Microsoft has issued a statement about its position in regard to the Free Software Foundation's version 3 of the GNU General Public License, which was crafted in part to protect users from possible Microsoft patent infringement lawsuits. Microsoft's stance?

"Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian says it is in his interest to give customers GPLv3 code when they are seeking updates, even if the customer was paying for Novell support through Microsoft certificates."

"The Free Software Foundation today released the final version of the new GNU General Public License, GPLv3. Novell welcomes and supports GPLv3 and we appreciate the collaborative process that led to its conclusion."

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.

I've been trying to make sense out of the new Version 3 of the General Public License and I've got to tell you, I can't yet.

"For all that a great deal of attention was given to the arrival of the GPLv3 (Gnu General Public License, version 3), few software developers announced plans to move their programs to this new license. Now, open-source programmers are beginning to give the new license a try."

"Novell will continue to ship the complete version of its Linux enterprise server even though Microsoft is attempting to distance itself legally from the new General Public License (GPL) v3 open source license."

"Microsoft made a few mistakes in the Novell-Microsoft deal, and GPLv3 is designed to turn them against Microsoft, extending that limited patent protection to the whole community," explains GPLv3 co-author Richard M. Stallman.

Novell will distribute portions of its SUSE Linux enterprise suite that fall under the GPLv3 license directly to customers who purchased certificates that would have entitled them to receive the software from Microsoft.