Two years ago this month, Microsoft forged its controversial partnership with Novell that, among other things, had the two companies agreeing not to sue each other over intellectual property issues, in part to protect Suse Linux users over any patent litigation from Microsoft.

ust how well has that deal worked out? That depends on whom you talk to.

Microsoft and Novell paint nothing but a rosy picture of the arrangement. "[Customers] like the idea that Microsoft and Novell are in the same room," says Susan Hauser, Microsoft's general manager for strategic partnerships.

But a fervent opponent of the deal, responsible for the Boycott Novell Web site, sees things differently: "Novell compromised interests of the free software community for hundreds of millions of dollars that it received from Microsoft. Novell and Microsoft put their interests ahead of the free software community that makes the software everyone else uses," says Roy Schestowitz, a freelance writer and co-editor of the Boycott Novell site. The arrangement, he adds, "legitimized Microsoft's doubtful and undisclosed patent claims." Schestowitz says the Microsoft-Novell deal may have led to a chain of at least seven more patent deals covering Linux and accompanying parts, which he believes also harm Linux's self-interests.

Today, Microsoft and Novell executives talk as if there never was a controversy.

But there was