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Attachmate To Acquire Novell For $2.2B Cash

Posted by kdawson on from the old-order-passeth dept.

wiredmikey and a few others wrote in to let us know that Novell has agreed to be acquired by Attachmate Corporation for $6.10 per share in cash, in a transaction valued at approximately $2.2 billion. The Boston Globe reports that the deal also includes the sale of some intellectual assets to a consortium organized by Microsoft. Attachmate plans to operate Novell and SUSE as separate business units. Here is the press release.

7 of 221 comments (clear)

  1. I'm not hopeful by Omnifarious · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Attachmate's strategy for the economic downturn was to lay off most of their development staff while still collecting maintenance from all their customers. And they only had to follow that strategy because the private equity group that owns them had sucked a ton of money out of the company by saddling it with a gigantic debt.

    I don't feel very good about the prospects for sane, customer focused management from this particular company.

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    Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
  2. Cue The Queen by marcello_dl · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Another one (that made a deal with MS) bites the dust.

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    1. Re:Cue The Queen by mcgrew · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Why is that truthful comment marked flamebait? What's the matter, mod, the truth hurts?

      Stacker, FoxPro, many others. MS's buying of Foxpro especially annoyed me; Foxpro was a good DBMS before MS bought and killed it. It was head and shoulders above Access. MS couldn't compete, so they bought them out and pretty much ruined it.

      Do a little Googling before you mark someone flamebait.

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      Free Martian Whores!
  3. Possibly SCO-related? by dkleinsc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I for one would be wondering whether this move was intended to acquire the Unix copyrights that Novell owns (as determined by the SCO case). The idea here is that SCO was stopped largely because they didn't actually have copyright on what they claimed infringement for.

    Not that there weren't lots of other reasons why the case didn't hold water, but this does look like potentially a way to get the whole thing started up again.

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    I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
  4. Re:Miguel finally gets his job with Microsoft? by mark72005 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    as an employee of one of the remaining groupwise customers I think this falls in the category of "anything would be an improvement"

  5. Re:Mono? by VGPowerlord · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As long as we're making guesses, I'm guessing it will include:
    Mono... maybe.
    eDirectory (formerly NDS) - To end the lawsuit threat Novell has had over MS since Active Directory, MS's NDS clone, debuted in 2000. Oh, and MS will kill eDirectory and encourage users to move to Active Directory... along with Windows Server if they currently use Linux.
    ZenWorks Desktop Management - To my knowledge, this is like nothing MS currently has. Used for centrally managing the software installed on networked computers.

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    GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
  6. The billion dollar question... by Just+Brew+It! · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...is "What IP did Microsoft acquire in this deal?" If they've acquired the UNIX copyrights, we could very well see the zombie corpse of SCO rise from the grave to terrorize the world again.