Even though patent talks between Microsoft and Red Hat broke down last year before Microsoft went on to sign a technical collaboration and patent indemnity deal with Novell, Red Hat is still willing to work with the Redmond software maker on the interoperability front.

Over two years ago, Microsoft and Novell signed an interoperability deal. Part of this agreement was a patent deal that suggested that Linux infringed on Microsoft's IP. Since then, Microsoft has signed a number more of these deals with various companies, but the Novell one is still the most famous.

Even though it's a corporation, Red hat has continually placed being a good member of the open source community over being one of the corporate community. Their dedication to open source is outstanding, and yet they receive very little thanks. As a stronghold and *the* prime of example of corporate GNU/Linux, they are an important domino. We have

Microsoft and Amazon announced on Monday that the two have entered into a patent cross-licensing deal. As part of the pact, Amazon will pay Microsoft an undisclosed amount of money, though the two sides did not disclose more details

"They took the money that Microsoft offered. That's really all the news there is here - that Microsoft found another foundering commercial Linux distribution willing to sign up to the patent covenant and give it publicity. The technical aspects are irrelevant, as they indeed are in the Novell deal."

In part 4 of a 5 part series on the new version of the most commonly used free/open source license, today we take a look at one of the reasons it took so long to create–the Microsoft/Novell patent deal.

Microsoft says software that's licensed under GPLv3 isn't covered by the patent protection deal it recently signed with desktop Linux distributor Linspire.

A deeper look at Melco's deal with Microsoft... IN some ways, the Melco sellout resembles the Brother Industries sellout. Microsoft blogger Mary Jo Foley wrote about this deal almost gleefully and also suggested that OEMs might be next to sign (i.e. sell out to Microsoft). Does she know anything that others do not? The short story as she tells it goes like this...

"There are exactly nine days left for Microsoft to get other Linux companies to sign up for patent cross-licensing deals. The GPLv3 is set to be published on June 29 and once that is done, any new deal will be subject to the terms which it includes."