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.
Mendonça no longer functions as an independent agent but rather as a fig-leaf for a mafia-like entity that prizes obedience over integrity and self-preservation over truth
The state of the media is not good and when prolific book publishers start running ads as 'articles' or videos (never mind the disclosure) it is rather tasteless
Microsoft's CEO has already admitted that XBox is having serious financial problems [...] They already try to reuse the brand "XBox" to refer to Vista 11
This is what happens when companies try to establish themselves on a mountain of promises and false assumptions, kicking the can down the road until payroll becomes hard to complete