Novell Reportedly Taking Bids From Up To 20 Companies

Degrees writes "Although Novell rejected the bid from Elliott Associates earlier this year, reports now indicate Novell has decided to embrace the inevitable. According to the Wall Street Journal (sub. required): 'As many as 20 companies have expressed interest in Novell, according to people familiar with the matter. Most, if not all, of the companies expected to lodge serious bids are private equity firms. ... Novell has four separate businesses, each of which could be attractive to a rival technology company. However, it's unlikely that a tech company would bid for all of Novell, these people said. Private equity firms, however, could break up Novell and either sell off the pieces or run them as standalone businesses.' Are there any companies that don't have an enterprise grade Linux distribution, and ought to? Ditto workstation management, directory services, legacy email, and virtualization suite?"

Comments

Wonder if SCO makes a bid

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean then they would own the UNIX IP and the Linux IP! And since that'd mean Micro$oft paying Micro$oft it'd be a really smooth deal...

Re:I hope this doesn't harm the Linux distro marke

[pjt33]

Sure, but where are SCO going to get the money?

Re:I hope this doesn't harm the Linux distro marke

[Anonymous Coward]

They would be in a very strong position to torpedo Linux adoption for years, if not decades.

Pushing back the year of Linux on the desktop