I would not anticipate that we make a huge additional revenue stream from our Novell deal, but I do think it clearly establishes that open source is not free, he said, and open source will have to respect intellectual property rights of others just as any other competitor will.
The two companies struck a deal last November that sees Microsoft sell Novell’s SUSE brand of Linux. The agreement also calls on both companies to agree not to sue each other’s customers for patent infringement.
While Novell said then and now that the deal does not constitute an admission that Linux contains Microsoft IP, Microsoft has the opposing view. It took less than three weeks last November before the companies started arguing over the subject.
