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Information Technology News Dell joins Microsoft/Novell Linux pact
Information Technology News Dell joins Microsoft/Novell Linux pact | Dell joins Microsoft/Novell Linux pact |
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| by Stephen Withers | |
| Monday, 07 May 2007 | |
      
Dell will also create a new marketing group to promote the migration of existing Linux users to SLES on Dell servers. "Our customers have told us they want interoperability and expect technology vendors to work better together," said Rick Becker, vice president of solutions, Dell Product Group. "Dell is the first major systems provider to align with Microsoft and Novell in this collaboration, and we intend to lead in this space." As for Novell, vice president and general manager of global strategic alliances Susan Heystee said, "Dell's embrace of the Novell-Microsoft agreement reflects a growing market reality: The two platforms of the future are Linux and Windows, and customers want them to work better together." The Novell/Microsoft deal saw Microsoft agree to buy around $US240 million worth of certificates that it can use internally, give away, or resell. Money flowed in both directions - to Microsoft's net advantage - to cover patent rights, with Microsoft agreeing not to sue SUSE customers for patent infringement. More than 40,000 certificates have already been activated. "The Microsoft-Novell agreement was a result of our customers demanding more of our industry in interoperability and IP protection," said Susan Hauser, general manager of strategic partnerships and licensing at Microsoft. The cross-licencing part of the arrangements between Microsoft and Novell came in for criticism from the open source community, and the draft GNU General Public Licence version 3 (GPLv3) licence was rewritten to block arrangements of this kind. Such discriminatory patent agreements are dealt with by GPLv3 extending them to all recipients of the affected program(s), and by terminating GPL permissions for a distributor that obtains a discriminatory patent promise in return for payment to a third party that is also in the software distribution business. Microsoft and Novell also agreed to work on Linux/Windows interoperability. Dell recently announced it would offer Ubuntu Linux as a preinstalled option on selected consumer PCs.{moscomment}
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