FACT : At the end of the day, a corporation's primary goal is to make money and take care of their self interest. In their spare time/expense they would probably want to do charity/social work(for various reasons). Thus Novell by default can do what it wants under the prescribed laws.
The only way this can change is if a majority stock holder(by the way i don't who owns how much of Novell, but that data can be got from the U.S - S.E.C) decides a motion to oppose a company decision and gets enough share holder votes with him. Yes, the Novell ``user" does not and CAN NOT decide, its the share holders CAN, and if and only if they have a majority. If they don't, then whatever was done is done.
If users are unhappy with the company policy, they can certainly complain(about a major business decision) but that is effective only if they have enough numbers to impact Novell's revenue. Even if that does happen, its all on the company business guys to see where ``more revenue" comes from and thus take a decision. Its about where the $$$ and the more $$$ comes from. So if the more $$$ is coming from M$ . . . need i say more.
Also, if one play's with corporate fire, one must be ready to get burnt.
Let me make one thing very clear. i don't oppose all commercial organisations. But it is very naive on anyone's part to think that all of them would be selfless in terms of protecting value systems, integrity and freedom at the cost of profits.
Moreover if a person is using some free(as in freedom) software(partially/wholly developed by a commercial organisation), that organisation takes a decision which the customer is not happy with, and he/she doesn't have shareholder clout - there's really little to do in terms of changing that company's policy.
What one can do is, STOP using that software and use alternatives. If there are components that are unavailable then use what is available and develop what is not. Is it difficult: YES, Is it going to be a path of pain: YES, Is it even possible: YES!!!
The GNU project set out to do that and succeeded and getting most of the stuff needed, and over a period of time other people(Linus, etc etc etc.) and communities(BSD, ASF etc etc etc.) also contributed and at the end of the day, a working system did emerge. i think that says it all.
It's Stallman and the printer all over again. Stallman wasn't a Xerox majority share holder and his efforts in getting the driver source code did not bear fruit, so he did what had to be done.
The only question is are the users of Novell products going to do the same? Only time will tell.
Regards,
- vihan