Over two years ago, Microsoft and Novell signed an interoperability deal. Part of this agreement was a patent deal that suggested that Linux infringed on Microsoft's IP. Since then, Microsoft has signed a number more of these deals with various companies, but the Novell one is still the most famous.

Open-source pioneer and Novell Vice President Miguel de Icaza Thursday for the first time publicly slammed his company's cross-patent licensing agreement with Microsoft as he defended himself against lack of patent protection for third parties that distribute his company's Moonlight project, which ports Microsoft's Silverlight technology to Linux.

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.

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

You'll find an MP3 of a conference sponsored by the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council on the Novell-Microsoft deal held in Boston on September 26th here, where representatives from Novell and Microsoft defend the patent deal.

Does the Microsoft-HTC patent agreement mean we can expect to see Microsoft weigh in on the Apple vs. HTC patent infringement matter? Or is the Microsoft-HTC deal just one more example (with more mobile-phone makers possibly to come) of Linux companies attempting to head off potential Microsoft lawsuits involving Linux?

Microsoft and Linux distributor Xandros on June 4 signed a broad set of collaboration and patent agreements that reminded many of the November 2006 Microsoft/Novell partnership. What do analysts and other Linux vendors think this new deal means for Linux?

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.

Microsoft says software that's licensed under GPLv3 isn't covered by the patent protection deal it recently signed with desktop Linux distributor Linspire.