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Red Hat wasted no time in responding to the news that Novell and Microsoft had reached an agreement that, for a royalty fee, Microsoft would not be suing SUSE Linux customers for any possible Microsoft-patent infringement.
In an exclusive eWEEK interview, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that the distributors of other versions of Linux will not be able to tell their customers that Microsoft wont sue them for patent infringement.
“If a customer says, Look, do we have liability for the use of your patented work? Essentially, If youre using non-SUSE Linux, then Id say the answer is yes,” Ballmer said.
Ballmer went on to say that other Linux vendors “are certainly welcome to get involved to quickly provide these covenants not to sue.”