Red Hat Inc and Novell Inc will soon face more competition from a small rival, Ubuntu Linux, in the market for open-source software programs that run server computers.

Some shakeups in the virtualisation industry reveal the role of dirty maneuvers Is Microsoft grabbing greater control over VMware’s strategy and direction by appointing its former (and very notorious) executive, then pressuring out the company’s founders?

There’s a growing body of evidence suggesting that Novell and Red Hat could soon face new competition in the Linux server market. Something new from Microsoft? Nope. Another attack from Oracle? Not quite. This time, the competition could come from tiny Canonical and the company’s latest Ubuntu Linux release.

Bits from the press about Novell and virtualisation for the most part. MANY people may not remember this, but Ron Hovsepian admitted giving power to Microsoft in the datacentres. It was part of the deal that Novell should permit Windows to run as a host and SUSE usually be a guest.

Competition authorities in Germany and the United States today highlighted the fundamental role that Free Software plays for competition in the software market.

Microsoft's Virtualization Validation program is used to push Novell at the expense of rivals like Red Hat, Debian, Ubuntu.

Novell sidles with Microsoft's end of the spectrum and Gartner promotes Hyper-V by comparing VMware to Novell

News about Microsoft and VMware/EMC with additional analysis .

One of the biggest gripes the FOSS community has with respect to Microsoft's business tactics is that its longstanding exclusionary agreements with hardware vendors has stifled genuine competition. This is the very issue of one of two claims Novell will be allowed to press against Microsoft in their anti-trust lawsuit.