Replies to post #1450 on Microsoft Corp (MSFT)

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Novell, Microsoft form groundbreaking partnership
Friday November 3, 9:43 am ET

Novell Inc. and Microsoft Corp. have reached an agreement to make their products work together, the companies said late Thursday.
Waltham, Mass.-based Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL - News), which designs open source business software based on the Linux operating system has long been rivals with the Redmond, Washington-based software giant (Nasdaq: MSFT - News) best-known for its popular Windows operating system.

Under the deal, the companies will jointly develop and market software that lets the Windows and Novell's Linux operating systems co-exist on the same machine, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer said at an event in San Francisco Thursday. The two have agreed not to sue each other's customers if their software encroaches on their patents. Microsoft will recommend Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise for customers who want to run computers with both systems and will distribute coupons for maintenance and support.

The two companies will establish a joint research facility to make sure customers can consolidate multiple Linux and Windows systems on a single server machine. The facility will also work to improve interoperability between documents created with Microsoft's Office and its open-source rival OpenOffice.

Published November 3, 2006 by the Boston Business Journal