Novell fumes at Ballmer's balls

Hovsepian explained that Novell's main concern with the Microsoft deal was to improve interoperability between Linux and Windows, with the patent agreement added as an after-thought. "Our interest in signing this agreement was to secure inter-operability and joint sales agreements, but Microsoft asked that we cooperate on patents as well, and so a patent cooperation agreement was included as a part of the deal," Hovsepian wrote. "Novell has a significant patent portfolio, and in reflection of this fact, the agreement we signed shows the overwhelming balance of payments being from Microsoft to Novell."

Microsoft agreed to pay Novell US$440 million for Linux technical support, while Novell paid US$40 million to Microsoft for the agreement not to sue. But what Novell now claims was an after-thought has been roundly condemned by everyone else in the IT industry, with Sun saying the deal would damage the open-source movement, and Samba calling it "unacceptable".

Microsoft responded to Novell's letter in a statement, in which it said that the two companies "have agreed to disagree on whether certain open source offerings infringe Microsoft patents and whether certain Microsoft offerings infringe Novell patents".

The deal doesn't admit infringement, but it doesn't take a stand in the other direction either, Microsoft pointed out: "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."

While Novell is "absolutely right in stating that it did not admit or acknowledge any patent problems", Microsoft reiterated that it believes Linux infringes on Microsoft patents. Therefore, it was "necessary and important" to create a mechanism whereby Linux users could pay Microsoft for those patents, Microsoft said.

Novell might not be admitting any liability, but it nevertheless helped put Microsoft's plan of collecting money from Linux users into action, Microsoft said, for which it thanked Novell. "We are gratified that such a solution is now in place," the company stated.

Novell has clearly not learnt the lesson it has been taught several times in the past, and most of the IT industry keep in the forefront of their minds: never mess with Monkey-boy.