As regular readers will know, three of my major interests are virtualization, open source, and heterogeneous systems management. So imagine my delight when Microsoft and Novell announced an agreement incorporating all of these areas.

Unlike many others, I am not running around screaming that the sky is falling. Sure, there are ongoing concerns – exacerbated by the sabre-rattling of Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO – about how Microsoft might pursue its intellectual property rights. However, ill-informed bloggers are flooding the Web with fear, uncertainty, and doubt such as:

* Microsoft will now sue everybody except SUSE customers – Unlikely. Microsoft will not benefit from taking on IBM, HP, Sun, and others (including its own major customers) who have a stake in Linux.

* Open source developers will stop writing code because they feel oppressed or stifled – Also unlikely. They did not give up when SCO actually sued; why would they give up just because Microsoft might sue?

* This agreement breaks the GPL – Wrong. Microsoft’s lawyers may be many things, but they are most certainly not so foolish as to overlook the legal requirements of the GPL.

This deal certainly helps Microsoft compete against many rivals, including Altiris, BMC, CA, Google, HP, IBM, LANDesk, Oracle, Red Hat, Sun, VMware, Xen, and more. However, it does so by attacking their competitive advantage, not through any dirty tricks or underhandedness.

Unfortunately, the blind noise of ill-informed bloggers is drowning out the good news – Microsoft is openly, willingly, and commercially cooperating with the open source community, committing to deliver:

* Full support for virtualized Linux on Windows or virtualized Windows on Linux – Multiplatform server virtualization will be the standard operating environment of the future. This agreement ensures Linux and Windows will run cleanly together in a virtual environment.

* Interoperability between OpenOffice, OpenDocument, and Microsoft Office Open XML document formats – Format compatibility has been a major barrier to adoption of OpenOffice.org. Microsoft is promising to eliminate this barrier, which will be a huge benefit to users of all platforms.

* Web services-based management technologies to manage mixed Windows/Linux environments – EMA’s research has proven that sophisticated tools for managing heterogeneous environments make Linux more cost-effective. Open Web-services management capabilities will make management of heterogeneous environments more achievable.

Denise Dubie is senior editor with Network World.