Today's Wall Street Journal is reporting that Microsoft made a recent $250 million, yes million, Linux purchase from Novell. While this might at first blush appear to be a good thing, as Martha Stewart, or even Platypus Matt, might say, Lee Gomes of WSJ is seemingly circumspect:

Had Microsoft wanted to shower love on Linux it would have gone to the altar with Red Hat, by far the biggest Linux vendor. Instead, Microsoft picked one of the weakest, Novell. While Microsoft says it is open to working with Red Hat, too, some suspect that Microsoft's move wasn't so much supporting Linux as it was fracturing that world by using its mountain of cash to prop up the weakest player.

and

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that a cornerstone of the deal was a guarantee that users of Novell's version of Linux wouldn't be sued by Microsoft. Buy what about, say, Red Hat customers? There could be, he said, no such guarantees for them.

Gomes hits on a bit more of the nefarious stuff later on in his column, but MS sure looks to be the heavy. I'm not sure how this will directly affect teaching and learning with technology, but certainly the economics and politics of software, what is made available, and what is available to end users, is part of the ecology of technology. Here's a link to a Seattle Post-Intelligencer story on the deal from a week ago: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/291494_msftnovell08.html