Novell has answered one of the most pressing questions following its announcement that it would sell itself to Attachmate, and hand over nearly 900 patents to a technology coalition led by Microsoft. What, then, did that mean for Unix?
Novell has now confirmed that it will hold onto its Unix intellectual property, promising that there will be no fundamental changes that could reshape the openSUSE community if the deal closes, itself a challenge amid shareholder unrest over the selling price and the threat of class-action lawsuits. Linux Planet has the story.
When Novell first announced that it was being acquired by Attachmate for $2.2 billion, the question of who would retain ownership over Unix copyrights was an open issue.
As part of the Novell sale, the company also revealed that it is selling 882 patents to a Microsoft-led technology consortium for $450 million. Potential ownership of Unix by the Microsoft-led group could have led to a new round of patent battles between Microsoft and the open source community. In a terse statement, Novell has now publicly stated that it will not be selling Unix as part of the patent sale.
