Some quick reactions to the Microsoft/Novell deal announcement: Before the webcast announcing the new raprochement ended, the parties were rolling out the backup documents explaining it -- press releases from Novell and Microsoft, FAQs, a letter to the open source community, even a blog from Novell's chief marketer.

The specifics of the announcement were quickly covered by the business press (for a good exegesis, go to C|Net), and my initial reaction is conventional: The deal is clearly an important step in customer satisfaction; one of the FAQs says:

Customers have repeatedly told both Novell and Microsoft that flexibility is an increasingly important part of their data center. . . . Both Novell and Microsoft realize that the data center of the future will have both Linux and Windows as significant platforms. This agreement is all about making those two platforms work together, and providing the enterprise support for that interoperability that customers demand.needs.

The commentary on the webcast made clear that customers do not want to get in any patent crossfire between software firms, and that firms that threatened to put them there might find their order cut. This is called "an incentive." So it is clearly a good step on the road to improved interoperability and reduced transaction costs.

But something deeper is going on. While the details of the deal were a bit opaque, full of talk of virtualization, document formats, and joint research projects -- one questioner at the end asked "would you say in 45 seconds what the heck you guys have been talking about for the past 30 minutes?" -- the level of energy and downright glee from the CEOs, their aides, and even the third-party validators brought in from HP and Goldman Sachs was high. It was out of proportion to the details of the apparent announcement, or to the simple idea that a customer problem was getting solved.

My guess is that the long term implications involve two things. First, Microsoft is on a major campaign to foster interoperabilty, and to encourage developers to write for Windows, viz, its announcements over the summer concerning its 12 Tenets and its more recent patent restraint policy.

But a group that has been outside the scope of these blandishments has been the open source community, largely because the peculiarities of open source licensing models keep open source purveyors from giving rights to proprietary companies, and vice versa. The Microsoft/Novell deal bridges the gap through blanket permissions to use patents. For Microsoft, this opens the way to bringing new groups of developers back into into the Windows system, because they can now work for both Linux (as long as it is SUSE) and Windows at the same time.

Second, something is going on in connection with the future of software-as-a-service, a topic barely touched on in the documents, so it is hard to tell what. Lurking somewhere in here, I would bet, is a joint Windows/Novell SUSE initiative involving S-a-a-S, if I were techie enought to understand it.