According to Moglen of the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), the patent agreement is of concern because it is discriminatory and poses a threat of dividing the commercial free software community from the non-commercial free software community.

"If the Microsoft corporation, whether it wishes to be part of this ecology in a genuine and sincere sense or not, if it succeeds in getting one distribution to pay royalties for the distribution of free software, other distributions will do so. They will have to. That will then succeed in marching the commercial sector away from the non-commercial sector, and Microsoft then will be able to use its patents to sue to block the development of software in the non-commercial sector without the fear of suing its own customers, which is the force that now constrains them from misbehavior with their patent portfolio."

If there's any doubt that Microsoft is hoping to exploit the deal to divide the Linux community, rather than to make nice with the community and respond to its customers demanding Linux, one need look no farther than comments made yesterday by Steve Ballmer at the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) conference in Seattle. As reported by Linuxworld.com.au, Ballmer says that "Novell pays us some money for the right to tell customers that anybody who uses SUSE Linux is appropriately covered.... We believe every Linux customer basically has an undisclosed balance-sheet liability."