Redmond-based Microsoft and Utah’s Novell are entering a new partnership based around Novell’s SuSE Linux.

As part of the deal, all future litigation against Novell will be halted, including patent infringement disputes. Microsoft will begin offering sales support and technical support for Novell SuSE Linux, an open source operating system available in several versions, including OpenSuSE (community developed) and SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (Novell developed, includes proprietary applications).

The deal is not final, and may be changed at any time. This appears, however, to dent the plans that business software giant Oracle has had to begin support for Novell competitor Red Hat. Both Oracle and Red Hat stock was down at the time of this writing.

A press conference is slated for 5:00pm EST (now) and more details may be announced. As always, GizBuzz will keep you updated.

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The press conference has begun. Updates follow:

Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft:

• Microsoft & Novell are working to collaborate and bridge the gap on the differences with Open Source and the Closed Source models.
• Working on “raising the bar” with interoperability, in areas like moving documents cross-platform, virtualization, distributed systems management, etc.
• Microsoft is putting their marketing behind SuSE - Ballmer says that Microsoft wants Linux users to choose Novell!
• Both companies will continue to compete! “I’m gonna say ‘Windows, Windows, Windows!’”

Ron Hovsepian, CEO of Novell:

• Came down to the customer and what we needed to do for the customer. The drive of the new relationship.
• “This allows our customers to focus on accelerating growth…”
• Very impressed with Microsoft’s integrity and deep commitment in creating this relationship for the customers.
• Aligning sales teams, engineers, marketing, etc. so that the issue is heard.
• Microsoft is distributing approx. 70,000 units of SuSE Linux Enterprise Server, as always - for the customer

Dr. Jeff Jaffe:

• Discussing tech collaboration and (most important) how this will strengthen Open Source
• Interoperability between Windows and Linux - key (”Today takes it to a new level”)
• Microsoft will not assert patent infringement claims against individual Open Source developers
• Collaborating on FOSS related projects like management, documents, etc. Looking forward to collaborating with Microsoft’s engineers.
• Working on a joint solution for virtualization - “Para-Virtualization”, the heart of their marketing and sales
• Web services management, customer focused, and better eDdirectory and Active Directory interoperability
• Developing software to convert OASIS and MS Office documents
• Mixed source

Brad Smith, Microsoft Lawyer:

• Complex patent issues, had to address proprietary issues, and how to bridge proprietary and OSS issues
• Tried to maintain creative ways to building an Intellectual Property “bridge”, did so successfully; Fixing the Intellectual Property rights so Novell customer’s don’t have to
• There were times where they wondered “how?!” Had to maintain the ‘patent portfolios’ of both companies
• Needed to respect both business models in a way that was compatible with all other license agreements
• Any subscriptions for SLED will get a Microsoft Patent Covenant
• Patents are continually referenced! Novell is “Only company to provide a Covenant for patents from Microsoft”
• Economic commitment, with royalties to Novell on Open Source software
• “We’re not getting into the Linux code distribution business.”
• Won’t assert patents against individual, non-commercial Open Source developers

A general comment - the WordPerfect patent infringement dispute is still ongoing. As one person said, they were able to get “99″ of the patent issues covered but not this one. Undoubtedly though, this is an issue that will be a bit easier to work through thanks to this new partnership. WordPerfect is no longer Novell owned, but they still use portions of the codebase for Novell Groupwise.