This could be interesting. Red Hat has already refused to do a deal with MS which would involve a patent deal racket, but apparently remains interested in the part which is being advertised by others who recently made deals with MS as a reason why such deals would be beneficial, the interoperability works.

And of course, Microsoft's officials say that the two cannot be separated. Well, of course, it is not in their interest to separate this. It should already be common knowledge that Microsoft isn't interested in interoperability here, no matter how much they are waving that card around (not as if they aren't waving their pretty much virtual patent cards either).

So.. Red Hat here has a chance to do either of the two things, and in both cases it wins and since it here does seem to represent the interests of the community as well, we win. If it somehow gets MS to sign a deal without patent issues involved, this will immediately pose a question to others who signed the previous deals, why the hell did they have to sign patent deals with MS and endure all the community rage if Red Hat could do it without that (unless of course, they really wanted those patent promises). On the other hand it could give MS some leverage as they could point to the deal with RH as a proof that they really do care about interoperability.

The thing is, either way, the deal like this would be more on RH's terms and would show even more who really has the power of the future (GNU/Linux) more than any other of the previous deals for which it was pretty much MS setting up the terms.

But, I'm not holding my breath for that option. A more likely one could be that the whole thing will crash, showing what we've been knowing all along. These deals aren't about playing well and about MS caring about interoperability. They're about FUD, and all else is just something to wave around with.