into this battle while I worked at Microsoft and SCO Group first sued customers.  I pointed out it was a suicidal thing to do if they were a "real" company, and not the anti-VC (i.e. a company that acquires old technology and litigates money out of the marketplace.)  Vendors will occasionally sue customers in 1:1 situations e.g. a license dispute, in a similar way that customers occasionally sue vendors in one off disputes for non-performance, but a vendor NEVER sues customers over general things like IP infringement.  It sets a tone for all customers that is ... suicide.  Your top sales people will simply leave.  They know customers are now viewing business with the vendor as possibly tainted by lawsuits.

I also pointed out that IBM wasn't going to let anything bad happen.  A company investing a BILLION dollars in Linux could afford to weather even a few tens of millions of dollars of legal debate over several years while they determined how bad it may or may not really be.  Frustrating and distracting?  Certainly.  So what?  The customer is king. 

IBM Joins OpenOffice.org (The Quick Analysis)

It's official — IBM has joined the OpenOffice.org project. [There's good reporting and analysis from Andy Updegrove and Redmonk's Stephen O'Grady.  Update (12 Sep): Here's Andy's interview with IBM's Doug Heintzman, Director of Strategy for the Lotus division.] 

Here's the back of the envelop analysis.

From the OpenOffice.org community perspective, I'm guessing Louis Suarez-Potts (OO.o Community Manager) is feeling good to get a new injection of code/energy.  This is great for the community.  The OpenOffice suite keeps getting better and better, but new blood with new code could provide a much needed boost.

Overall Sun Microsystems is probably [very] happy IBM is supporting OpenOffice.org directly.  This is a much better situation than IBM building some form of ODF development platform inside Eclipse.org to enable ODF over OOXML, with OpenOffice.org hit as collateral damage.  [This would be sort of ironic since Eclipse helped to pull the Java centre-of-gravity away from Sun, and Visual Studio was collateral damage (or icing depending upon one's perspective).]  Collaboration is the much stronger market play here for Sun and IBM, and most importantly OO.o users and customers.

From the IBM perspective, this is brilliant business as usual.  ODF is the global leverage they need to crack open the Microsoft Office marketplace.  (I've written ad nauseam that ODF and Microsoft Office is just another example of Christensen economics in motion.  Microsoft has over-delivered on Office.  They mistakenly think more innovation faster is the answer.  Let the chips fall where they may.)  IBM will likely use OpenOffice to front-end Lotus and the Domino server product lines, and anchor their business messages to their customers's needs around standards and open source software, much the same as they do with Eclipse and the Websphere developer world.  Their claims are that much stronger with this announcement.

Sun gave Gnome a huge leg up about four years ago when they contributed a wealth of their accessibility technology R+D.  IBM will now contribute the same into OpenOffice.org.  It means they can easily manage their way through U.S. government procurement regulation in this space.  Once again brilliant IP management from IBM, and good for OO.o users and customers.  [For those that have heard me present, this is exactly what I mean about having a mature intellectual asset strategy, and being generous exactly in order to play to win.]

A strengthened OpenOffice.org will help Novell immeasurably to keep their distance with Microsoft on the desktop.  Novell has done a lot of work with OO.o in the past.  They have a great desktop Linux product.  They can simply take a ride on this one and eat the benefits.  There's really nothing Microsoft can say here.  Regardless of any agreements around OOXML that Novell may have with Microsoft, Novell comes out clean on the ODF front as customers demand it.

I noticed the press release includes a quote from Beijing's Redflag Chinese 2000 Software Co., Ltd., the makers of Redflag Linux and RedOffice.  This is significant.  Apparently last November I was one of the first people to blog about the document format work in China that led to a Chinese national standard (UOF).  Redflag Chinese 2000 was implementing UOF in Red Office (the Chinese packaging of OO.o).  There is work afoot to harmonize ODF and UOF.  And clearly Redflag Chinese 2000 remains committed to the OO.o effort.

So despite the bluff and bluster, the OOXML camp inside Microsoft should not be sleeping well at this point. 

"Don't blink.  Blink and you're dead.  Don't turn your back.  Don't look away.  And don't blink.  Good luck!" — the Doctor

Microsoft, Moonlight, and Open Source Software (and Novell's Brilliance!)

There's been interesting news about Microsoft support for the Novell Moonlight project this past few days.  Miguel de Icaza as community leader around Mono and Moonlight best tells the news on his blog, and points to Scott Guthrie's supporting blog post from Microsoft.  Tim O'Reilly points out that Microsoft will (predictably) support open source software for competitive advantage, in this case against Adobe.  Matt Asay supports Tim with the observation that Microsoft will use open source "where it's weak" and chides the two companies to just consummate the marriage.   

All the Moonlight support from Microsoft is a Very Good Thing for Moonlight and Novell, but let's be clear: Microsoft's participation in Moonlight is NOT Microsoft doing open source software. 

No code has been contributed to a community under a liberal license.  (As Miguel says, "Microsoft will give Novell access to the test suites for Silverlight to ensure that we have a compatible specification.")  No IP has been contributed to a community under a liberal license.  ("The codecs will be binary codecs, and they will only be licensed for use with Moonlight on a web browser".) 

Novell is doing the heavy lifting with help from Microsoft.  And in return, Novell is actually being pretty savvy (despite Matt's regular swipes at them for a lack of open source creativity and strategy).

• Novell is anchoring itself rapidly as the other cornerstone for cross-platform programming between Windows and Linux.  This gives them a valuable community center of gravity with respect to the enterprise that is much more valuable with customers than "we're not Red Hat".  Miguel has demonstrated himself as a brilliant community leader over the years.  Influence and IP control — It's all good for business. 
• It allows Novell to move Mono beyond the patent FUD and "science experiment" label Microsoft has traditionally thrown at it.  [Mary Jo Foley correctly called this one out.]  For Microsoft to renege on this very public initiative, or to try to claim behind closed doors that they like Moonlight but not Mono will demonstrate to customers once and for all that Microsoft doesn't understand the customer cross-platform/interop needs.  While Moonlight may be a great desktop experience, Mono is also all about server-side applications. 
• Before Microsoft gets any [BROKEN!] ideas around trying to jam yet another unproved specification through the standards process, Novell is anchoring the specification with a second high profile external implementation on another platform.  [This is a Very Very Good Thing for everyone.]

Microsoft certainly gains in the bargain as well.  They get to maintain a position on a multi-platform field they would otherwise forfeit to Adobe's open source maneuvering and market history around Flex and Flash.  They get to be seen publicly collaborating on Linux-based technologies so as to foster the belief with customers that they do genuinely care about cross-platform interoperability (and anchored around C# and .NET technologies).  They may even be in a GREAT position with respect to some customers to be the single source vendor of platforms when one considers the other collaboration deals in place with Novell.  It's win:win for each of them. 

But it's not Microsoft doing open source.  When we start to see Microsoft developer participation in the public code contributions for Moonlight, then they can claim to be "doing open source."  Regardless of the open sourcery of it all, however, it will be fascinating to see where this initiative goes.

Novell's Link to the Microsoft TCO Linux Message

Last week, Novell got caught in a press release with Microsoft in which an HSBC IT operations manager makes appropriate noises about TCO of Windows over Linux per the Microsoft messaging of the past 5 years.  This is too bad really.  It emphasizes the points Brent Williams made in his presentation with respect to Novell:

• Novell thinks the problem is catching Red Hat: They need to formulate a brand identity for SuSE other than "We're not Red Hat." (slide 14)
• Shows that even Novell believes it can't stop Red Hat alone. (slide 15)

Here's a slightly different way to look at the messaging:

Red Hat began messaging at least a year ago around the use of Red Hat linux in value creation.  Here's how the logic flows from a Michael Tiemann presentation at the 2006 Red Hat Summit:

• Companies spend on average 4-8% of income on IT (Financial companies 8-12%)
• So regardless of how you carve up the cost savings, you're messing around with something that will NOT move the stock price anytime soon.
• IT focusing on the value creation side of the bar can help by delivering better customer service (and retention), market growth, competitive advantage. 

This is actually backed up nicely by studies over the past couple of years around ROI and TCO, where executives are more interested in the ability of IT to improve customer satisfaction and business information access than ROI, and recognize that they can't measure TCO particularly well. 

So to bring it all home for Novell readers:  If you were a billion dollar financial services company, you're arguing over saving the customer some money on a $100M IT budget, BUT the sort of money you're really talking about is 10% (according to old IDC Windows vs. Linux numbers) over several years for particular workloads, so $10M, and the reality is it's smaller than that because they're running a heterogeneous environment and aren't about to swap it all out soon.  And that assumes you can accurately measure the cost savings.

Red Hat is pitching value creation on the other $900M in revenues.  Moving the ball by 10% there (i.e. $90M) is a whole lot more interesting than 10% on the cost side.  As the CIO, do you want to help save a bit of money, or grow the business?  Which one moves the stock?  Which one makes you a hero and grows your bonus? 

The message is all about the customer as hero.   

The Best Presentation on Software Business and Open Source I've Ever Seen

Brent Williams presented “Open Source Business Models: A Wall Street Look at a Wild 2006 and the Prospects for Even More Fun in 2007” at EclipseCon Tuesday.   Brent is a (temporarily) independent equity research analyst.  Unlike so many “Wall Street” types, he approaches the discussion from the economics of what people do, rather than what they say they do.  Similar to r0ml in content, there are always surprises along the along the way.

Brent has graciously allowed me to post the slides.  Brent's analysis and mine are congruent on many topics, but he brings clarity to the topic and a wealth of experience.  He starts with a tear down of the Oracle Linux debate and the Microsoft Novell deal.  I especially like his tear down of the commoditization myth and his observations around interface standards versus standards of implementation.  A couple of slides in the presentation don't quite stand alone, but for the most part the deck is brilliant. 

Enjoy!

Three Things Steve Ballmer (and Brad Smith) Get Wrong about Free and Open Source Software

Enough, Mr. Ballmer, please. 

There have been a rash of articles over the past week on Steve Ballmer's recent statements about open source software and intellectual property during the New York financial analysts presentation.  They follow on other recent related statements around the Novell-Microsoft deal by Brad Smith, and the Progress and Freedom Foundation.  Here's what Ballmer et al get wrong:

• Customers care about patents. (The corollary that vendors sue customers over patents, and that this is why customers need care is patently (sic) false.)
• Free and open source developers don't respect intellectual property.
• People think free and open source software is free.

Let's handle them in reverse order. 

Open Source Software is Free
Wrong.  And no one thinks this.  Mårten Mickos brilliantly observed two years ago that the early community is willing to trade time to save money, and the later community is willing to trade money to save time.  But neither the do-it-yourself users or the pay-as-you-play customers thought anything was "free".   They each made an economic decision based on their particular needs in context.  Anyone that ever paid for a Red Hat Advanced Server installation or a Novell SuSE desktop or MySQL Network knows that the solution isn't free, even if they didn't pay a software license fee.   

Microsoft continues to think that free and open source software sits at one end of a spectrum that has commercial software at the other end.  They apparently still don't realize these two ideas are orthogonal.  Really. 

Free and Open Source Software Developers Don't Respect IP
Wrong.  First, F/OSS licensing is completely dependent on strong IP (copyright) law.  Second, key projects generally have contributors license or assign the rights of their contributions to the project owner.  This is no different than Microsoft licensing third party code for inclusion in Windows or Office.  The terms and conditions bar might be higher for Microsoft because of the business and litigation risk they take, but the legal concept is the same.  Brad Smith suggesting otherwise is disingenuous at best for a lawyer.

Mr. Smith would obviously point out that the sort of licensing Microsoft does includes discussions around patents, something most (but not all) open source software licenses do not discuss.  This is because patents are a vendor-to-vendor discussion, and not all open source software projects are necessarily run by commercial vendors.  (This may explain why vendors with patents also make interesting patent grants to open source projects in which they participate.)

This discussion also flies in the face of the reality of vendors with more mature IP strategies than Microsoft's contributing heavily to free and open source software projects.  These other players seem to be extremely respectful of IP, yet they find their business strategy includes F/OSS.  Makes you wonder more at the lack of imaginative asset strategy at Microsoft. 

Customers (Should) Care about Patents
Wrong.  Patents are tickets to negotiations in vendor-to-vendor discussions.  Customers could care less.  I started this blog two years ago with a short essay titled "When are you going to sue your customers?"  In it I use the following example:

Legal IP tools are important for vendors and certainly relevant in vendor-to-vendor discussions.  The idea that customers care about patents, however, would seem counter-intuitive.  Consider the following: when you last bought an automobile, did you pick the “Honda” over the “Toyota” because the Honda had more patents in it, or more patents per ton of vehicle, or maybe because Honda's intellectual property practices were “better” some how?  Of course not.  You bought the product that met your needs.  It may well have even been the more innovative product by your own subjective measure, but whether or not the manufacturer chose any number of legal tools to protect the innovation wasn't part of your buying consideration.  How the vendor's business process works is of no interest to the customer beyond the actual customer-vendor interface so to speak.

Whether the vendor has a mature IP strategy, applying for patents, trademarks, and copyrights appropriately, choosing to keep some ideas trade secret protected, sharing selected IP with partners or competitors through patent pools and cross licenses, or aggressively publishing some ideas in the face of their competition is of little interest to the customer. The customer only cares that the product serves their needs and provides the value they paid for it.

Next scenario:  you are happily driving your Honda when you receive a letter from Toyota one day telling you that you're infringing their patents. They give you the choice to (a.) cease driving your Honda, or (b.) pay them a license to their patents.  You can essentially “pay twice” for the privilege of driving your car, and for some small sum you can feel free of any concerns that you are infringing Toyota's patent claims ever again.  On this vehicle.  Or for your household.  Or maybe it will be offered to you the customer as an annual license calculated by the number of drivers in the house and the number of Honda vehicles you own, pro-rated over certain uses, unless the patent applies to certain other manufacturers as well. What do you do?  Do you even waste time calling your lawyer to figure this one out?  Or do you call the Honda dealership and tell them quite simply to “fix this.”

Of course this assumes you don't also receive letters from General Motors for their patents (frustrated that North Americans are buying foreign vehicles), Daimler-Chrysler, and Hyundai, so you have the opportunity to “license” your Honda vehicle from many companies and pay for it numerous times. [srw -- this is WHY patents are a vendor-to-vendor discussion.]

The reality, however, is that Toyota is not going to threaten to sue Honda's customers.  They would like the opportunity to switch those Honda customers to Toyota's products, not upset them to the point that no Toyota dealership ever gets a chance at that Honda customer again. 

If anyone sued a customer company for patent infringement over its use of Linux, the company being sued would find a lot of "friends", starting with the Linux Foundation.  One might even imagine the company having a negotiation with IBM over opportunities for IBM to sell in other unrelated areas in return for help on the Linux litigation front.

Jeremy Allison recently mentioned in an interview that "I have had people come up to me and essentially off the record admit that they had been threatened by Microsoft and had got patent cross license and had essentially taken out a license for Microsoft patents on the free software that they were using, which they then cannot redistribute. ... But they’re not telling anyone about it. They’re completely doing it off the record."

This is hugely disturbing.  It means these companies are essentially giving into a market bully.  They certainly aren't serving their share holders.  If Microsoft is so gung-ho on the idea that this is a good thing, then THEY should come forward with the who and the how so we can all take a look.  The fact that this may be happening in secret does not put them in a good light at all. 

The Novell-Microsoft technical co-operation agreement around virtualization, web services, and document formats is no different than any other vendor-to-vendor tech co-op (marketing) agreement.  It's business as usual. 

The Novell-Microsoft "agreement to provide each other’s customers with patent coverage for their respective products" is no different than any other vendor-to-vendor cross license deal at the end of the day.  Microsoft wants to message it around open source software (Linux specifically) and IP and customers, but that's actually irrelevant. 

What other patents do these two companies have?  As much as Microsoft loves to maintain ambiguous IP messaging around Linux and patents or the Novell sponsored mono project and patents, the more interesting question is what historical patents Novell may have that might read on operating systems or file systems.  This scenario would be far more damaging for Microsoft than for Novell in a patent injunction shoot-out on revenue streams.  Cross licensing is just good business for two such vendors.  And customers could care less.

Culture comes from the top.  For all the good work that Bill Hilf's team may be trying to do, Ballmer's message is damning.  Ballmer's is the message that will be carried by the Microsoft field organization.   He's the CEO.  And it's doubly damning because Ballmer's message on this issue has no credibility anymore.

If Microsoft really wants to prove once and for all that customers should really care about paying for patents separate from their solutions, then Microsoft should go sue a customer over Linux systems that allegedly infringe their patents.  It would need to be a customer that clearly has a large installed base of roll-your-own-Linux systems.  They should go sue Google.  Or Bank of America.  Then we can all see how important this really is.

Of course Google may well have interesting patents on things like "search", so it would become a negotiation again.  And Bank of America probably spends a lot of money with Microsoft for other things, and it's unclear Microsoft would want to risk such a revenue stream (since they clearly wouldn't be worried about customer opinion at that point). 

At the end of the day Steve and Brad need a new strategy.  (Or a new PR firm.)  This message is growing old, and makes them look unimaginative (or worse, sneaky) in leading a modern high technology company.  Microsoft continues to stand alone in this space.  It's really too bad. 

Oracle Linux: Novell or Red Hat? (Hopefully neither!)

Updated 18-Apr-2006, 13:30: Added the postscript on the Boston Globe quote. 

This morning saw reports in the Financial Times that "Oracle considers venturing into Linux".  This was picked up by CNet (via Reuters) which set up the discussion about Oracle's desire to deliver a entire stack of technology to customers, and then drew attention to the quote that Oracle has even "considered buying Novell."  And thus are rumour mills fed.  Let's actually look at the discussion in a business context:

In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Ellison said that Oracle wanted to sell a full “stack” of software that, ... included both operating system and applications. “I’d like to have a complete stack,” he said. “We’re missing an operating system. You could argue that it makes a lot of sense for us to look at distributing and supporting Linux.”

Not an unreasonable opinion.  Go all the way back to Geoff Moore and Crossing the Chasm (1991).  You want to present a "whole product" solution to your customer, i.e. your core revenue driver and all the complements you can reasonably provide that your customer perceives as the complete solution to their problem.  If to sell an Oracle "solution" today means Oracle licenses and Oracle vertical specific applications, AND an expensive operating system on expensive hardware, AND an expensive application server, then reducing the overall cost to the customer while driving the core revenue generators would seem to be A Good Idea. 

As part of a recent study of the open source software market, Mr Ellison said that Oracle had considered buying Novell, which after Red Hat is the biggest distributor of Linux. “We look at everything, play this thing out,” he added.

This statement should not surprise anyone that has worked in a large enterprise with a view of the executive offices.  Companies explore ideas on paper constantly in their corporate/business development offices.  Lot's of "what if" scenarios are played out, and numbers crunched without anyone ever committing to doing something.  Companies even pay good money to the McKinsey's of the world for this sort of analysis even if they have their own inhouse "business consulting team". I'm sure Oracle has also run the numbers on Red Hat and SuSE (before the Novell acquisition) and developing their own distribution at various times in the past, and will do so again.   

“Now that Red Hat . . . competes with us in middleware, we have to re-look at the relationship – so does IBM,” he said.

This last quote is the troublesome one (or maybe it's a misquote without context).  Oracle is the enterprise relational database company.  It's been expanding its brand with vertical specific Oracle applications.  It needs middleware (i.e. an app server), like it needs an operating system on which to run, but it isn't a middleware company. 

Go back to the original business goal expressed in the article, that Ellison wants to provide a complete stack or solution to his customer.  Good idea, but he has better ways to spend shareholder dollars to solve customer problems than acquiring the stack outright, and then living with the cultural consequences and long term engineering expenses of becoming an "operating system company" and an "app server company" as well as their primary focus as the enterprise database company.  Spending good money to get into other rapidly commoditizing businesses, rather than serving your customers needs by supporting companies like Red Hat with its JBoss acquisition that already know how to make money in a different margin business seems a waste.

As I suggested Friday, Oracle should be hammering down Red Hat's door to expand the relationship with all the money they saved by not acquiring JBoss, or in this case (hopefully) Novell.

P.S. You have to love news editors.  I was interviewed by Hiawatha Bray from the Boston Globe yesterday.  The quote as it appeared:

But Stephen Walli, vice president of Optaros Inc., an open source consulting firm in Cambridge, said buying Novell or Red Hat would be a mistake for Oracle.

''They would have to carry all that cost on their balance sheet," Walli said. ''I think it would be a really bad idea."

This is why I blog the whole idea.  While accurate, the quote could mean it was a mistake for Oracle's business to carry the engineering expense compared to the value to their solution to their customers (which was meant), OR that Novell or Red Hat are dogs that one wouldn't want on one's balance sheet (which wasn't meant).  Maybe I'm being overly sensitive. 

 

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Mono, Microsoft, and Mischief

Update (17-Sep-2005, 19:00 PDT): Well the party did indeed happen, t-shirts and all!  I'm sorry I wasn't in L.A. for it.  Todd Bishop from the Seattle Post Intelligencer was covering the PDC and talked with Miguel.  He talks about mono in an article and on his blog.  Hopefully Miguel posts pictures soon.

Apparently Microsoft is again denying Miguel de Icaza a Mono BoF at this year's PDC. This is such a missed opportunity for Microsoft.  Microsoft needs Mono.  They published the CLR and C# language specifications as international standards through ECMA and ISO, but it still looks like a proprietary controlled technology to the customer base.  Standards are a message in the marketplace that encourage multiple implementations.  As long as there is only one commercial implementation, there is no standard, and the customers know it regardless of the number of trees killed to produce specifications.  Encourage Mono and then deliver the better integrated experience for writing web services on .NET.  Of course that would require the ability to ship software in a timely fashion. 

Microsoft is the company that re-branded the ".NET Server" to "Windows Server 2003", and ".NET" to "Windows .NET" to ensure they really drove home the idea that it's all about Windows.  At this point in their existence, they already own that word in customers' minds, and unfortunately customers know that really means their "desktop".  There was the opportunity to own a new word — ".NET" — and even associate it with the idea of servers, but that's gone now.  It's "Windows .NET".  IBM learned a long time ago to own new words.  They have a history of owning new words and moving along with their customers.  There was "mainframe" and "PC" and even "Selectric" at one glorious time.  Digital Equipment Corporation on the other hand ended up only owning one word.  Too bad. 

If I was Novell, I would start a nasty viral ad campaign for the PDC.  Instead of gathering in a hallway like stubborn refugees, get a meeting room in a neighbouring hotel, or take over a bar like a Dick's Last Resort.  Pass out invitation cards and put out notices in the lobbies of all the local hotels for the PDC, and on the message boards at the conference.  Set-up the screen and one of those nifty portable projectors, plug in the laptop, and let Miguel do what Miguel does so well.  Buy the beer and the food.  Hand everyone a copy of the latest SuSE distribution, and whatever Mono tools can be put together.  Hand out t-shirts to the first 100 people through the door and make them GREAT t-shirts.  (I'm thinking a brick wall background with the Mono monkey logo "spray painted" on the wall in a loud fluorescent blue or green.  No words.  No other logos.  We already know what the Novell logo looks like and it would spoil the effect.)  Encourage everyone to wear them to the PDC the next day.  Remind Microsoft that you're customers — and that it's your money.  Make the Mono BoF the best little party of the PDC.  It certainly couldn't cost as much as a booth in the vendor hall. 

Of course that's just what I'd do.