...but a company guided by the same principles as an Enron does more damage than good.
Like Enron, Novell seeks control of an existing market rather than create something new to add to the marketplace. Enron, for example, didn't add any significant generating or transmission capacity to the North American power grids...instead they weaseled their way between suppliers and consumers to exact their pound of flesh in every transaction without actually producing anything.
Like Enron in the electrical power industry, Novell is attempting to insert itself between developers (producers) and end users, and to collect a toll for acting as gatekeeper where no toll booth or gatekeeper is needed.
And because Novell's business model is not based on production -- and is essentially based on extortion, as Enron's was -- ultimately Novell will collapse just as Enron did. The GNU/Linux community as a whole doesn't accept the validity of Novell's agreements with Microsoft, and sooner or later the EU and the United States will take up the problem of Microsoft's illegal monopoly to address it substantively this time around...rendering Novell's business plan entirely worthless.
I do feel sorry for the rank and file workers at Novell...but they also ignored what their employer has been up to in exchange for a pay check. Sooner or later that catches up with a person, and they were content to collect the paychecks without regard to the damage Novell was deliberately doing to all the rest of us.
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