Red Hat Says No To Possible Novell-Like Alliance With Microsoft

said ‘no’ to a possible alliance with Microsoft that would resemble the agreement recently reached between Novell and the software Bloomberg News and e week reported Thursday.

Mark Webbink, deputy general counsel at Red Hat, rejected the idea in an email to Bloomberg and eweek after Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer floated the idea at a software conference. Ballmer said Microsoft was “willing to do the same deal with Red Hat Linux and other Linux distributors” that it had struck with Novell.

Novell and Microsoft formed a partnership to create interoperability between Novell’s SUSE Linux and Microsoft products.