Of all the scenarios being mooted on the purchase of Borland's line of compilers and IDEs, the one that I like the most is Novell.

Novell's Mono project includes an implementation of the .NET CLI that runs on Windows, Linux, OS X, and a number of UNIXes. The Delphi group has an IDE, compilers and compiler expertise including top optimization quality, and experience with VM development. Technology wise, the two groups are highly complementary.

The only thing I wonder is if Novell has the fire in the belly to recognize that now is a viable time for an alternative to the Visual Studio-Eclipse polarity. Few people realize that the window on the next phase of development is opening now. We're entering a disruptive phase in software development (ref. Windows 3.1 and the rise of OO, the WWW and the rise of Java, the dot-com crash and the rise of agile techniques). The change in programming context to multicore will cause a disruption in software development.