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Novell sold to AttachmateNovell sold to AttachmatePosted Nov 22, 2010 14:29 UTC (Mon) by stumbles (guest, #8796)Parent article: Novell sold to Attachmate "...organized by Microsoft Corporation..." Hardly surprising.
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And MS gets "certain [Novell] IP assets" Posted Nov 22, 2010 16:22 UTC (Mon) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] And MS, via CPTN Holdings LLC, gets "certain intellectual property assets" of Novell. If that means patents, then Mono could become a big problem.
And MS gets "certain [Novell] IP assets" Posted Nov 22, 2010 16:36 UTC (Mon) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] Actually, the impact of this isn't immediately obvious to me. Holdings companies don't do development, so we're not talking about copyright and probably not trademarks. US$450 million is a reasonable sum, and first paragraph mention in the press release suggests that these are serious assets. Could it be something to do with removing Novell patents from the OIN pool?
What assets? Posted Nov 22, 2010 17:20 UTC (Mon) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link] Mary Jo Foley couldn't get a answer out of them.
And MS gets "certain [Novell] IP assets" Posted Nov 22, 2010 22:03 UTC (Mon) by armijn (subscriber, #3653) [Link]
Since when is OIN a patent pool?
And MS gets "certain [Novell] IP assets" Posted Nov 22, 2010 23:27 UTC (Mon) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] They have some use of their members patents to bring defensive action. The companies organized by Microsoft are probably ones that want to have the OIN threat out of the way so that they can bring suits.
And MS gets "certain [Novell] IP assets" Posted Nov 23, 2010 1:19 UTC (Tue) by linuxrocks123 (guest, #34648) [Link]
Are you sure about this? I can't find any documentation supporting this. I thought they could only bring defensive action with their own patents, which aren't affected by this, and that the members only agreed not to associate patents against the Linux system against each other, where the Linux system apparently does not include Android.
---linuxrocks123
And MS gets "certain [Novell] IP assets" Posted Nov 23, 2010 1:31 UTC (Tue) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] When they started the organization they sang a very different tune than they do today, which included the patents of members. I think there is a lot about OIN that is not on the web site. I always felt that most industry-sponsored patent defense activities around Linux were more about defending software patenting than Linux. I doubt we can even get a straight answer from OIN on this issue.
OIN lacks credible success story Posted Nov 24, 2010 17:31 UTC (Wed) by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048) [Link] I'm not aware of the OIN having deterred anyone from asserting patents against anyone else. The OIN would like to make people believe so, but there isn't even one credible, verifiable success story. There has been some litigation involving Linux regardless of the OIN. When the OIN became involved with the TomTom case, everything that was known about the outcome wasn't any different from how comparable disputes ended.
OIN is all sorts of things including a patent pool Posted Nov 24, 2010 17:43 UTC (Wed) by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048) [Link] In this blog post I outlined the three functions of the OIN. It buys up patents at auctions; it wants to serve as a deterrent (mutually assured damage); and it tries to establish a plurilateral cross-license agreement. All three of those activities are related to the concept of a "patent pool". The problem is just that the OIN doesn't appear to have had a verifiable positive impact in any of those areas.
And MS gets "certain [Novell] IP assets" Posted Nov 22, 2010 16:59 UTC (Mon) by SEMW (guest, #52697) [Link]
Given that Attachmate have said they'll continue developing mono [1], surely they'll have wanted any IP rights that came with that, which would include any mono patents? The "certain intellectual property assets" sold to the (MS-controlled) CPTN Holdings LLC would surely be things not directly attached to any product, like the Unix copyrights; since Attachmate would want those that directly pertain to anything they'd continue developing.
Besides, it's not like Microsoft doesn't already hold a ton of patents (on .NET) that directly apply to mono. How could a few more change anything? What assurances we have against Microsoft suing are based on things like the Community Promise, not a hope that they don't have enough relevant patents. (And the patents Novell donated to the Open Invention Network[2] were, well, donated. They presumably can't be undonated).
[1] http://twitter.com/migueldeicaza/status/6732038669340672
And MS gets "certain [Novell] IP assets" Posted Nov 22, 2010 17:43 UTC (Mon) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] Probably they got a license or a covenant not to sue.
"certain [Novell] IP assets" == 882 patents Posted Nov 22, 2010 18:04 UTC (Mon) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link] Another interesting item from the Patent Purchase Agreement section of the 8-K: "Also on November 21, 2010, Novell entered into a Patent Purchase Agreement (the Patent Purchase Agreement) with CPTN Holdings LLC, a Delaware limited liability company and consortium of technology companies organized by Microsoft Corporation (CPTN). The Patent Purchase Agreement provides that, upon the terms and subject to the conditions set forth in the Patent Purchase Agreement, Novell will sell to CPTN all of Novells right, title and interest in 882 patents (the Assigned Patents) for $450 million in cash (the Patent Sale)." Looks like this is just patents, not dusty file cabinets full of historic UNIX copyrights. Optimistically, maybe it's just MSFT trying to protect their Active Directory business from Novell's directory-related patents.
"certain [Novell] IP assets" == 882 patents Posted Nov 22, 2010 19:26 UTC (Mon) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] Someone should interview the folks at Open Invention Network and ask how this effects them. Jon, want to do that?
And MS gets "certain [Novell] IP assets" Posted Nov 22, 2010 18:24 UTC (Mon) by whitemice (guest, #3748) [Link]
"already hold a ton of patents that directly apply to mono"
and to Python, PHP, glibc, X11, gcc, scheme, Java, GNOME, KDE, D-bus, Apache, Perl, firefox, pidgin, empathy / telepathy, vala, etc....
And MS gets "certain [Novell] IP assets" Posted Nov 22, 2010 20:24 UTC (Mon) by gus3 (guest, #61103) [Link]
Mono goes to Attachmate, according to Miguel de Icaza on Twitter: "After the Novell acquisition, Mono continues as-is, but our paychecks will come from Attachmate instead of Novell."
Novell sold to Attachmate Posted Nov 22, 2010 17:25 UTC (Mon) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link]
When the Elliott Associates unsolicited buyout was announced shortly after SCO's definitive defeat in court I immediately suspected Microsoft but my search for evidence of this at the time came up blank. Now it would seem the clammy hand of Microsoft was indeed busy pulling the strings, just concealed from view effectively enough to defeat a casual web search.
I would tend to think that once again, Microsoft treads near the border of illegal trust making activity, on the wrong side of it.
Novell sold to Attachmate Posted Nov 23, 2010 5:55 UTC (Tue) by Tashlan (guest, #17277) [Link]
I've suspected for some time the SCO case was simply to flush out who legally owned the UNIX copyrights so Microsoft could purchase them either directly or by proxy.
$10 million for the setup.
SCO / UNIX copyrights ... Posted Nov 25, 2010 1:38 UTC (Thu) by kmself (subscriber, #11565) [Link]
... except that much of the rest of what emerged in the case 1) threw very significant doubt over the strength of the copyright (particularly through the unsealing of the AT&T v. BSD lawsuit), over the applicability of any such copyright to Linux, and of the very willing participation in Linux by multiple putative copyright holders (principally Novell and SCO) under the terms of the GNU GPL.
The copyright angle is dead.
The purpose of the SCO v. IBM suit was to sow FUD. From conversations I had at the time with at least some tech execs (not particularly clueful ones, but then, that's probably the majority), it was at least somewhat successful.
I continue to give strong kudos to IBM for defending the case as strongly as it did, this has been a huge benefit to all of us in the Free / Open Source software communities.
Novell sold to Attachmate Posted Nov 23, 2010 1:05 UTC (Tue) by rodgerd (guest, #58896) [Link]
Yes, but I'll be intrigued to see how Florian Mueller can spin this into another "RedHat is the Microsoft of Linux!" tale.
Novell sold to Attachmate Posted Nov 25, 2010 0:01 UTC (Thu) by AndreE (subscriber, #60148) [Link]
Although the mystery of how Florian Meuller will spin this into an attempt to link to his blog has been been revealed already.
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