"Not since SCO has there been a company so reviled by the open source community as Novell following its deal with Microsoft.

Microsoft touted its operating system interoperability partnership with Novell on Monday, saying that more than 500 customers have signed up since the program began more than three years ago.

Just two days before Microsoft and Novell signed a controversial deal in 2006, the two sides still hadn't figured out a way to make peace over Linux without violating the licensing terms that govern the open-source operating system.

RDN's Executive Editor, Features Jeffrey Schwartz talked about the Microsoft-Novell deal with Justin Steinman, Novell's director of product marketing for Linux and open platform solutions, at TecháEd. Steinman was involved in negotiating the terms of the deal and offers his insights on Microsoft's actions, the impact of the agreements on Linux development and more.

On the back of defending the agreement this week, Novell did as promised and published details of its landmark November 2006 Linux partnership agreements with Microsoft.

To many outsiders and to numerous sections of the open-source community, Novell's decision to make a deal with Microsoft in 2006 to avoid litigation around Linux was motivated by desperation.

I've been thinking about something for a few days now. It's about the latest Novell-Microsoft deal that was announced on August 20, where Microsoft agreed to buy another $100 million worth of vouchers from Novell. I was wondering: how come two public companies can make a deal that seems to me to be material and yet keep pieces of the deal secret?

Mary Jo Foley notes some of the highlights of Microsoft's patent/interoperability deal with Novell, following Microsoft's own press release celebrating the deal. She says something, however, that I'm not sure I agree with

In part 4 of a 5 part series on the new version of the most commonly used free/open source license, today we take a look at one of the reasons it took so long to create–the Microsoft/Novell patent deal.