[xiaomai]

I vaguely remember the Microsoft/SuSe deal but never linked that to GNOME3. I really love gnome-shell, but one thing I always have to tweak is putting the minimize/maximize buttons back in the toolbar (couldn't ever figure out why they would get rid of those... now i know?).

[kmeisthax]

I assumed that it either had something to do with filesystem patents[0] or the vague patent claims they made on early Android vendors. UI design didn't even cross my mind - I didn't even know those were patentable, and Apple's foray into "look and feel" lawsuits was something Microsoft adamantly fought against. Hell, if I've heard correctly[1], Microsoft was the reason why those early UI design flourishes like faux-3D highlights made their way into CDE and Motif.

Given that Miguel de Icaza already is calling BS on this I'm starting to doubt the veracity of any of this.

[0] Microsoft still claims ownership over ExFAT, for example

[1] It was vaguely mentioned somewhere in NCommander's very, very long "Installing every version of IBM OS/2" stream

[toyg]

The SuSe agreement was really about networking and filesystems. At the time, SuSe had been bought by Novell - a networking company. They saw Linux as the future of their business, but the risks around Windows interop as a real threat to that business. They did not have an adversarial relationship with MS (actually the opposite), so they moved to mitigate those risks with a friendly agreement. Other companies did not share those interests. This post is bad revisionism.

(As an aside, what MS did or did not do in the '90s really has no bearing on what they did in the '00s or later. 90s MS was a hustling startup, '00s MS was a corporate behemoth. Like Apple pre- and post-iPhone, they changed behavior and (declared) values once they became the top dog.)