[ Thanks to Amy
Bennett for this link. ]
“We don’t know for absolute sure that somewhere in the
$2.2 billion acquisition of Novell by Attachmate and the
“concurrent sale of certain intellectual property assets to CPTN
Holdings LLC, a consortium of technology companies organized by
Microsoft Corporation, for $450 million in cash” that those
unidentified IP holding were, in fact, Novell’s ownership of UNIX.“True, a sale of UNIX to Microsoft is the sort of thing that
conjures up the unlikeliest of outcomes–the kind of headlines that
only too recently were atop April Fools’ Day stories.“And yes, it is troublesome that Microsoft, which leads the CPTN
investment group, has so far declined to specify just what IP was
part of the $450 million side deal. But not too troublesome–after
all, that kind of uncertainty only works in Microsoft’s favor for
now.”