A few days ago it was a special day as May 2^nd was the special milestone corresponding to November 2^nd. The deal signed by Microsoft and Novell was set to expire at the very end of this year, but Novell sold itself just half a year before that date. The expiration of the patent agreement too is an interesting issue because the Mono team is being dissolved after many GNU/Linux distributions absorbed Mono somewhere in the stack, usually just for applications on the desktop. It remains to be seen what will happen because the deal in question remains largely secret or heavily redacted. What's left of it needs to be interpreted by legalese speakers, such as Groklaw. Pamela Jones suggested there might be succession in place, but that is based on just one comment.

Anyway, the deal with Novell was a cautionary tale and one that Nokia did not learn from. Some of the people who were involved in the Microsoft/Novell deal no longer work for Novell. Mr. Elop will no longer work for Nokia very shortly. But that's the subject of our next post. ⬆