Novell has decided to speak to the Microsoft press. There are figures and opinions there which are noteworthy. For example:

[Steinman, for Novell:] As part of our agreement, Microsoft purchased from Novell $240 million of certificates that customers can redeem for subscriptions to SuSE Linux Enterprise Server with support. Microsoft has been selling those certificates to customers as part of mixed Windows-Linux deals. Xandros didn't get anything like that. We also have some of the unique stuff around virtualization with Microsoft. We weren't surprised by this news. They said publicly from day one they wanted to sign up some other partners as part of their open source ecosystem.

So is this a good thing?

[Steinman:] It's part of Microsoft's business strategy. I think well leave it up to the market to decide. All I'm capable of commenting on is why Novell did the deal. It was important to deliver this technical interoperability between Windows and Linux. It's been borne out by the fact that in the six months of the deal so far, Novell has invoiced $91 million of the $240 million that Microsoft committed to us in the agreement. That's roughly 38 percent in six months of a five-year deal.

As Eben Moglen said a couple of months back, Microsoft is throwing SLES coupons out of the airplane. Novell gleefully talks about their salesman, on which they are financially dependent, but recent developments could pour out cold water on this party.

With Novell intent on moving to GPL v3, and Microsoft intent on not touching anything remotely related to GPL v3, it appears that the situations is coming to a head--one that seems likely to result in Microsoft ceasing its Linux distribution deal with Novell.

If appears likely that this 5-year partnership will have only lasted for months. Novell ought to have learned from Jim Allchin.