Broad Agreement Signed with Novell

Novell and Microsoft have signed a broad and complex business agreement that could ease interoperability between Windows and the SUSE Linux OS distributed by Novell, particularly in virtualization scenarios. The agreement offers better assurance of support for customers running both OSs and could help Microsoft convince customers to move legacy Unix applications to SUSE Linux running within a virtual environment on Windows Server. Novell and Microsoft have also pledged to improve interoperability in other areas, such as between Microsoft’s Office and the open-source OpenOffice.org applications that Novell includes in SUSE Linux distributions for desktop PCs.

The agreement also attempts to resolve potential patent conflicts between commercial (Microsoft) and open-source (Linux) software business models. However, the agreement sparked considerable debate in the open-source community, with some proponents claiming that the agreement is unenforceable, and others accusing Microsoft of trying to raise doubts about deploying open-source software.