[ Thanks to Eddy
Nigg for this link. ]
“In November 2006 Novell and Microsoft singed and announced a
collaboration agreement between them, which took the Linux world by
surprise. Novell is the owner and producer of SUSE Linux which it
acquired in 2003. Novell is also the owner of the UNIX and UnixWare
copyrights, which was recently confirmed by a US court, which in
itself is a welcome victory, because of SCO’s
threat to the Linux community based upon allegations of copyright
infringement of UNIX. SCO claimed that Linux is an unauthorized
derivative of UNIX and sued IBM and Novell over copyright claims.
And then there were speculations, that Microsoft helped SCO in its
effort against Linux. But after all, Microsoft perhaps realized
that SCO is going to loose and it was them, which suddenly needed
protection from Novell, hence the collaboration agreement with
Novell. And the deal includes a patent cooperation agreement, where
Novell and Microsoft each promised not to sue the
other’s customers for patent
infringement…”