THIS post is more of a history lesson, as opposed to actual commentary about any specific news. Novell's legacy of payoffs from Microsoft is not so distant because only 2 years before the patent deal involving GNU/Linux got signed, there was this.

U.S. software giants Microsoft and Novell settled one of two lawsuits Monday, but Novell said it would file another lawsuit against Microsoft this week.

Here is another report about it. Microsoft paid Novell to settle after a "$3 billion-plus campaign."

Microsoft (MSFT ) has taken another huge step in what has become a $3 billion-plus campaign to rid itself of the legal fallout of its 2002 settlement of an antitrust case brought by the U.S. government. Gates & Co. agreed on Nov. 11 to pay Novell (NOVL ) $536 million to resolve claims regarding Novell's NetWare networking software.

Also from the same year, here is an article where Novell and Microsoft show their similarities, both expressing affinity for a mixed-source corporate identity [1, 2, 3, 4].

Microsoft, Novell share common belief

Although Waltham, Mass.-based Novell anticipates a mixed-software universe, not everything lends itself to open source, so there will be an evolution of products that run in mixed environments, Patrick said. "This may ultimately shift," he said.

The more things change, the more they stay the same [1, 2]. These two companies reject software freedom, choosing a hybrid- and lock-in-based approach instead.⬆