[ Thanks to Steven J.
Vaughan-Nichols for this link. ]
“VMware wanted to buy Novell, but the virtualization
company didn’t want to buy everything that Novell’s board wanted to
sell. At the same time, Microsoft had made it clear that it hated
the idea of VMware, a Microsoft rival, ending up as Novell’s owner.
The result was that Attachmate ended up buying Novell for
$2.2-billion while Microsoft paid $450-million for as yet un-named
Novell intellectual property.“Attachmate has agreed to acquire Novell for $6.10 per share in
cash. Attachmate, which got its start as a terminal emulation
company in 1982, is privately held. Its primary owners are the
private equity firms Francisco Partners, Golden Gate Capital and
Thoma Bravo. Today, the Attachmate side of the company still works
in X Window and terminal emulation. Its other half, NetIQ, sells
and services systems and security management software.”