I don't argue that everybody should accept paying a Microsoft tax.

Novell has the right to do busines with MS, and if Novell finds that an MS tax is a great thing for Novell to pay, let them.

This is about symbiosis. If MS forms a symbiosis with Linux through a Linux-based income, then MS has started stepping down the path that we have yelled at them to take for the last 10-15 years: The path of Open Source and free software.

MS looks at Linux from a business perspective. Don't mind if they do, they are a business.

We might know better, we might be aware that there is no basis for MS to collect taxes from Linux users. But MS looks at the world through profits, turnover and sales.

And just like a baby tries to understand new things by putting them into its mouth, even though it might be non-food, MS is trying to understand Linux in a very non-Linux way, but in a way that MS is used to understand things.

Somewhere down the stream, people are paying money to Novell that eventually becomes MS profits. Novell thus has a cost that no other Linux vendor has. And thus Novells customers have a cost that other Linux vendors' customers haven't got. Bottom line, businesses and people who buy Linus solutions from Novell are less cost-effective than customers of other Linux vendors.

Let's use the fact that Novell Linux customers are less cost effective than others, to make MS understand better ways of making money with Linux, instead of just yelling at them for making money on silly partnership deals.

If there is no value added for Novells Linux customers in paying the MS tax, these customers will notice and complain, and by that time, MS will be used to a Linux based income, and they will therefore try harder to make money on Linux the Linux-way.