There is an interesting article at Groklaw regarding an agreement between Microsoft and Novell with regards to Microsoft's Silverlight platform (Moonlight for Linux people). Seems that the author has read the contract and despite their ability to decipher legalese have found that the agreement is rife with ambiguities.

“So I read the covenant, and I found, despite my training and experience, that I couldn't fully understand it. That was a warning sign to me, because you don't need to be a rocket scientist to read legalese. Once you know the language, you know it. And I know it. Why couldn't I understand this covenant, then? Is there an attempt to camouflage the intent? If I can't understand it, how can you, I wondered? How could programmers know what they can and can't do? End users? Is it safe to contribute code? To include in distros? To use, even? I couldn't tell, although it seemed not safe, from what bits I did understand, most particularly because the wording seemed to me so unclear. Lack of clarity in legalese is what leads to litigation, in my experience, and I know Microsoft knows how to write clear legal documents should it wish to.”

 My Take

Anybody who has ever done any web development immediately recognizes that the hardest part of it is not getting everything to work/look right... it's getting everything to work/look right in Internet Explorer. Considering that Microsoft has been coming up short on supporting known and agreed upon internet standards for years I find it amusing they want to extend their foray into new web technologies. Until it's free, open, cross-platform and standardized like the rest of the many internet technologies I'll pass.

Furthermore, Novell's continued flirtation with Microsoft really puts a damper on their open source initiatives like OpenSuse. It's very hard to push your open source platform and also be dealing with a company that is very opposed to open source software. Very strange.

To sum up: there seems to be a lot of confusion regarding the agreements between Novell and Microsoft and in the end these ambiguities could be harmful to open source software if embraced by the community. As with all things, tread with caution.

Update: Might have helped if I put the link to the original article...
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080528133529454