Bonum Certa Men Certa

Novell's Last Week - Part V: AttachMSFT Might Sell UNIX

Amiga UNIX



UnixSummary: Novell clarifies that UNIX was not sold to Microsoft, but it is being passed over to AttachMSFT, which has little or no reason to keep it

Linux Australia says that SUSE is safe from Novell's patent sale to Microsoft, but what about all the other distributions and companies? As Groklaw resumes covering more news from SCO vs. Novell [1, 2] one has to wonder if AttachMSFT will even bother with this case. HP shows up in this case now, as well:



HP has now joined the growing group of companies reserving its rights in the SCO bankrupty regarding SCO's Notice of Cure Amounts in connection with SCO's hoped-for sale of its assets. But its reason is different: it can't find all the contracts SCO says it has with HP, and neither can SCO.


This is a case which does not matter so much anymore. Think about it. It matters a lot less because even if Novell wins, Novell is a goner. Is UNIX safer in AttachMSFT's hands?

One blogger asks: "Is Open Source under Siege? Let's Hope Not!"

In the last months, Oracle has stepped away from the open software community, focusing more on short-term monetizing of the open source products they have acquired from Sun Microsystems. There are speculations that Red Hat might have sold out the wider Open Source community in favor of its own customers in a sealed patent infringement settlement, which might have a similar effect as Novell's deal with Microsoft which has let to calls to boycott Novell.

Now, Novell has been acquired by Attachmate, apparently backed by Microsoft, with the side-effect that at least 882 of Novell's patents will be transferred to a Microsoft backed consortium.


As we stated earlier, UNIX is not the main problem here (not in the short term anyway) because as John Dragoon clarified when it became a PR disaster, "Novell [is] to retain UNIX copyrights" (immediate coverage from The H):

Novell has announced that it will be retaining the copyrights to the UNIX operating system. In the wake of the acquisition of Novell by Attachmate, which included a sale of intellectual property to CPTN, a Microsoft led consortium, there were questions raised over whether that intellectual property included the copyrights to the UNIX operating system.


This was also covered in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]. As one site put it very concisely, "Novell has said that the copyright to its Unix operating system will remain with Attachmate Corporation after the merger, and not go to the Microsoft led CPTN Holdings." Well, but who controls AttachMSFT?

Charles Schulz from LibreOffice wrote: "This is a security announcement: #Novell still owns the #Unix copyright. The kept the nukes but sold the bioweapons?"

Novell's PR blog has generally gone quite silent and posted very little [1, 2] compared to its weekly average (the PR staff is probably busy somewhere else). Red Hat's Jan Wildeboer tells Glyn Moody: "IMHO #AttachMSFT will offer SUSE+UNIX as a package soonish to $BUYER." That is a possibility too. James Turner says that patents are still the main problem to worry about:

Life is definitely less clear now that Novell is being consumed by Attachmate. For one thing, part of the deal involves transferring a big chunk of Novell IP to a company fronting for Microsoft. Hopefully, it's just the normal collection of garbage software patents every big company seems to end up with, and not anything that would provide an avenue of attack against Linux.


Groklaw looks deeper as it tries to understand the nature of this deal:

Attachmate acquires Novell, then it combines Longview and Novell and then the combo is called Novell going forward. That's what I read, anyway. So there will still be an Attachmate parent company and a Novell subsidiary, I guess, going forward, and Novell will hold the UNIX copyrights.


Anyway, here is Novell's press release (spin) and some of the remaining coverage, the full extent of which is hundreds if not thousands of links.



In the next two parts we will look at investor lawsuits and proprietary software from Novell.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Three Months
Next week on Tuesday our sister site turns 20.5
Links 06/12/2024: Promotion of Fake and Illegal Patent 'Court' (UPC), South Korean Strikes, and More Bailouts at Taxpayers' Expense
Links for the day
All the Red Flags in New Linux Foundation Report
How telling...
 
Links 06/12/2024: Meal Changes and Internet Nostalgia
Links for the day
Brittany Day (linuxsecurity.com) Reposing Linux Foundation/Microsoft FUD Using LLMs, Probably Controlled by Microsoft
Plagiarised FUD by LLMs
Links 06/12/2024: Alarm Raised in EU Over Meddling and Destabilisation by TikTok, Strong Criticism of 'Open'AI
Links for the day
In France, Android Skyrockets to 52%, Windows Falls to 26%
even in rich countries across Europe Windows is rapidly losing "market share"
When News Sites Become Shopping Catalogues Disguised as 'Reviews' or 'Articles'
Sometimes Fagioli uses HEY HI (AI, LLMs actually) to make 'articles' about HEY HI
[Meme] Hit and Run with SLAPP
Microsoft staff versus Techrights
[Meme] When You Go Against Corporate Front Groups and Shills of Moneyed Interests (EDRi is Microsoft-Compromised Now)
The "golden rule" is, follow the gold
The Register Exposed Many IBM Scandals, Lawsuits, and Secret Layoffs. Now IBM Pays The Register.
Hush money?
IBM Told the Media the Secret Mass Layoffs Would Carry on Till End of November, But They Still Happen This Month
"My team of 9 people had 4 regulars and 5 contractors. All contractors gone."
Gemini Links 06/12/2024: Shrinkflation and Working at Google
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, December 05, 2024
IRC logs for Thursday, December 05, 2024
[Meme] Shooting the Messenger
"you needn't refute the message, just take out the messengers"
Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) Associate Sued Us for Publishing Perfectly Accurate Article About SFC; We Sued Them for Harassment
SFC and its associates aren't nice people
Fantastic Journalism by Brian Fagioli
A lot of today's Web, even "news" sites, is spam
Techrights Does Not Forget
Techrights has many anti-censorship mechanisms
Windows Has Fallen to All-Time Low in India
In India, only about 1 in 8 Web requests comes from Windows
Microsoft Criminals: Law Enforcement is the Real Problem
deflecting the issue and resorting to projection
[Meme] They Dropped the L (Libre and Law)
SFLC, could I borrow 75% of your letters?
Companies That the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) Will Censor the Community for, Using Their Very Large CoC
also exploiting poor (and sexually abused) women from eastern Europe
Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) Has Asked a Blogger to Delete This Page About the SFC, So We Reproduce It in Full Here
Censored article
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has Raised More Than Three Times More Money Than the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), Which Mostly Gets Money From Corporations, Including Microsoft
Do not donate any money to copycat organisations. It's worse than money down the river because your money might get spent attacking and even defaming the originals.
Increasing Productivity With Less Hardware, Little Power, and Fewer CPU Cycles (and Far Less Digital Waste in General)
A lot of people who glance at our PCs (as they visit us) act a bit baffled, as much of what we're using is a bunch of terminals and some text editors
Gemini Protocol Keeps Getting Better (Less and Less Reliance on Centralised Certificate Authorities)
Reliable systems do not depend on third parties, only themselves
Why We Moved to Perl and Dumped PHP Last Year
Elongating the lifetime of the underlying stack
Links 05/12/2024: Explaining the South Korea Chaos and French PM Barnier's Government Already Disintegrating
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/12/2024: Domain Changes, Griping With Haskell
Links for the day
Links 05/12/2024: Mass Layoffs at Microsoft's PR (Bribery of Media) Agency, UnitedHealthcare CEO Shot Dead
Links for the day
GNU/Linux news for the past day
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, December 04, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, December 04, 2024
Links 05/12/2024: Formaldehyde and Cancer, US and China Boycotting One Another
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/12/2024: Hermeticism, Living in the Shell, and More
Links for the day
At the OSI, Microsoft Operative (Funded by Microsoft) Promotes Proprietary Software of Microsoft
The OSI is deeply corrupt. The good news is, it's barely hiding it anymore.
It's FOSS? No, It's SPAM.
Another sellout
Links 04/12/2024: Social Control Media Thoughts, Enrons of 2024, and More
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/12/2024: Soviet Esotericism, Mikrotik is Awesome, and More
Links for the day
Techrights is Officially an Adult
this site's eighteenth anniversary
Technology: rights or responsibilities? - Part IX
By Dr. Andy Farnell
Many Geeks' Achilles Heel: They Don't Take Computer Breaks
Life can get longer if you stay healthy
[Meme] Silicon Valley's "Successful Businessmen"
Debt is not a currency
Visualising About 0.7 Trillion Dollars of Debt in Supposedly "Successful" Tech Companies
If they're doing so well, how come they borrow so much money (which some would struggle to pay back or never manage to pay back)?
Single-Digit Microsoft: Windows Finally Falls Below 10% in Angola
it's only a matter of time before Windows is down to 5%
Coming Up With Topics to Cover and Issues to Comment on
Socialising is a big part of it
In Asia, Microsoft's Bing Became Smaller Than Yandex and It Shrinks Every Month
How long before Microsoft pulls the plug on Bing?
[Meme] Far From What Was Originally Intended
Makes site about RMS; Deletes his own 'site'
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, December 03, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, December 03, 2024
Illuminating Microsoft's Dirty Tactics
Criticising illegal things that Microsoft does can be classified as "Microsoft bashing" or "hatred"
Proof That Drew DeVault Vanished From Mastodon After the RMS Attack Site Was Linked to Him (and People Pointed Out DeVault's Fascination With Animated CP, Drawings of Naked Kids)
We assume he just wanted to vanish from Mastodon
Maybe Bill Gates is Getting Demented Like His Late Father (He Says Things That Are True But He's Not Supposed to Say in Public)
It happened in a podcast with Reid Hoffman
We've Clearly Struck a Nerve
Microsofters and Microsoft proxies have meanwhile lost their temper