Novell and Microsoft

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Last week’s announcement of the new relationship between Microsoft and Novell took a lot of people by surprise. The promise of better interoperability between Windows and SUSE Linux, and between Microsoft Office and Open Office via Office Open XML, could increase Linux adoption in corporate environments.

Microsoft’s new willingness to back away from patent claims against Novell and open source developers and users (Brad Smith, senior vice president and general counsel at Microsoft noted “If you buy SUSE Linux, you also get a patent covenant from Microsoft”) may be driven by a desire to compete with Red Hat, which recently entered into a new agreement with Oracle. More details on the IP issues are in Jason Matusow’s blog.