Novell CEO Jack Messman is also in the process of sending an e-mail to Novell
customers. In that e-mail, Messman debunked a href="http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/execmail/" target=new>memo Microsoft
CEO Steve Ballmer sent to customers last week. In his e-mail, Ballmer wrote that
Windows has economic and security advantages over open-source software and
warned that Linux users are fair game for intellectual property lawsuits.

Ballmer's widely publicized e-mail came at the one-year anniversary of
Microsoft's href="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/facts/default.mspx"
target=new>Get the Facts campaign, a marketing effort by the software
company that compares Windows favorably with Linux. In the e-mail, as Microsoft
has done throughout the campaign, Ballmer cited passages from studies conducted
by industry analyst firms that show Windows to be superior to Linux.

In response, Novell accused Microsoft of cherry-picking from the analyst
reports.

"Microsoft is being very selective in what they are pulling from these
studies," said Bruce Lowry, a Novell spokesman. "Microsoft is trying to spread
FUD [fear, uncertainty and doubt] in the marketplace with incomplete arguments."

Indeed, contrary to the message Microsoft is trying to get across, the
studies don't chide Linux at all, according to Novell. For example, a report
from The Yankee Group that compares the cost of Windows to Linux also says Linux
provides "excellent performance, reliability, ease of use and security,"
Novell's Messman wrote in his e-mail. 

However, Yankee Group senior analyst Laura DiDio, author of the report,
cautioned that Novell may now be quoting selectively from her report to show
Linux in a favorable light. You can make a case for either operating system
depending on what the individual user's environment looks like, she said.

"Unless you read the whole report, you can take things out of context.
...Novell is trying to use it for their own purposes," DiDio said.

Novell also took issue with Ballmer's comments that no vendor today stands
behind Linux with full intellectual-property indemnification. "In fact, it is
rare for open source software to provide customers with any indemnification at
all," Ballmer wrote. That's wrong, according to Messman. Novell does offer its
customers protection from copyright claims.

"If the world were as Microsoft states, Linux would not be the world's
fastest growing operating system," Messman wrote.

Novell is not alone in critiquing Microsoft's campaign and Ballmer's e-mail
in particular. Dion Cornett, an analyst at Decatur Jones Equity Partners LLC, an
equity research firm in Chicago, wrote in a research note on Monday that Ballmer
obviously selected portions of the analyst reports to make his case.

"If the 'independent studies' are as accurate as Ballmer claims, then AOL,
Amazon, Google and Linksys -- all companies that are standardizing on Linux --
must be wrong in how they operate their massive IT infrastructures," Cornett
wrote.

Additionally, Cornett believes Microsoft's campaign may have an adverse
effect on the company and little impact on open-source vendors such as Red Hat
Inc. and Novell. "In fact, [the campaign] may have the opposite effect of
validating Linux as a viable threat to Microsoft's business," he wrote.

Novell entered the Linux business last year with the acquisitions of Ximian
Inc. and SUSE Linux AG. The Waltham, Mass.-based company for now is limiting its
public response to "Get the Facts" to the Web site and Messman's e-mail, Lowry
said.

Robert McMillan, of the IDG News Service, contributed to this report.