CNet has a wide-ranging interview with Bill Gates, in which he touches partially on the Novell deal and Open Source / Free Software. Here is an interesting quote:

We're also letting Novell give something that you get in the commercial model, but you rarely get otherwise, which is the indemnification, just like we always do with every copy of Windows. So we're pioneering some things here.

Let me get this straight - Novell is providing the indemnification? I thought the brilliance here was the fact that MS was providing the indemnification, therefore sidestepping the GPL2?



So far, I have yet to hear any two people who should have knowledge of the deal's significance give the same story. We have Ron's perspective and Microsoft's official response, Steve Ballmer's view on what the deal means, and David Kaefer's spin on what Steve said, and now Chairman Gates.

PJ at Groklaw made a great point the other day about a meeting of the minds as a requirement for a valid contract, with each passing day I wonder if there was ever even a meeting of the executives.