Red Hat deal a kick in the guts for Novell

By Sam Varghese
Tuesday, 17 February 2009 02:13

Opinion and Analysis

The good people over at Novell must be wondering what to do next after Red Hat and Microsoft inked a deal on server virtualisation interoperability yesterday.
What will hit Novell really hard is the fact that Red Hat has not had to bend over as Novell itself did in 2006; there are no patent clauses in this deal at all, no question of money changing hands.

In sharp contrast to the hush-hush nature of the Novell-Microsoft deal, Red Hat has clearly outlined the details of what its agreement with Redmond involves.

This will be a kick in the guts for Novell and ensure that the open source community stays on Red Hat's side; the support of the community has been key to Red Hat's success and the company obviously wants things to stay that way.

There has been speculation from time to time, even before Novell signed on the Redmond register, that Red Hat would come to some kind of an agreement with Microsoft.

What has stood in the way has been Microsoft's insistence that patents be part of the deal and a covenant not to sue over each other's IP be included.

The extent to which this has been insisted upon leads one to speculate that it is Microsoft which is fearful of transgressions when one it comes to patents.

Red Hat, on the other hand, has always insisted that interoperability should be based around open standards and that talk about patents is a hurdle.

Red Hat's commercial success, which has been built up after some initial errors in its business strategy, has enabled the company to wait for a deal on reasonable terms, one that could work to its advantage, not one that makes it a pariah within the community.

The key components of the deal, according to a Red Hat media release, are:

Red Hat will validate Windows Server 2003 SP2, Windows 2000 Server SP4, and Windows Server 2008 guests on Red Hat Enterprise virtualisation technologies.

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