Published at LXer:

Novell is paying Microsoft for its patents, and will pay royalties ongoing. Microsoft in turn promises not to sue individual non-commercial coders or paid coders who contribute to SUSE: Protection racket, anyone?- TC

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I don't share this opinion. I see a picture of two companies that are both on-the-rocks, grabbing for each other to find some kind of business model where their "patents" and "proprietary" properties will continue to somehow make money. And I don't think highly of their actual prospects for doing so.

The Linux community needs to stop thinking of itself as "maverick" and "counter-culture." When your code-base runs more servers on the Internet than anything else in the world, you're mainstream. And people are going to be demanding of you the same things that they demand of anything else that "runs their business": service.

I actually heard that Microsoft was trying to create its own UNIX based OS. Not sure if it was true or if it was just a rumor but with this parntership it seems like they were trying and maybe gave up?

I like the combination anyways .. I've always liked SLES and you know you got to love Windows

Companies the size of HP, Microsoft or IBM have a M.A.D.D. patent policy. They build up a cache of patents. If they are sued, they can respond with a barage of suits of their own.