Mailing the story:

When Microsoft announced the first of its patent interoperability agreements with Novell in November 2006, one of the major claims made in favor of the patent covenant agreement was that it would give customers peace of mind and ensure that they didn’t have to worry about issues such as intellectual property infringement. Eight months, several further patent deals, and a new version of the GNU General Public License later, and the promise of simplification for customers is a hollow one. In fact, Microsoft’s patent covenants have arguably made things more complicated for Novell, Linspire, and Xandros Linux users.