WHEN Microsoft signed a 5-year deal with SUSE we called for/asked our readers to boycott SUSE. This deal has just officially come to an end, as we noted yesterday. Now, to be frank, there is not much to be said about it as two articles by Sam Varghese explored this subject a couple of months ago [1, 2] and this deal does not appear to have much to do with patents, so we don't need to worry too much.

“So much for relying on Microsoft as a 'partner'...”
      --The deal was signed in 2011. An article from around that time took note of CPTN, saying: "In fact, it is so much money that it's fair to argue that Novell would have imploded without the Microsoft cash injections and sold for a lot less money than the $2.2bn that Attachmate paid to get control of it. (The net cost to Attachmate was less than half of that, however, thanks to the cash Novell had on hand and another $450m that a consortium led by Microsoft paid for 880 of Novell's patents.)"

What's interesting here is that SUSE is no longer so 'special' a child in Microsoft's eyes. So much for relying on Microsoft as a 'partner'... ⬆