The statement, by CEO Francois Bancilhon, has the international company joining with Linux providers Red Hat and Canonical, which have refused to sign cross-licensing deals with Microsoft.

Formerly called Mandrakesoft, Mandriva publishes the Mandriva GNU/Linux operating system for enterprise , government, and educational customers. The company has offices in the U.S., France, and Brazil. Its products are available through its online store as well as through dedicated channels in more than 140 countries.

Innocent 'Unless Proven Guilty'

On the company's blog, Bancilhon wrote on Tuesday that there has been "absolutely no hard evidence" that Linux and other open-source applications are in breach of any patents. In any democracy, he wrote, "people are innocent unless proven guilty and we can continue working in good faith. So we don't believe it is necessary for us to get protection from Microsoft to do our job or to pay protection money to anyone."

He added that interoperability between Microsoft and Linux is a "good thing," and that the best way to accomplish that is with open standards.

Mandriva's position is similar to the one taken this week by Canonical, the company responsible for a popular GNU/Linux distribution called Ubuntu. Canonical's CEO, Mark Shuttleworth, wrote in his personal blog that "the deals announced so far strike me as 'trinkets in exchange for air kisses.'"

"A promise by Microsoft not to sue for infringement of unspecified patents has no value at all and is not worth paying for," he added. "It does not protect users from the real risk of a patent suit."

Fallout from Novell Deal

One by one, Microsoft has been steadily stacking up cross-licensing agreements with several Linux-related companies. The deals have included a provision that protects the signatory's customers from liability due to Microsoft patent infringements. Microsoft has said that Linux and other open-source software infringe on some 235 of its patents, a declaration that is adamantly opposed by members of the open-source community.

In recent months, the Redmond, Washington-based company has announced cross-licensing deals with LG Electronics, Xandros, Samsung, Linspire, and others.

The most notable such deal, and probably most controversial so far, was the arrangement in November of last year between Microsoft and Novell. In a subsequent and widely cited "Open Letter to the Community," Novell said the deal included a promise that each of the parties would not sue the other's customers for patent infringement.

But Novell also said that it disagreed with Microsoft's claim to patents affecting Linux. "Importantly," Novell said in the Open Letter, "our agreement with Microsoft is in no way an acknowledgement that Linux infringes upon any Microsoft intellectual property. When we entered the patent cooperation agreement with Microsoft, Novell did not agree or admit that Linux or any other Novell offering violates Microsoft patents."