Red Hat will only sign an interoperability agreement with Microsoft if it is based entirely on open standards, the company's executive vice president of engineering Paul Cormier told vnunet.com.

"Interoperability done on closed APIs isn't interoperability," Cormier said. "We'll never do interoperability based on closed APIs."

He reconfirmed that Red Hat is actively talking to Microsoft to improve the way that Red Hat's Linux distribution and Windows interoperate.

His comments indicate however that Red Hat isn't interested in an agreement similar to the one that Novell signed with Microsoft last November.

The company instead argued that it wouldn't require such an agreement because open standards should already guarantee interoperability.

"That challenge can be met by the work that we are doing with open standards, " said Timothy Yeaton, Red Hat's senior vice president of worldwide marketing. "It shouldn't require an agreement."