Novell's press release on partnership with Microsoft

Novell's press release on partnership with Microsoft

We're still in phase 3; things just got a little dirtier. Do you honestly think that M$ is now saying "we tried to fight them, and it didn't work, oh well, guess we'll let them win"? If you do, I've got a used car and a bridge you might be interested in...

Seriously, though, this really is just another attempt to spread FUD, and Novell played right into M$'s hands by accepting this deal - M$ has long since asserted the Linux violates (some of) their patents, but now they can actually go and say "hey, one of the major Linux companies signed an agreement with us, so obviously, when we're saying there's patent problems with Linux, it's not just hot air!". It may not impress the average developer or user much, but upper management sure are going to be interested in that.

Personally, I think this is a perfect example of the prisoner's dilemma. Novell gains a short-term advantage from the deal (because suits worried about patent assertions from M$ will be more inclined to choose SuSE over RedHat or other commercial distros now); but RedHat etc. will be tempted to sign similar deals, with the end result that none of them gained anything - they just lost to M$.

Eben's (and JoeBuck's) explanation of why a deal like this would most likely violate the GPL may be sort of a "get out of jail free" card for the community (even though Novell in its short-sightedness may not see it as such), but we'll still get a black eye, at least, since the executives etc. will still think about patents again, and may still conclude that it may be safer to use windows (or a commercial Unix) rather than Linux.