http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05...eking_suitors/
Coming up on the 5th year of their 5 year "deal" and they want to sell the company? Figures. Their "Linux income" appeared to be mostly from coupons Microsoft purchased and gave to selected corporations to replace other Linux servers, mainly RedHat. When MS stops buying coupons Novell's Linux "income" will stop, too.
Buying Novell won't keep openSUSE out of "another vendor's hands" because any vendor or group or person can fork openSUSE and create yet another Linux distro. (YALD).
Would Microsoft buy it? Why should they? They can let it die, and all their promises and agreements and "coupons" die with it, along with the "deal". So does the support for those SLES servers which were used to replace RedHat servers (and which were installed so as to never be "master browsers" so that Windows servers always controlled the network). What are those companies going to do with their unsupported SLES boxes? Write them off, wipe them off, and install Win2k8 on them, like good little slaves.
But, the BIG question is WHY is Novell seeking to sell itself? Some successful companies were sold because the owners were offered amounts they couldn't refuse (Shuttleworth). Novell isn't that successful that folks are throwing money at it. They had to advertise. There is something about their business model/plan/future that indicates that the future isn't going to bode well for them or, perhaps, Linux. Perhaps some inside information about Microsoft's plans to begin suing major Linux distros for IP violations? Distros like openSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu, et.al, Red Hat, PCLinuxOS, Mepis, Mint, Debian, Slack, Gentoo, Archer and a few others?
Buckle up. The failed proxy suits may be over. We might be in for a direct frontal attack.
With its Linux business finally at break-even, Novell likes to think it is worth more than what Elliott is offering. But with its NetWare business collapsing and revenues for the company overall trending downward year after year and profits either thin or not there at all, Novell may have an exaggerated sense of what it is worth — much like Sun Microsystems did when it put itself up for sale by opening up talks with IBM back in November 2008, which ultimately resulted in Oracle paying $7.4bn (about $5.6bn net of cash and debts) for the company.
Why Novell thinks it is worth more than $1bn is a bit of a mystery, when you look at the numbers and the pressures it is under. Just like it was a bit curious as to why Sun figured it was worth more of a premium than IBM was willing to pay. Good products and intellectual property are important, but IBM has plenty of those, just like Oracle does. Which is why neither IBM nor Oracle will buy Novell for these reasons — though they might buy Novell to keep it out of another vendor's hands and milk the legacy customers to pay for it.
Why Novell thinks it is worth more than $1bn is a bit of a mystery, when you look at the numbers and the pressures it is under. Just like it was a bit curious as to why Sun figured it was worth more of a premium than IBM was willing to pay. Good products and intellectual property are important, but IBM has plenty of those, just like Oracle does. Which is why neither IBM nor Oracle will buy Novell for these reasons — though they might buy Novell to keep it out of another vendor's hands and milk the legacy customers to pay for it.
Buying Novell won't keep openSUSE out of "another vendor's hands" because any vendor or group or person can fork openSUSE and create yet another Linux distro. (YALD).
Would Microsoft buy it? Why should they? They can let it die, and all their promises and agreements and "coupons" die with it, along with the "deal". So does the support for those SLES servers which were used to replace RedHat servers (and which were installed so as to never be "master browsers" so that Windows servers always controlled the network). What are those companies going to do with their unsupported SLES boxes? Write them off, wipe them off, and install Win2k8 on them, like good little slaves.
But, the BIG question is WHY is Novell seeking to sell itself? Some successful companies were sold because the owners were offered amounts they couldn't refuse (Shuttleworth). Novell isn't that successful that folks are throwing money at it. They had to advertise. There is something about their business model/plan/future that indicates that the future isn't going to bode well for them or, perhaps, Linux. Perhaps some inside information about Microsoft's plans to begin suing major Linux distros for IP violations? Distros like openSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu, et.al, Red Hat, PCLinuxOS, Mepis, Mint, Debian, Slack, Gentoo, Archer and a few others?
Buckle up. The failed proxy suits may be over. We might be in for a direct frontal attack.
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