Lora Bentley spoke with Novell's Justin Steinman, who spoke with us in response to our recent interview with intellectual property attorney Antoinette Tease about the partnership between Novell and Microsoft and how the GNU GPL v3 may affect it.

Bentley: How did the agreement with Microsoft come about?
Steinman: Novell's agreement with Microsoft is all about customers. Novell heard very loud and clear from customers that for the next five years there are going to be two dominant operating systems in their data centers — Linux and Windows. As much as the Novell marketer in me would love to see 100 percent Linux data centers, the realist in me — the pragmatist — says that will never happen. Our customers turned to us and said, "You know what? Accept this reality. I'm tired of you telling us that interoperability is our problem. We want you to solve it for us." So from a strategy perspective from Novell, it's provided an unbelievable opportunity. Do we want to be the Linux that works well with Windows, or the Linux that doesn't? Since we saw that the data center was changing to include Linux and Windows, we decided to make SuSE Linux Enterprise the Linux that works well with Windows.

Bentley: What does the company hope to accomplish with the agreement?
Steinman: The agreement with Microsoft was made strictly around the idea that we would do technical collaboration in four areas: virtualization, heterogeneous systems management, directory and identity interoperability, and office document translators.

SuSE Linux Enterprise is a desktop-to-data center platform. We have a desktop version of our Linux platform, we have a server version and several other products. What we are now offering to our customers is the fact that our Linux stack, from the desktop to the data center, works well with the Windows stack from the desktop to the data center.

Bentley: Many in the broader open source community have accused Novell of "selling out" by collaborating with Microsoft. How do you respond to that?
Steinman: There are a lot of people who do believe that Microsoft is the devil. And that's an opinion that's prevalent in the open source community. However, I think it's an opinion that's prevalent in the minority — and it's a vocal minority. I think the vast majority, and I'd quantify that at about 80 percent to 85 percent, of the open source community actually supports this deal. The reason I think that the community supports the deal is that it supports the adoption of open source in the enterprise.

Let's go back and look at some of the success we've had in the past 90 days with Microsoft. We signed a huge deal with Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart had been messing around with Linux a little bit, on fewer than 50 servers in its environment. Wal-Mart also has a very strong relationship with Microsoft. When Wal-Mart heard that Microsoft had endorsed ... SuSE Linux Enterprise, Wal-Mart decided it was time to stop messing around and get serious with Linux. They added a large number — in the tens of thousands — of SuSE Linux Enterprise servers. These are not Red Hat takeaways; these are not replacing anything. ... These are new Linux. So the vast majority of the community is excited about this because they're seeing new Linux deployments. Net new.

Now if I'm in the minority and I don't like this — if I'm Bruce Perens — then I'm going to be vocal about it. I'm going to be angry and I'm going to make a lot of noise. But if I'm in the large majority, why do I need to stick my nose in someone else's fight? I'd rather just go on doing my job. If I like the Microsoft agreement, there's no real benefit to me, personally, in coming out and saying that. If I did, the vocal minority is going to attack me, too. It's easier just to keep quiet. That's why the community perception has been misconstrued by the media at large.

Bentley: So did Novell expect such a backlash — particularly with regard to the patent provisions?
Steinman: Well, I want to be very clear about what the patent provisions really are in the agreement. This is simply a covenant not to sue. We heard from our customers that they don't know if there are intellectual property concerns in Linux or not, and they don't care. They just want to know that they can deploy Linux without having any headaches. They want to know that they can deploy Windows without having any headaches. Novell strongly maintains that there is no intellectual property violation in Linux. Period.

However, we heard from our customers that they didn't know and they don't want to know. So we simply got a covenant not to sue — which means that if you buy SuSE Linux Enterprise, you can rest assured that Microsoft won't sue, and you can go about your business. That's very popular with our customers.

I also want to note that ... we have an open source advisory board comprised of open source leaders inside the company. When Jeremy Allison was here, he was part of that open source advisory board. We met with the open source advisory board before the deal was signed. We shared it with them and gave them an opportunity to torpedo the deal. And that open source advisory board said, "We think this is a good thing for the adoption of Linux. It's going to get new Linux in the hands of customers."

So am I a little taken aback by some of the news? Yes, but the media loves a good fight, and I think the media has misconstrued some comments and made it seem bigger than it actually is.

Bentley: How, if at all, will the GNU GPL v3 affect the deal?
Steinman: I think it's too early to comment on GPL v3. There are still a lot of drafts, and the last call for comment drafts hasn't gone out yet. So the draft that your IP expert commented on may be different than the draft that I'd be commenting on.

I do want to tell you that Novell is a significant financial contributor to the Free Software Foundation, as are all of the leading Linux distributors around the world. … We're one of a number of large corporate entities that contribute to the FSF. As part of that, we are one of the vendors on Committee B of the GPL v3 development community. ... We have lawyers in the room contributing to the GPL v3 draft process, so we are in active discussions with Eben Moglen and other members of the FSF around what GPL v3 will look like. I want to make it extremely clear that Novell is committed to our Microsoft agreement, and we're committed to helping develop a version of the GPL that enables that agreement to continue.

Editor's Note: As of March 21, Steinman has been made aware of and apologized for a misstatement in the above answer regarding Novell's financial contributions to the Free Software Foundation. See his response here.