The pact between Microsoft and Novell is primarily aimed at the growing number of major companies and government agencies that rely on both Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft's patent-protected Windows and Novell's open-source Linux platform to run their computers.
To encourage more companies to choose Novell's open-source platform, Microsoft has promised not to file patent-rights lawsuits over any of its technology that's blended with Suse Linux.
The concession is meant to address concerns of corporate users who have been reluctant to use Linux because they feared Microsoft might retaliate with patent-infringement claims.
Surely, being a major development, there will be a lot to discuss later. Since this breaking news may seem pretty urgent, let us call this a placeholder. Watch this space. There are more details in a Reuters article.
How will this affect Canonical and Ubuntu, if at all? We shall soon find out. For the time being, here is just a video of Mark Shuttleworth talking about his historic deal with Dell.
Novell believes it can hit a pricing sweet spot with Linux on the enterprise desktop and remains in talks with top OEMs -- including Dell -- about preloading SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 on PC clients.
There are many Arch derivatives that do not rely on "viral" marketing in MElon's child porn-pushing social control media and are instead relying on real development, not slop
We approach the parts where we explain that the Application to the Court with Garrett's name on it was instead complaining about fair criticism of the combative law firm (irrelevant to any injunctions) as if it was impermissible to explain what it had done - and still does - to my wife and I