Novell continued to demonstrate its commitment toward Open Source by hiring HP's Jeremy Allison,  a programmer closely associated with the Samba open-source project.

Samba is known for its ability to enable Linux (or Unix) servers to emulate Microsoft file-sharing capabilities, and Allison's hiring seems to reinforce Novell's commitment to Linux while underscoring the reality of living in a world dominated today by the Microsoft Windows OS.

Since Novell committed itself to an Open Source strategy in 2003, it has ported its seemingly ageless NetWare file system to Linux, acquired the SUSE Linux OS, and publicly avowed its commitment consistently. Novell, in fact, ships Samba with its SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

Will this hiring presage more movement among Open Source advocates? If so, it will be interesting to see how much of this movement seems directly relevant to the company's strategy (as the case with Novell), is mystifying (as the case with Intel), or falls somewhere in the inscrutable zone.

Perhaps old Kremlinologists can dust off their antennae and find work as Open Source hiring analysts.