--Paul Maritz, former Microsoft Vice President, referring to Netscape
Paul Maritz
Photo by former Microsoft evangelist Robert Scoble
NOVELL'S market position has been weakening for years and its market cap falling to dangerous levels. News sources say that Novell is about to be acquired and it's primarily one source that all the reports rely on. "Why would Novell announce sale in 6 weeks," gnufreex asked. "You announce deal when it is done... And when it is definitive... They are just trying to pump stock... They have nothing." Agent Smith" wrote: "Novell being sold in parts. What will become of OpenSuse ???" (more details in the IRC logs we'll publish later).
“They are just trying to pump stock... They have nothing.”
--gnufreexgnufreex said that "maybe Novell is pumping it [the stock] to buy time. Their Market Cap was 1.9b yesterday. If it slides more, they can't get same offer as they got from Elliot... Shareholder would sue for refusing Elliot offer... If market cap goes under 1.9B...
"What I meant is that Novell is getting panicky because their market cap is sliding below the level it was when Eliot made them an offer. If it falls bellow that level, then buyers are going to offer less than Elliot offered. And shareholders might sue because they got the worse deal because Hovsepian turned down Elliot offer without letting shareholders vote (there was no vote about Elliot)"
"Agent Smith" wrote: "Received tweets hinting VMware's the mystery buyer of Novell Novell Sold to VMware"
We'll come to this in just a moment.
First of all, here are some more reports about Novell closing its sale (following a split). The following is everything we've found on the Web so far, without exception:
● Novell breakup and sale imminent, says report
Commercial operating system maker Novell is close to selling itself off after breaking it into two bits, according to the is New York Post.
Citing unnamed sources, the Post says a "strategic buyer" will shell out cash to acquire the SUSE Linux business that Novell paid $210m for in November 2003. That Linux business has just finally made it to break-even, according to Novell, and will by our estimates generate maybe $145m in revenues in fiscal 2010. (Novell brought in $108.2m in Linux platform sales in the first nine months of fiscal 2010 ended in July).
Shares of Novell jump 6% on buyout report
[...]
The New York Post, citing unnamed sources, said the struggling business software maker plans to sell the company to a "strategic buyer" and a private equity firm.
Some people might be surprised to hear that that vCD is based on RHEL v5 U4 and not on Novell SUSE. You might know that VMware recently decided to standardize on Novell SUSE for all its virtual appliances, and an OEM deal was struck between the two companies. The operative word here is "recently." Sadly, the deal was struck at such a time that VMware could not use Novell SUSE for vCD. Merely from a standardization perspective, I would like to see that change at the next release of the product, but I think we will have to wait for the vCD 2.0 offering before that transpires.