In Sydney for the company's leadership forum, CEO Ron Hovsepian and chief marketing officer John Dragoon both stood by Novell's decision to partner with Microsoft and said a lot of the initial reaction was misinformed.

"We did not sign a patent cross licensing agreement, what we agreed to was not to sue any customers over patents," Hovsepian said, adding there has been confusion and rhetoric over the intellectual property aspect of the contract.

The deal protects customers, but either company could still sue each other tomorrow, he said.

Many in the open source industry questioned why Novell would even think about entering into such an agreement, but Hovsepian remains adamant it is all about customers.

"Our strategy is to drive Linux in corporate environments, so the agreement was driven by customer conversations and because most customers were developing on Windows or J2EE and most shops would have both platforms," he said. "It was not a deal we had to make, but we needed to do something to get more market momentum and this seems to resonate more with customers."