MS-Novell Scandal, in Simple Terms

i love this explanation... by bruce perens:

"Once upon a time there was a software company called Novell. Novell had a friend "Big Mike" who was always getting in trouble with the law, but he was strong and had a big business. Big Mike was making big noises, threatening to beat up Novell's customers. So, Novell made a financial deal with Big Mike so that he'd promise not to beat up Novell's customers, but would instead threaten the customers of all of Novell's competitors.

Novell's product wasn't really their own, but was made by a group of benevolent volunteers who shared their work with everyone, on the condition that everyone else would share it too. Novell tried to corner the market on the work of the volunteers, by having Big Mike threaten anyone who used the volunteers' work without paying Novell. The volunteers had a legal agreement with Novell to keep this from happening, but Novell and Big Mike got their lawyers together to engineer a loophole. Novell didn't feel bad about breaking their agreement with the volunteers, as long as what they did was only unethical and repugnant, not against the law.

The volunteers didn't like any of this. They made sure that Novell couldn't use any of their new work, but they shared it with all of Novell's competitors. The volunteers stuck Novell with the full cost of maintaining all of their old work without their help, for as long as Novell had to support its own customers. The volunteers were also business owners, developers, VARs, and IT managers, and they never recommended Novell for anything again. Novell stayed a third-rate contender among Linux distributions, behind other businesses like Red Hat and even non-profits like Debian and its partners. Eventually, Novell gave up on that business and went away."