{"id":8611,"date":"2006-11-03T19:05:00","date_gmt":"1999-11-29T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=8611"},"modified":"2006-11-03T19:05:00","modified_gmt":"1999-11-29T20:00:00","slug":"microsoft-novell-partnership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=8611","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft – Novell Partnership"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is one of those times where if you’d told me this 5 years ago, I’d have laughed until my ribs broke.<\/p>\n

In case you missed it, Microsoft and Novell have announced a strategic partnership to promote and support each others products.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

How it all came about, we may never know.\u00a0 But I do have a suspicion.\u00a0 A while back, Microsoft announced that they had found Linux distributions had infringed on Microsoft’s Intellectual Property (IP) rights.\u00a0 This didn’t surprise me, especially after hearing Mark Russinovich’s presentation on how Linux compares with Windows.\u00a0 Mark goes on to describe how the Linux developers constantly added new features to compare with advantages that Mark was point out that Windows\u00a0had.\u00a0 <\/em>Microsoft said they were investigating on how to reconcile this.\u00a0 Options included nailing the authors of the code (usually someone living in their parent’s basement – just kidding!) or suing enterprises who were using the offending products.<\/p>\n

A major part of the announcement from this partnership is that Microsoft will not pursue anyone who is using Novell’s SUSE Linux product range.\u00a0 Out of this, Microsoft will receive royalties from Novell on license sales.\u00a0 Novell don’t make too much from licensing so this won’t be an issue for them.\u00a0 They aim to make money from support and services contracts.\u00a0 This agreement also appears to include Novell subsidiaries such as a product called Mono, a Linux clone of .NET.\u00a0 It was also stated that Microsoft will not pursue authors of open source<\/em> code that infringes on their IP rights.\u00a0 If you read between the lines this would mean that CIO’s better start adding some $’s to their budget.<\/p>\n

On a side note, Microsoft is extremely unlikely to send lawyers in to their "big 500" clients, i.e. the people who drive the design and sales of Microsoft’s products.\u00a0 It would be even less unlikely they would pursue the smaller fish.\u00a0 However, this is just a gut feeling and not a legal opinion.<\/em><\/p>\n

So that’s the IP stuff out of the way.\u00a0 What does the rest of the agreement include?<\/p>\n