This unhappy tale brought tears to my eyes...tears of laughter: The continuing saga of Billy Goats and Steve Ballsup. Are these two for real?

Okay, the headline is a bit dramatic. But the Sun-MySQL business combo makes The VAR Guy wonder: Will Novell wake up and start buying open source application providers … or is Novell doomed to repeat the exact same mistakes it made in the 1990s? Alas, Novell in 2008 looks a lot like Novell from a decade ago. That’s not good. Here’s why.

Novell's very latest financial press release does not tell the whole story, but some journalists are falling for it

"So Novell really does now finally seem to own the Unix copyrights. Linux finds itself on a high-ground pedestal of long-term, low-risk use (unless Microsoft buys Novell [should have when they could have, eh?]). And IBM and Novell are closer than ever."

The Novell/Canopy/Caldera/DR DOS story continues, and Novell and Microsoft are in the middle of it all, battling in discovery in the Novell v. Microsoft antitrust litigation -- that is the litigation over WordPerfect currently before the US District Court in Maryland in pretrial discovery.

Here's the latest from Roy Schestowitz of BoycottNovell.com:

Novell’s de Icaza: The Man Who Gives GNU/Linux to Microsoft

I've been following this story for a while now. I'm not the first to compare Novell to SCO. It seems fair to compare them without being hyperbolic.

Novell BrainShare started March 21 in Salt Lake City, Utah. The company is gradually winning back channel partners like VARs and systems integrators, thanks to SUSE Linux. But so far, Novell doesn't seem to have a compelling story for the fastest growing portion of the channel -- managed services providers (MSPs). The big question: Do MSPs care about Novell?

Novell today claimed to have more certified software partners than rival Linux providers. The chest pumping represents Novell’s latest thinly veiled attack against Red Hat. But take a closer look at Novell’s claims and you’ll see why Red Hat may take issue with some of Novell’s statements.

Well, this is fascinating. Here's an order from Judge Ted Stewart in a dispute between Novell and its insurer, Vigilant Insurance Company. Novell tried to get them to pay for the SCO v. Novell litigation back in 2004 and they refused, so Novell sued last May.