The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, is reporting on its Web site that Microsoft's announcement this afternoon will be "an unusual partnership with Novell Inc. that gives a boost to the Linux operating system."

Update: It's official. Here's the news release, and our initial story on the news.

Update: Here's a summary of some key points in the agreement:

• The companies will collaborate on marketing efforts, and Microsoft's sales force will offer customers coupons entitling them to one-year subscriptions for maintenance and updates on Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server. It will have 70,000 of the coupons to distribute each year.

• Microsoft agreed not to pursue patent-infringement claims for any technologies that it believes to have been incorporated illegally into Suse Enterprise Linux Server and other Novell products. In addition, the company said it wouldn't pursue patent claims against individual contributors to open source projects.

• Novell also agreed not to pursue patent claims over Microsoft products. The companies said they would make initial payments to each other, of unspecified amounts, in exchange for releasing each other from patent liability.

• The companies will offer virtualization technology to let business customers run copies of Windows on a Linux-based computer servers, and vice versa.

• Microsoft and Novell said they will make a variety of their programs work more smoothly together, including Windows and Suse Linux, and Microsoft Active Directory and Novell's eDirectory. In addition, they will work on interoperability between Microsoft Office and the alternative OpenOffice.org.