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.
Free software "absolutism" is not a radical stance, more so if the only "radical" belief the user possesses is that he or she must be in control of his or her software, and by extension his or her computer
