Microsoft and Red Hat are no closer to a deal involving intellectual property cooperation, Microsoft has confirmed. "Red Hat and Microsoft have previously had conversations about interoperability, but none of our recent conversations have included discussions about intellectual property cooperation," Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft"s vice president of intellectual property and licensing, told eWEEK.
This effectively puts to rest—for now—the speculation that the rival operating system vendors might actually be talking about a deal that includes some kind of intellectual property provision and/or patent covenant. Enterprise customers, however, have a great deal of interest in seeing the two companies work together because of their investments in both sets of technologies. Bob Muglia, Microsoft"s senior vice president for server and tools, admitted that interoperability and support for major Linux distributions have come up repeatedly at the company"s Interoperability Executive Customer Council.