All Windows Vista users from a city in Sweden are completely cut off from the worldwide web by a barrier of Linux servers. Running Microsoft's latest operating system in Lund is a move equivalent to accepting an Internet blackout because of incompatibility issues between Vista and the Linux distribution on the server of the Internet Service Provider. And it looks like Vista users in Lund will continue to experience an Internet eclipse via Linux, as the ISP is blaming Microsoft and Windows Vista for the incompatibility and is unwilling to provide a workaround. Altering the present configuration of the Linux servers would be necessary in order to accommodate Windows Vista, but with the ISP refusing to mitigate the issue it is only up to Microsoft.

The Redmond company has strongly applauded its own debut on a Windows Linux interoperability path started in November 2006 through an alliance with open source distributor Novell. Microsoft was subsequently accused that its deal with Novell was focused mainly on intellectual property assurance and a means to force users running heterogeneous environments to pay Microsoft in order to be safe from potential lawsuits involving patent infringement. Brad Smith, Senior Vice President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary, Legal & Corporate Affairs together with Vice President of Intellectual Property and Licensing Horacio Gutierrez claimed in May that examples of free and open source software from Linux to OpenOffice are infringing on no less than 235 of the Redmond company's patents.

In response to Microsoft's claims and to the deal the company had inked with Novell the Free Software Foundation put together the GNU General Public License version 3 (GPLv3). Essentially GPLv3 ensures that all users of free and open source solutions are safeguarded from Microsoft legal actions, as well as at least one client received discriminatory patent promises from the Redmond company for a particular product under the version 3 of the GNU General Public License. Microsoft reacted stating that it was in no way bound by GPLv3, but the free Software Foundation stated that as long as the company will deal with software under the GNU license it cannot declare itself exempt from its requirements. Still the Lund case, as reported by The Inquirer, is much more simple and an actual matter of the much praised Windows-Linux interoperability, and could be resolved very simply if the local ISP would only cooperate with Microsoft on the issue, a company representative stated.