Vista, Novell and Microsoft, Red Hat and schtuffs

So of course being a supporter of FOSS, I was keenly watching the news and I have to admit the articles as of late have been interesting. The fact that Vista is on its way to manufacturers and that Novell and MS are forging a business partnership is a bold though not entirely unexpected move.

Red Hat's reaction to all this is about what I expected, but still with recent moves by Oracle to encroach into Red Hat's main line of business and the Novell/MS thing it will be interesting to see how RH adjusts itself to compete with these newer threats.

Personally I think the end user is going to benefit in the long run. I hold quite a few doubts that Oracle will really make too much of a dent in the services arena until at least a year or later. Novell and MS's moves however may have a greater immediate impact. With financial backing and a fairly strong product NMS has more commercial clout to say mainstream IT managers. On the flip side, RH now remains the only truly independent player with sizable market share. While RH critics are in no short supply I think as long as they stay close to the FOSS paradigms they'll keep a good sized user base unless price pressure and lack of business growth keep them down.

We'll have to see how the market shifts now but I for one will watch with interest and hopefully be able to see the benefits of competition for both parties.