In an interview with Reuters, Szulik [Red Hat's CEO] declined to say whether his company is now in negotiations with Microsoft over signing such a patent agreement.
"I can't answer the question," he said.

Red Hat's CEO reveals that he was never involved in negotiating non-technical (anti-competitive) deals.

Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik is not known for avoiding conflicts that threaten his company. So how much longer will it be before he unleashes his legal team to defend against Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s patent accusations in the same way he railed against SCO Group's copyright claims?

"In a fascinating article at Reuters Red Hat’s Matthew Szulik admitted that a year ago he and Microsoft were discussing some sort of patent deal."

I wasn't very nice to Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat's new CEO, when I heard the news that he was replacing Matthew Szulik. My reasoning? Matthew Szulik had done so much for Red Hat and besides, what could a Delta Air Lines COO have to teach about open source?

Apparently Microsoft has a thing for conservative Japan. Just when I thought Microsoft had closed patent cross-licensing deals with every Japanese firm ever to have considered corporate existence, Microsoft surprises me with a deal with Onkyo.

For sometime there, I generally figured that once the next revision of the GPL came about, all of these deals that are being made with Microsoft will eventually be put to bed. I was also delighted to see Mandriva standing against the alleged patent violations that Microsoft brought up time and again.

Few events have created more fodder for the blogosphere, more fuel for Microsoft critics and more emotional responses than the Microsoft patent deals with Novell, Linspire and Xandros. While putting together a list of things people hate about these deals is easy, generating a list of positive aspects is much harder.

Microsoft’s agreements with Linux vendors also happen to dispel “patent risk,” which to my mind is as illusory as ghosts given that the odds of Microsoft ever filing patents suits against Linux are virtually nil (huge risks down that path, given that patents can bite Microsoft as much as Linux…probably more so).