Stories by: Don Tennant

I'm not above engaging in a little shameless name-dropping, especially when I know the dropped name will spark a reaction. So while chatting with attendees at the LinuxWorld conference in San Francisco last week, I made no secret of the fact that I had interviewed Richard Stallman a few days earlier. I marveled at the awe and admiration on the faces of many of my listeners.

One of the reasons I enjoy covering the IT profession so much is that if you put five IT pros in a room to discuss a particular topic, you're likely to get at least six different opinions about it. So when I raised the issue of substance abuse within the IT industry in my blog last week, I fully expected to get the full gamut of reader comments. I wasn't disappointed.

The landmark technology collaboration agreement between Microsoft and Novell that was announced earlier this month took a controversial twist when Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer later proclaimed that Linux customers have "an undisclosed balance sheet liability" because Linux "uses our intellectual property." Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian provided his views on the ensuing controversy, along with a behind-the-scenes account of how the agreement was reached, in an interview Tuesday with Don Tennant.

Chris Stone, Novell's vice chairman, spoke Tuesday with Computerworld about the strategy behind his company's plan to acquire SUSE Linux AG, and why Novell chose SUSE instead of Red Hat. Excerpts from the interview follow.

At Novell's BrainShare user and partner conference, Chairman and CEO Jack Messman Monday announced that Linux would serve as the migration path for the company's flagship NetWare network operating system. Shortly after making that announcement, Messman spoke about the decision to adopt Linux even though he considers it to be an immature operating system.

Faced with the reality of a steadily falling share of the network operating system market, Novell Monday answered the NetWare migration question. And the answer is Linux.

Rick Belluzzo, former president and chief operating officer of Microsoft Corp., took over as CEO of ailing storage vendor Quantum Corp. in September. Belluzzo spoke with Computerworld Wednesday about his first three months in a job where "Linux" is no longer a dirty word.