Microsoft and SUSE now friends

Big things happen in San Francisco, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian had a little chat and the results are most interesting. Microsoft and (SUSE) Linux are now friends, belive it or not!

The big news is that Microsoft will also agree not to assert rights over patents to any software technology that might be incorporated into SUSE Linux and that Microsoft and SUSE will be able to run now on the same system in a more compatible manner. Microsoft and Novell agree that the users are the reason why they made this partnership. In some way this is a way for Microsoft to deal with the open source community, and somehow extend it’s market.
This comes just after the news that Oracle Corp. said it would begin selling technical support for Red Hat Linux, so now the sides are like these: Microsoft and Novell against Oracle and Red Hat (and also IBM who also supported RedHat in the past). The main thing about this deal is that Microsoft won’t attack in court any of the software using SUSE on patent reasons. Another major aspect is the desire to create a common patform to run both Windows and SUSE in such manner that the two will interconnect.

Bottom line is that actions such therese bring Microsoft somewhat colser to the ‘open source’ world, and actions like these are considered mennacing by some who want open source to remain open and free.

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Posted in Software by Bogdan Popa