Dragoon claims after the first 90 days of the agreement, some 35,000 SUSE Linux support certificates have been sold to enterprises.

"Some sections of open source community looked at this deal very negatively and some think we have violated that trust [but] the tone is becoming more balanced," he said, adding 94 percent of Novell employees now use Linux on their desktop, including himself and Hovsepian.

When asked about Microsoft's five-year release cycle from Windows XP to Vista, Hovsepian was coy as to whether that was too long, instead saying Novell will work towards an 18-month to two-year release cycle.