Red Hat & Microsoft partner up!

PJ's Groklaw reported yesterday that 'Red Hat Is Asking for Prior Art', http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090216150306923

Quoting:Red Hat could use our help finding prior art in connection with the patent infringement litigation brought by IP Innovation, LLC, a subsidiary of Acacia against Red Hat and Novell.

Since Acacia may be connected with Microsoft (see http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071011205044141), then how large a sum was passed between Microsoft and Red Hat in relation to both the ongoing prior art litigation and the current virtualization (virustrualization?) deal ???

- Red Hat's PR statement on the strongly "customer-demanded", "interoperability" deal at http://www.redhat.com/promo/svvp/?intcmp=70160000000HiHHAA0 - Matt Asay's CNET piece 'Microsoft, Red Hat to interoperate patent-free' at http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10164907-16.html - Current LXer thread on the MS-RH deal at http://lxer.com/module/forums/t/28530/

When is Roy S. gonna start the "Boycott Redhat" website?

Quoting:....the "Boycott Redhat" website?....

Thinking the same thing myself.

No, I would be surprised if Roy did anything like that - after all, its not like redhat made some sleazy secret deal with microsoft for a separate peace, at the expense of the linux community as a whole.

No, redhat did this the right way IMHO.

This deal (Redhat-Microsoft) is no more transparent to the FLOSS community than the much maligned Novell-Microsoft deal. In fact, it looks to be justified for much the same reason with much the same objectives: "Our customers are DEMANDING interoperability with Microsoft."

DarrenR --

Stop that!!!

Inconvenient truths are supposed to be about the climate, not free software.