It's hardly just a rumour or a mere speculation anymore. Rumours about Novell being split and sold [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] are now developing into concrete evidence. One article jointly written by Microsoft's booster Ben Worthen for Mudoch's press says that "VMware is pursuing Novell's SUSE Linux operating system business, these people said. Attachmate Corp., a private-equity backed software company, could end up buying some or all of the remaining assets, including NetWare, Novell's network operating system. Attachmate, which is owned by buyout investors including Golden Gate Capital and Francisco Partners, sells software to companies running older IT applications.
“VMware is hardly a desktop-oriented company, so OpenSUSE should seriously start thinking about a fork.”"Novell is most likely to sell its Linux business to VMware, although the two sides still differ on valuation, the people familiar with the matter said. Analysts say the Linux business, which has tools for managing virtualized operating systems, will strengthen VMware's presence in cloud computing, a catch-all term for software and services accessed over the Web The company may decide not to sell its remaining assets to Attachmate if it decides that the price being offered is too low, the people said."
We have already explained why this is bad news. We have this page about VMware's recent history (victim of Microsoft "Slog", then entryism, just like Yahoo! in some ways). VMware is hardly a desktop-oriented company, so OpenSUSE should seriously start thinking about a fork. ⬆
Comments
Yuhong Bao
2010-09-17 00:45:16
twitter
2010-09-17 03:30:04
dyfet
2010-09-17 06:40:03
Mikko
2010-09-17 13:47:09