When Red Hat's CEO, Matt Szulik, was asked recently by the U.K.'s Computer Business Review what impact Novell's purchase of SuSE had had on his company's business he replied: I can't think of any," adding, "I think people like the idea of this 5,400-employee software company buying up a German Linux distributor. I think they liked the theater of it."

This really rankled Novell spinmeister Bruce Lowery who commented: "If this is theater, we're still in the first act. The fat lady hasn't sung yet." Still, Red Hat is able to say that it has more subscription revenue in EMEA (Europe, Middle East & Africa) than Novell's entire worldwide Linux revenue. That's true, to a certain extent. Novell did report SuSE Linux Enterprise Server revenue of $8 million in its third quarter, ended July 31. Red Hat had subscription revenue of $54.3 million in its second quarter, ended Aug. 31, according to the CBR article. But this neatly avoids looking at the revenue from Open Enterprise Server - $31 million last quarter - even though much of the OES business is driven by its Linux core.

While I've never been shy about criticizing Novell when it's wrong (and that does seem to happen far too often), Red Hat's self-serving comments really need to be put into perspective. After all, there was a time when Lotus 1-2-3 outsold Excel. And, even earlier, when Visicalc outsold Lotus. Nothing is static in the world of software. Just ask Novell, which fondly remembers when NetWare outsold all other networking systems combined.

What Lowery was perhaps too polite to point out was Novell's utter dominance of Red Hat in the areas of identity management, network management and collaboration services. Szulik's comments may well be the desperate remarks of a CEO who sees his company's lead slipping away. Linux may not be in your future plans, but if it is then SuSE Linux (via OES) is by far the best choice for your network.

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Dave Kearns is a writer and consultant in Silicon Valley. He's written a number of books including the (sadly) now out of print "Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Networks." His musings can be found here.