Microsoft pays Novell $308 million

IT SEEMS that Microsoft is paying a small fortune to make sure that it got its pact with Linux distributor Novell.

According to ZDNet, details of the deal, which seem to have cost Vole $308 million, have slowly emerged and show how much Microsoft is prepared to chuck at the deal. The five-year Microsoft-Novell pact strings together patent, technology and business issues. Under the deal Vole will buy 350,000 coupons for $240 million from Novell entitling customers to support and maintenance for Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server.

Vole will also spend $94 million over the five-year deal on its own sales and marketing work for Suse products. It will also pay Novell $108 million not to sue it for using its Linux technology. Some of that will be offset by Novell paying Vole $40 million not to sue it over Microsoft technology.

While the deal has many in the Open Sauce community a little worried, not least because it implies that Vole might sue other Linux distributors on patent issues, Microsoft seems to want to use the technology to improve its virtualization technology.

This would mean that Microsoft could incorporate Linux into its business packages and blur the line between the two operating systems.

Meanwhile Novell said its agreement with Microsoft doesn't violate the General Public Licence, one of the Open Sauce community's big issues with the Novosoft pact.

A spokesNovell said that it was not prohibiting the royalty-free copying or distribution of code. µ

L'INQ
Zdnet