Microsoft Pays $536M to Novell

_mArk writes "This morning Novell announced that it had settled a potential law suit with Microsoft related to its NetWare product line. Microsoft agreed to pay $536 million to Novell, but this is not the end as there is another litigation against them pertaining to WordPerfect."

Comments

Beware the Microsoft settlements

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Generally, whenever Microsoft settles with anyone it's bad for the free world.

• Microsoft settles with DOJ. Result: Microsoft doesn't get broken up like it deserved, and now wants to "license" standard Internet protocols to you.
• Microsoft settles with AOL. Result: the final nail in Netscape's coffin, and the Mozilla developers all get fired. And of course, the dream of seeing Gecko in AOL client is dashed.
• Microsoft settles with Sun. Result: anti-Linux collusion between Microsoft and Sun.
• Microsoft settles with Novell. Result: We don't know yet, but I'm expecting something ugly. Maybe some bizarre legal cross-licensing to prevent non-commercial software from existing?

Yawn. The river flows.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this means a lot to Novell, but big money moves in this industry (like in so many others) like a river. Microsoft has a viable, long term strategy for survival and success. Novell has a viable, long term strategy for survival -- maybe. Part of the Microsoft strategy is legal payoffs as the cost of doing business. Things change when companies fail to innovate. IBM was too slow to keep up so they went through a bad time. Microsoft innovates not in the realm of technology, but in the realm of selling technology. No one does it better.

Re:Novell is a dead company

[paitre]

Novell is "reinventing" themselves as a Linux company.
Specifically, who do you think owns SuSE these days? It's Novell.

IMO - I think Novell has a couple of very nice products that they simply need to redeploy - a lot of the technology behind netware is actually pretty cool, but they allowed themselves to become marginalized (IOW - they sat on the laurels they built for themselves in the late80's and early '90s and it's almost put them out of business).

Once they finish this turn around, I expect them to regain some competitiveness, but getting back into "their" market is going to take some doing.

Re:Sue sue sue, it's the American way!

[paesano]

Gee, I don't know. Maybe some of the failures of Word Perfect (and every other competitor) had something to do with Microsoft's ability to lock them all out of every large Enterprise by their bundling practices. Innovate? Microsoft? Your kidding, right? Their only innovations have been with slimy business practices. No one can dispute their absolute genious there.

Re:So Novell is going to let the EU case die?

[aristus]

What's more, the 536M is about the size of the EU fine... so it's not really about the cash (what's a billion dollars to them?) it's about not letting *anyone*, any entity or government *anywhere*, tell them what to do.