On Thu, 09 Nov 2006 09:02:31 +1300
Steve Holdoway <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Here's the agreement. It's difficult for me to see how this is going to be
covered by GPL, or how it exempts itself from it.
Item 1.01 Entry into a Material Definitive Agreement.
On November 2, 2006, Novell, Inc. (“Novell”) and Microsoft Corporation
(“Microsoft”) announced that they had entered into a Business Collaboration
Agreement, a Technical Collaboration Agreement, and a Patent Cooperation
Agreement. This set of broad business and technical collaboration agreements is
designed to build, market and support a series of new solutions to make Novell
and Microsoft products work better together for customers.
Under the Business Collaboration Agreement, which expires January 1, 2012,
Novell and Microsoft will market a combined offering. The combined offering
will consist of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (“SLES”) and a subscription for
SLES support along with Microsoft Windows Server, Microsoft Virtual Server and
Microsoft Viridian that will be offered to customers desiring to deploy Linux
and Windows in a virtualized setting. Microsoft will make an upfront payment to
Novell of $240 million for SLES subscription “certificates,” which Microsoft
may use, resell or otherwise distribute over the term of the agreement,
allowing the certificate holder to redeem single or multi-year subscriptions
for SLES support from Novell (entitling the certificate holder to upgrades,
updates and technical support). Microsoft will spend $12 million annually for
marketing Linux and Windows virtualization scenarios and will also spend $34
million over the term of the agreement for a Microsoft sales force d
The Technical Collaboration Agreement, which also runs until January 1, 2012,
focuses on three areas:
* Novell and Microsoft will develop technologies to optimize SLES and
Windows running as guests on each other's operating systems.
* Novell and Microsoft will work together and with independent software
vendors to develop management tools for managing heterogeneous virtualization
environments, which will enable each party's management tools to command,
control and configure the other party's operating system in a virtual machine
environment.
* Novell and Microsoft will work together on ways to make translators
available to improve interoperability between Office Open XML and OpenOffice
formats.
Under the Patent Cooperation Agreement, Microsoft commits to a covenant not to
assert its patents against Novell's end-user customers for their use of Novell
products and services for which Novell receives revenue directly or indirectly
from such customers, with certain exceptions, while Novell commits to a
covenant not to assert its patents against Microsoft's end-user customers for
their use of Microsoft products and services for which Microsoft receives
revenue directly or indirectly from such customers, with certain exceptions.
Both Microsoft and Novell have payment obligations under the Patent Cooperation
Agreement. Microsoft will make an up-front net payment to Novell of $108
million, and Novell will make ongoing payments of at least $40 million over
five years to Microsoft based on percentages of Novell's Open Platform
Solutions and Open Enterprise Server revenues.
