Although I know that the news is a few weeks old, I can’t resist starting my adventures in the world of Blogs with something as beautiful as this pact that no one trusts. On the other hand, it gives me so much hope, given my desire to unite engineers (people who engineer, not necessarily graduates) under the same roof and that there are no Taliban, no dark side, or the like… (sniff, sniff, what an idealist I have become).

Now, the points of the pact are the following: 

  • Microsoft will recommend Suse Linux Enterprise for customers who want to have Linux and Windows as servers. It will distribute coupons for the maintenance and support of the Novell distribution, which will act in a reciprocal manner.

  • Joint work on virtualization technologies, being able to work with both operating systems installed on the same machine simultaneously.

  • Work on the compatibility of their office systems and therefore between the files of each one (Open XML in Microsoft Office and Open Document in OpenOffice.org).

  • Interoperability between your directory services.

  • Agreement not to cross patent lawsuits. This includes those that Microsoft thinks it can do against groups or free software developers whose code has been included in Suse or not financially compensated.

I leave you some links that will clarify more:

http://es.theinquirer.net/2006/11/03/microsoft_se_alia_con_novell.html http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB116249026689311557-helTbrheLKgbaJ5iO5z40ZFCiOs_20061109.html?mod=blogs http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2006/Nov-04.html