Yeah, sure, cause MSFT does all of their development in the F/OSS community and gives away their technology for free just like RHT does with the Fedora Project. And MSFT has open sourced (or kept open source) all of their acquisitions like RHT did with Sistina (GFS and Cluster Suite), JBoss, Qumranet, Netscape Directory Server, Netscape Security System and others. Oh, and MSFT has paid for legal counsel to testify *against* patents in front of the EU and the US. Yeah, I can see how Red Hat is *just* like Microsoft.

How does this qualify as "neutralizing?" RHT gave up nothing. F/OSS doesn't suffer at all. This is no different from making RHEL work with any other third party closed source technology like Oracle or SAP. RHT and MSFT have simply recognized that there is a need for this interoperability, but RHT basically forced MSFT's hand and MSFT backed down. This is, if anything, a huge victory for F/OSS.

Had RHT entered into the BS agreement that NOVL did, I would agree. In this case RHT stuck to their guns and MSFT blinked.

Read TFA. This agreement contains *none* of the bullshit IP limitations Novell agreed to when they sold out. In this case Red Hat and MSFT are only cooperating from a *technical* standpoint. RHT are not agreeing in any way that Linux owes MSFT any IP rights. This is amazing news and sticks a finger in the eye of Novell's sellout.

Yet another proof point that MSFT and Novell are full of it about the patent agreements. Interesting that a giant like MSFT is admitting how important Red Hat is to their customer base.