Microsoft and Amazon.com have signed a wide-ranging patent cross-licensing agreement that provides each company with access to the other's patent portfolio. Specific terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but it was made clear that Amazon will be paying Microsoft an undisclosed amount of money as part of the arrangement.

Microsoft is embracing cancer to help ensure Windows survives server-room consolidation. The company has released 20,000 lines of Windows kernel code under version two of the GPL. Microsoft called the license it once hated "the community's preferred license". How things have changed.

"Red Hat's chief technology officer has maintained that an intellectual property agreement with Microsoft is not necessary for the company to enable interoperability between Windows and Red Hat Enterprise Linux."

Microsoft and Brother Industries have entered into a broad patent cross-licensing agreement that enables access to each company's respective patent portfolio, including Brother's embedded Linux printing products. Aimed at boosting R&D efforts, the agreement includes compensation paid to Microsoft by Brother, say the companies.

The NSW Department of Education has put Microsoft on notice after it agreed to extend its software licensing agreement with the company for just one year instead of renegotiating a new three-year contract.

The company signed a deal with Microsoft in 2006 to collaborate over sales and to license patents Microsoft claims to hold over Linux. ZDNet UK caught up with McCarry to discuss the relationship with Microsoft and Novell's strategy for working with the technology company.

It is no secret that Microsoft uses a lot of GNU/Linux in house and we covered some examples of this in the past. Even just a week ago Microsoft acquired yet another company (Forecast) for over 100 million dollars and that company has merely everything based on Free software, including GNU/Linux. It brags about it in its Web site.

Microsoft has long claimed that Linux violates its patents, but has refused to be specific. A recent deal between the software company and a printer maker may offer a clue.

Linux users take note: Microsoft has signed another patent licensing agreement with a Linux using vendor. In this new case, Microsoft has signed a deal with Melco Group the group that owns tech vendor Buffalo Technology.