How can you compete with free ? That’s the question every business publication has been asking to Microsoft lately. Of course priceless software is actractive per-se, so many online journalist and bloggers already foresaw Microsoft’s decline in the OS war.

A look back at old documents reveals prophetic words .

Socitm president Richard Steel believes open source still lags behind commercial products.

Oh sure. Microsoft loves open source. If your open source company is willing to admit Microsoft owns Linux, acknowledge the legitimacy of its proprietary standards, and put “whatever Microsoft wants.”

One person's opinion about Novell's position; Sirius beat Novell UK in the past and does this again

It's a familiar story. Microsoft does a secret deal with a company over patent licences. Almost no details are provided about which patents, how much money has changed hands, or why, except for one vaguely worded press release that talks about how such secret deals benefit the customer through openness and innovation.

Two of Microsoft's partners are assisting its fight against GNU/Linux, which Ballmer labels biggest competitor