It's been hitting the wires that Novell's board have accepted an offer of $6.10 per share, or $2.2B, by the privately held enterprise software vendor Attachmate.

As Novell has more than $1billion in cash and an "MS-led" consortium is picking the still-living body for Novell's patents and IP, including the Unix copyrights, for $450M, you can see that Novell's legacy networking, enterprise, security and Linux operations are being sold for a very small premium indeed.

The #2 Linux vendor has also number of valuable enterprise partnerships, including with the likes of IBM.

Nokia has recently bet the company on open-source and the Linux ecosystem while trying to grow their resources on that front so the technologies and IP that Novell holds would be highly complementary to Nokia's current and future core operating software and networking needs.

Why isn't Nokia at the heart of an open-source consortium to acquire, protect and take advantage of Novell/SUSE's assets, esp. as it's all going on the cheap and to all the wrong (read: open-source hostile) parties?

Novell's biggest problem in recent years was their sullied reputation due to the Microsoft patent agreement. Having new and decent owners and management would remove that millstone while 'remoralizing' their workforce.

Nokia's "connecting people" technologies also need increasing tie-ins to wider networking, enterprise and institutional ecosystems. Developed (and increasingly developing) countries are in dire need of an updated modern IT infrastructure based on open standards (generally based on open-source).

Here would be an opportunity for Nokia or an OSS-centric consortium to repurpose Novell/SUSE's assets and expertise for mutually beneficial ends rather than seeing it dismantled and used against OSS.

It doesn't have to be "Adios, aMeego" to Novell, a Meego partner...

As expected, Groklaw has comprehensive coverage of this pending Novell sale.

It's not done and dusted and there are already two shareholder lawsuits against it.

While spinning off the (profitable) legacy unit (along with Mono, surprisingly) makes sense, I'd really prefer to see the (now also profitable) SUSE Linux side operating freely again; perhaps repurposed around KDE and eventually Qt...

If Nokia could build an alternative Linux/OSS vendor consortium while acquiring the large Unix and networking IP portfolio (which Nokia lacks as a relative Linux newcomer) and present a better deal e.g. by including stock swap... it would make Nokia instantly the #2 Linux vendor and developer.

Nokia has long been prominent player in (mobile) hardware infrastructure, but in the future the related "smart" software infrastructure (networking, services, based on Qt?) will play ever bigger part. Mobile communications and computing really ought to be seamlessly and securely integrateable to various networks according to the users' needs. SUSE could be the unit to make that happen.

The present alternative is seeing the existing (and to an extent synergistic) SUSE assets and development efforts wither away while Novell's networking, Unix etc. IP and patents will soon be used by Microsoft for hostile purposes.

I wonder which scenario Nokia's board and management would prefer...

This issue may actually be very much on topic for Nokia and its OSS/Linux-based strategy... Apparently Microsoft and Apple were behind the mysterious snatching (or is it still pending?) of Novell's IP portfolio.


BNET: Microsoft Forms a Patent Bloc With Apple, EMC, and Oracle

Also:

Fosspatents.blogspot.com: CPTN Holdings LLC (acquirer of 882 Novell patents): Microsoft, Apple, EMC and Oracle are the partners according to German antitrust notification

Slashdot: Microsoft, Apple, EMC and Oracle Form Patent Bloc


I really wonder if it hadn't been in Nokia's interests to keep Novell's IP, developer, etc. assets on its side...

Turns out that the Novell sale might be delayed or even be off the table! The MS-lead patent consortium ("CPTN Holdings LLC"), which was created for the sole purpose of grabbing Novell's patent portfolio, has been dissolved without explanation.

The sale of Novell's patents was an integral part of Attachmate's scheme to finance the planned takeover.

Some days ago German authorities had announced that they'd agreed with OSS groups' request to investigate the patent sale deal, so thanks again Germany. In the US these kinds of deals are invariably agreed and concluded without the slightest scrutiny in the name of public interest.

At least I can end this monogue knowing *why* ms-elop's nokia weren't interested in investing in greater Linux-Meego-Qt strength through acquisition. elop's sugar daddy was already on the case!

Ironically sucking up to ms cost nokia *four* times more in market valuation ($4.4B) in just the first day of trading (with an estimated 2 years of abyss to follow...) that it would've cost to acquire Novell and its significant (coding & IP) assets.

fsck nokia.