Novell Buys Suse was --- A distribution bytes the dust!

[Bill Horne]

On Tue, Nov 04, 2003 at 01:28:47PM +0000, rrmalloy at comcast.net wrote:
> Perhaps more interesting 

> NEW YORK, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Novell Inc. (NasdaqNM:NOVL - News) said
> Tuesday it agreed to acquire Linux software developer Suse Linux AG
> of Germany for $210 million cash, in the latest push by the business
> software maker into the emerging market.

The Good News: SCO is an amateur in legal wrangling compared to Novell. 

The Bad News: The boys in Provo play for real, and they like to win.
Look for quick implementation of M$-like "embrace, extend, and
extinguish" policies: if there's a way to lock users into paid
versions of SuSe, they'll find it, be it proprietary extensions, 
trade secrets, or trademark fights.

> Novell, of Provo, Utah, also said International Business Machines
> Corp. (NYSE:IBM - News), a major backer of Linux software, plans to
> make a $50 million investment in Novell convertible preferred stock.

Sounds like IBM is offloading the Linux work to Novell: maybe RedHat 
priced themselves out of the market? It's a win-win-win for Armonk:
a pin in Bill Gates' doll (thanks for OS/2, Bill ...), a warning to 
RedHat not to get too big for its britches, and a stake in Novell's 
existing product lines and patent pool.

FWIW. YMMV.

Bill