Today Microsoft and Red Hat announced a visualization interoperability deal. Red Hat is the most popular open source brand on the server and a leading Linux distro; Microsoft needs no introduction. The two companies will cooperate based on an open set of standards, and stay away from restrictive patents--the detail that is said to have torpedoed Novell with the open-source community

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From Red Hat's website: "In response to strong customer demand, Red Hat and Microsoft have signed reciprocal agreements to enable increased interoperability for the companies' virtualization platforms. Each company will join the other's virtualization validation/certification program and will provide technical support for their mutual server virtualization customers.

Key components of the agreement:

• Red Hat will validate Windows Server 2003 SP2, Windows 2000 Server SP4, and Windows Server 2008 guests on Red Hat Enterprise virtualization technologies.
• Microsoft will validate Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 and 5.3 guests on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V (all editions) and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008.
• Once each company completes testing, customers with valid support agreements will receive cooperative technical support for:
  • running Windows Server operating system virtualized on Red Hat Enterprise virtualization, and
  • running Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtualized on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.
• Future versions of products from both companies are also planned to be validated under these agreements.
• The agreements contain no patent or open source licensing components.
• The agreements contain no financial clauses, other than industry-standard certification/validation testing fees."

Will other companies and development teams be joining this open standards, open APIs deal, or will it remain exclusive to the two giants? Microsoft finally seems to be ready to play nice with open source.