Inside the Microsoft-Novell deal

• Tags:
• Novell Deal,
• Microsoft Novell,
• Goulde Explains,
• Goulde

Cath Everett ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 30 Apr 2007 13:43 BST

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

...Novell could act as a useful bridge to the open-source community, which it has been quietly collaborating with for some time anyway. It has, for example, worked with JBoss (middleware), Xen (virtualisation) and SugarCRM (enterprise applications) to enable them to run on Windows.

The goal here is to ensure that, even if customers don't purchase the vendor's closed-source equivalents, at least they may choose to run its operating system cash cow and other related tools.

Ovum's Lachal explains: "The company is slowly but surely coming to terms with open source and has been going through the five steps to grieving, which starts with anger and denial and eventually leads to acceptance. And this was an opportunity to get more involved because, while Linux is more a Unix than a Windows killer, open source more generally is growing to be a threat."

This is why Microsoft pushed for the third part of its deal with Novell. The two have signed up to a cross-licensing covenant and negotiated a patent indemnity arrangement, which involves agreeing not to sue each other's mutual customers for any breaches of intellectual property (IP) in perpetuity.

To this end, the software giant paid Novell $108m upfront to use its IP while, like Sun, Novell will pay various royalties, which are expected to amount to about $40m, over five years.

Although Microsoft has refused to specify which IP is involved here, Novell attests that it still holds the rights to all copyright and patents for Unix. This is despite having sold the operating system to the SCO Group over a decade ago, although SCO is still disputing Novell's claim in the courts. Microsoft, meanwhile, still has a Unix operating system called Minix and has, in the past, claimed that it contributed IP to the development of Unix SVR4.

This tangled web means that it is unclear how much cross-fertilisation of IP has taken place, potentially across multiple platforms, and not least in relation to Linux. This is because, despite vigorous denials from the open source community, Linux has at various stages been described as a Unix clone and as being unclean code.

The scenario has infuriated the open-source and free-software communities on several counts. On the one hand, the software giant's aim, of replicating its patent deal with Novell among other open-source vendors in order to have them pay for using what it claims is its IP, is against everything these communities stand for.

Ovum's Lachal explains: "The open-source people see this as a Trojan Horse and have rejected the whole thing. Microsoft felt, rightly or wrongly, that other companies are infringing its IP and wanted to get money out of them without having to sue them. It just wanted to create momentum behind this, with Novell being its first, but it misunderstood the reaction of the open-source community, which is intent on not paying it anything."

As a result, it would appear that Microsoft has managed to score an own goal in its bid to improve relations and thus interoperability efforts with the open-source community by using Novell as its mediator.

Fear, uncertainty and doubt
On the other hand, Microsoft has succeeded in furthering its campaign of spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt in order to frighten customers away from using open source in general, and Linux in particular, by intimating that they may be infringing its patents.

Refusing to clarify which patents might be involved only serves to muddy the waters still further, however, and means that the open-source community is unable to take action to resolve any infringements if, indeed, Microsoft's claims are true.

This already-tense situation was made considerably worse by Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, a couple of weeks after the Novell deal was signed. He said: "Novell pays us some money for the right to tell customers that anybody who uses Suse Linux is appropriately covered. It's important to us because we believe every Linux customer basically has an undisclosed balance-sheet liability."

This confirmed the open-source community's worst fears of dirty tricks being afoot and led Eben Moglen, general counsel of the Free Software Foundation, which controls the GNU Public License (GPL) under which Linux is distributed, to say that the Novell deal signalled the start of "significant patent aggression by Microsoft".

Yet another thorn in the side of the open-source and free-software communities, however, is that, while the cross-licensing and patent indemnity covenant...

• 
• 
• 
• 

• Share this article:
• Digg
• Slashdot
• Del.ici.ous
• Stumble
• Reddit

• Most Recent
• Most Popular