Submitted by: kirkland on Friday November 17th, 2006 at 06:42 PM EST

Microsoft Corp., which has agreed with Novell Inc. to make Linux and Windows compatible, opened the door Thursday to a similar alliance with Red Hat Inc.

"We are willing to do the same deal with Red Hat Linux and other Linux distributors," Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said at an SQL database software conference in Seattle.

Microsoft and Novell agreed two weeks ago to enable their software to co-exist on a single server computer in response to demands from customers who are increasingly using both. The agreement, which dulled a longstanding rivalry between Microsoft and Linux, also came as Oracle Corp. boosted its Linux efforts, threatening both Microsoft and Novell.

» Full story @ Seattle PI