Novell stickers it to Red Hat

Every journalist loves a running story – basically when one article seamlessly leads to another. This might not be Pulitzer material but it amused me.

Having pointed out the cheeky banner that Novell hung outside rival Red Hat's annual conference in Boston, I later found out from Red Hat's chief executive Jim Whitehurst that Novell also put a "big sticker" on the floor outside too but Red Hat managed to get it removed.

Well surprise, surprise, I got an email today from Novell with a nice image of the sticker in question and what a sticker – it must be twenty feet across – I wouldn’t like to have on the crew that had to lay that let alone remove it.

And remove it they did, and Novell has some interesting views on how that came about:

We've been running the campaign for some time now (as you probably know, Boston is our headquarters) and removed the ad at the request of the management company at the Prudential Center -- they said they'd got over 20 calls, including one from the Mayor's office, all instigated by Red Hat.

I didn't actually realise Novell was based in Boston – I thought that their hometown was in Utah but turns out I am slightly out of touch and they actually relocated in 2004. If that is the case Novell – why do all your Brainshare user conferences still happen in Salt Lake City?

Anyway – hopefully this running story isn't over yet and we'll see Red Hat take some retaliatory action against Novell – maybe hiring a couple of hundred actors in Red Fedoras to troop past its rival's HQ.