What a compasionate writing by Nick for MS. Like Linux worshipers singing together line "Baby i've changed... please come back" (from Eagles: In the new York Minute).

After all ...

It's a human sign
When things go wrong
When the scent of her(MS) lingers
And temptation's strong

Into the boundary
Of each married(Linux) man
Sweet deceit comes calling
And negativity lands

And it's no sacrifice
Just a simple word
It's two hearts living
In two separate worlds
But it's no sacrifice
No sacrifice
It's no sacrifice at all

Mutual misunderstanding
After the fact
Sensitivity builds a prison
In the final act

We lose direction
No stone unturned
No tears to damn you
When jealousy burns
(Sir Elton John - Sacrifice)

Microsoft doesn't need Novell. Your convoluted explanation why this might possibly be so is evidence in itself. Just because Microsoft might find itself in a worse competitive position if commercial Linux environment was dominated by Red Hat, that doesn't mean that MS wants to take on the nightmare that is managing Novell.

As for IBM, they chose to support two Linux distributions so they didn't have to care muchly whatever happened to any one of them. So they've got no compelling reason to buy Novell. If SuSE goes bad for them, then they sell their customers Red Hat instead of SuSE and eventually do a deal with a Canonical or suchlike to once again have two strings for their Linux bow.

Elliot need someone who will pay $1B for SuSE to make their purchase of Novell work. There's simply no one that stupid. The numbers don't stack up, so it would need to be a purchase driven by strategic rather than financial considerations. But if a company needs to control a Linux distro for strategic reasons they could partner with Canonical much more cheaply that buying SuSE.

As with Felix, MS would be jumped on instantly for it. Out of those listed think it would probably be HP if anyone. They already ship Suse as the chosen distro on their servers and laptops so already fits quiet well. And they did a year or so back (not sure if they canned the project though) of making a distro for themselves to use...might just prove easier to buy one instead unless the ideas been well sunk.

From a regulatory point of view I see IBM or HP in a better position to buy Novell than Microsoft. A buy-out would probably need regulatory approval. Are they going to allow a convicted monopolist to buy a "major" competitor? I don't think so.

Suse in anyone's hands isn't a threat to Redhat. Anyone who's had to deal with the Suse version of customer support will know why.