THERE are many warning signs when it comes to Novell's sale. Too many things smell rather funny. One of those things is the CPTN agreement/arrangement [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]. It is being contested by several parties and Simon Phipps wrote that "Additional Novell filing shows DoJ agrees with OSI & FSF and wants to investigate patent sale to CPTN (p4)" (there are not proper articles about it yet).
What are they? One is, what would Novell's value be if the merger doesn't happen but the patent deal does? The shareholders claim that a Jesse Cohn of Elliott "was in contact with the sponsors of Attachmate about a Novell deal as early as January 2010, and that his communications with Attachmate continued throughout the sales process Novell’s board of directors initiated soon after Elliott’s March 2010 offer." Was he promised that Attachmate would give the Elliott folks a seat on the board or some "other arrangement that would give Elliott a greater role than just minority shareholder of Attachmate"? The shareholders also allege "that Elliott and Attachmate expect to receive significant synergies in the near term." I'd certainly like to know what they know that we don't.
Right. SCO is "restructuring".
--LinuxToday Managing Editor