:Novell.com: Open Letter to the Community from Novell
Novell.com: Open Letter to the Community from Novell Nov 21, 2006, 02 :30 UTC (13 Talkback[s]) (11601 reads) (Other stories by Ron Hovsepian)
"On November 2, Novell and Microsoft announced a significant, multi-part agreement to work together to improve the interoperability between Linux and Windows and for Microsoft to redistribute more than 350,000 subscriptions for SUSE Linux Enterprise to the Windows customer base over a five-year period. This agreement is at the heart of what IT users demand--to deploy both Linux and Windows, and to have them work well together--and many companies have spoken out in support of this new cooperation.
"Customers told us that they wanted Linux and Windows to work together in their data centers, and so we agreed to develop new technologies and standards in server management, virtualization and document file format compatibility. CIOs want to focus on their business, and they want their suppliers to focus on improving operating system interoperability. The Linux community will benefit from the creation and release of the open source code to improve Linux's interoperability with Windows that will result from this agreement..."
[Editor's Note: After the publication of Novell's open letter, Linux Today received a comment on Novell's stance from Microsoft. The comment, attributable to a Microsoft spokesperson, is printed in full here. -BKP]
"Microsoft and Novell have agreed to disagree on whether
certain open source offerings infringe Microsoft patents and whether certain Microsoft offerings infringe Novell patents. The agreement between our two companies puts in place a workable solution for customers for these issues, without requiring an agreement between our two companies on infringement.
"Both of our companies are fully committed to moving
forward with all of the important work under these agreements. The agreements will advance interoperability between Windows and Linux and put in place a new intellectual property bridge between proprietary and
open source software. Customers and participants throughout our industry will clearly benefit from these results.
"We at Microsoft respect Novell's point of view on the
patent issue, even while we respectfully take a different view. Novell is absolutely right in stating that it did not admit or acknowledge any patent problems as part of entering into the patent collaboration agreement. At Microsoft we undertook our own analysis of our patent portfolio and concluded that it was necessary and important to create a
patent covenant for customers of these products. We are gratified that such a solution is now in place."
