You made a fatal error, you trusted us.

- Segundo Bob Metcalf (3Com), foi o que ele ouviu de um executivo da MS quando a joint-vaca (LAN*) foi para o brejo.

Surrupiei o graffiare da coluna de hoje do Roberto X. Ele tá comentando a "parceria" MS + Novell. Vale a pena ler toda a coluna. Mas vou dar o aperitivo:

There was a time -- right up to a week ago -- when Microsoft appeared to feel, from the statements of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, that they could ridicule Linux out of corporate America or use a campaign of fear uncertainty and doubt (FUD) to undermine the open source operating system. There was nothing good about Linux, they said, and a lot that was bad. They even argued that paying Microsoft for Windows was less expensive than getting Linux for free. Yeah, right.

But Linux happens. And Linux isn't going away. As a server operating system, Linux is far more important than Windows and that trend isn't changing, something that Microsoft has finally acknowledged, not just through this agreement with Novell, but also through the PHP license Redmond also announced this week. But Microsoft is still Microsoft and has its own peculiar way of changing with the times as we see in this very interesting agreement.

What is actually going on here? For one thing, Microsoft seems to be paying Novell a lot of money, some of it for software licenses and some for patent licenses. Microsoft agrees not to sue Suse Linux customers for violating its patents (a sort of non-license license that is purported to gracefully cover the legal gaps between open- and close-source licensing) and the two companies will build an interoperability lab.

Nothing wrong so far. Novell gets money, exclusive access and co-promotion by Microsoft and Suse Linux gets a boost against Red Hat and the other distributions.

Then Ballmer, speaking a few days later with an Indian IT publication, offered to do the same sort of deal with ANY Linux distributor, even Red Hat, much to the surprise of Novell, which thought the term "exclusive" meant, well, exclusive. The ink was barely dry and Microsoft was apparently re-interpreting the terms of the agreement.