Red Hat deal: when will we know more?

Sam Varghese
Monday, 23 February 2009 19:23

Opinion and Analysis

The agreement that Red Hat and Microsoft signed last week is something like a royal wedding - we all like the idea but we'd like to know a bit more about the demands made by the bride.
Whether Red Hat likes it or not, there are millions who want to know more, if only to assure themselves that the company has not gone in head over heels into a swamp which looks placid on the surface and is a whirlpool below.

It's not that people do not believe the public assurances that Red Hat offered on the day the deal was signed; it's just that nobody has any confidence in the other party.

As is well known, when Microsoft signs a deal on its own terms, the other partner in the deal generally tends to fade away over the next few years. The Red Hat deal is the first time that Microsoft has had to settle for something less than the minimum which it was offering all along.

But still, until the entire agreement is out there, some are not commenting. "As far as I know, the full text of the RedHat/Microsoft interoperability agreement is not publicly available, so I can't properly comment the deal," was the response I got from Andrew Tridgell, who is probably one of the people best qualified to comment, given his extensive experience in negotiating and forcing Microsoft to disclose details of network protocols which are used to work with Windows Server.

Said Tridgell: "I certainly have no objection in principle to interoperability agreements, and I am pleased that Red Hat have gone to the trouble of pointing out that the agreement does not contain any of the patent components that are so problematic with the Novell agreement."

He added: "If you want to research this further then I would suggest asking RedHat if they gave the Software Freedom Law Center a chance to review the agreement before it was made. If they did, then what did the SFLC have to say about the agreement? For myself, I'll be reserving judgement on the agreement until the SFLC have reviewed it. That may take some time, of course."

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