There's no evidence that it happened either way. But, I will remind you that according to the article you referenced in the first post in this thread, Novell approached Microsoft...not the other way around.

>That goes completely against FOSS philosophy. Novell may have signed an NDA, but I doubt it because even if they had, and MS detailed their allegations to Novell, someone at Novell probably would have anonymously leaked them in the format I laid out below, which hasn't happened yet. This actually reinforces my thinking that MS never detailed their allegations to Novell, regardless of what else was discussed or signed.
>
>And even if Novell did sign an NDA and it's somehow not been leaked, that's no guarantee that other likely targets of MS such as Red Hat and IBM would sign. Not to mention the core Linux committers.