Microsoft/Novell deal on shaky ground?

Enterprise giants tip toe around their open source interoperability work

Novell and Microsoft have already clashed over their recent agreement to work together.

The two firms announced a deal on 2 November that they said would see them work together to improve interoperability between Linux and Windows, and more importantly indemnify each other’s customers against patent infringement cases.

However, Novell has moved to distance itself from Microsoft, after chief executive Steve Ballmer claimed last week that only customers using Suse Linux had properly paid Microsoft for its intellectual property.

“We disagree with the recent statements made by Microsoft on the topic of Linux and patent,” said Ron Hovsepian, Novell chief executive in an open letter. “Importantly, our agreement with Microsoft is in no way an acknowledgment that Linux infringes on any Microsoft intellectual property.”

Hovsepian also stressed that Novell’s stance on software patents was unchanged by the Microsoft deal. “We wish to be extremely clear that Novell is committed to protecting, preserving and promoting freedom for free and open source software.”

Microsoft was quick to respond with its own open letter, announcing that the two firms have “agreed to disagree” on the issue of open-source products infringing on Microsoft software.
“We at Microsoft respect Novell's point of view on the patent issue, even while we respectfully take a different view,” Microsoft said. “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.”

Despite being less than a month old, this is not the first time the Novell and Microsoft tie-up has attracted controversy. Earlier this month, the Software Freedom Law Center and open-source software project Samba both criticised the announcement, arguing that Microsoft’s patent pledge had minimal value and that the deal was against the ethos of the free software community.

In an interview with IT Week, Linux vendor Red Hat also criticised the Microsoft-Novell pact.

“It paints Novell into an uncomfortable position,” said Shaun Connolly, vice-president of product management for Red Hat’s JBoss division. “Microsoft has an opportunity to send out a strong message to the open-source community and it muddled the message a little bit. It really looks counter to what the whole open-source movement was about by dividing the haves from the have-nots.”

Connolly said that Red Hat’s web-services stack has already gone through a lot of interoperability testing with Microsoft. “I want to see [the Red Hat-Microsoft] relationship continue,” he added.