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I'm asking the FR tech folks for some help! We inherited a Novell network and we migrated it to a Microsoft Active Directory network and we're realizing there are some lingering Novell objects around the network. We paid for Microsoft to look at the problems we were having and that's what their guy said. Does anyone know of any way to find Novell objects that might be luring around a MS network? I have no clue how to do this and would really appreciate your help. And no, starting over is not really an option for us. Thank you!!

Microsoft's Bill Gates took the witness stand Monday in a $1 billion antitrust lawsuit accusing the software maker of duping a competitor prior to its rollout of Windows 95. Gates began his testimony with a history of Microsoft Corp. and was expected to remain on the stand throughout the day. He said he was just 19 when he helped found the software giant. “We thought everybody would have a personal computer on every desk and in every home,” he said. “We wanted to be there and be the first.” Gates, wearing a gray suit and a yellow tie, was the...

Today is the last day that Novell (NASDAQ:NOVL) will exist as a publicly traded company. Trading in Novell's stock will cease at the close of business, as the company is taken private. Novell is being acquired by privately held Attachmate in a deal that closes today. The $2.2 billion acquisition was first announced in November of 2010. Attachmate is paying $6.10 per Novell share and will keep Novell as a wholly owned subsidiary. Novell shareholders approved the deal back in February. The final step that was required for the deal to move forward was the completion of a patent deal....

Proprietary deal falls through A cunning plan by the big names in proprietary software to snap up Novell's patents has fallen through leaving the future of the patents in doubt. Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and EMC had planned to create a consortium to acquire hundreds of Novell patents but now they have decided not to press ahead with it as it could get them into all sorts of anti-trust hotwater. CPTN Holdings was to jointly acquire 882 Novell patents for $442 million. The rest of Novell was to be sold to Attachmate for $2.2 billion, with that sale being conditioned upon...

CPTN Holdings LLC (acquirer of 882 Novell patents): Microsoft, Apple, EMC and Oracle are the partners according to German antitrust notification Breaking news: Twitter user @VM_gville (whose account has meanwhile disappeared) pointed me to the website of the German federal antitrust authority ("Bundeskartellamt"), which discloses a merger (or more precisely, joint venture) notification filed a week ago (on 09 December 2010), according to which the four companies behind CPTN Holdings LLC -- the acquirer of 882 Novell patents -- are Microsoft, Apple, EMC, and Oracle. The product market in which the newly formed company plans to operate is defined as...

“We’re either right or we’re not. If we’re wrong, we deserve people throwing rocks at us.”– Former SCO CEO Darl McBride in 2003*************************************************SCO’s long-running campaign against Linux may have finally been dealt a death blow. Late Thursday, the judge presiding over the company’s legal battle with Novell (NOVL) rejected its request for a new trial and upheld an April jury decision that determined Novell, not SCO, is the rightful owner of key Unix copyrights.“SCO argues that it is entitled to judgment as a matter of law because the ‘verdict cannot be squared with the overwhelming evidence and the law,’” Judge...

It's over. The jury has found that the copyrights did not go to SCO under the APA or anything else. The verdict is in. Novell has the news up on their website already, but I heard it from Chris Brown also. Here's the brief Novell statement:Today, the jury in the District Court of Utah trial between SCO Group and Novell issued a verdict. Novell is very pleased with the jury’s decision confirming Novell’s ownership of the Unix copyrights, which SCO had asserted to own in its attack on Linux. Novell remains committed to promoting Linux, including by defending Linux on...

A bankruptcy court judge has denied a request by the SCO Group to sell off part of its business, a move that could have helped it pursue court cases against Novell and IBM. SCO, which has been in bankruptcy court since 2007, had proposed to sell off most of its Unix business assets to a company called Unxis, the latest in a series of proposals aimed at allowing the company to exit bankruptcy and continue its high-profile Unix litigation. IBM and Novell, on the other hand, had requested that SCO's assets be liquidated, effectively putting an end to the cases...

I can't believe there's yet more major news, all in one day. But there is, from the bankruptcy front. SCO's period of exclusivity is over, as you can see from the minutes of today's hearing [PDF]. Look at number 1 on the list under the heading "Proceedings" and you will see the word: "DENIED". This was regarding the SCO motion [PDF] to extend the period of exclusivity, it's 4th, the motion that Al Petrofsky objected to pro se, as you can see on the Notice of matters on the agenda for today. So now IBM and Novell and the US...

An inside source at Novell just informed me that Novell laid off a considerable percentage of its workforce on Friday, suggesting that "basically an across-the-board reduction of 25 percent" had been made. The news came in too late to seek comment from Novell, but I will try to get an update over the weekend. These Novell layoffs add to the mounting woes of the already enfeebled technology industry, which has seen tens of thousands of employees lose their jobs. Though Novell's layoffs may be the most extensive of any open-source company of which I'm aware, Novell is by no means...

After a great deal of courtroom drama and mounting legal fees, the SCO Group is expected to file its Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan in court tomorrow. Jeff Hunsaker, SCO’s president, wouldn’t provide exact details of the plan, but he said the reorganization will hopefully help the company come out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which the company filed for in September 2007. Utah-based SCO has been up to its ears in legal battles over the years, a notable one being a suit against Novell over who was the true owner of Unix. In August 2007, a U.S. District Court Judge ruled...

The final judgment [PDF] from Utah is here at last. It recites what the August 10, 2007 and July 16, 2008 orders said, but it also resolves the recent dispute over SCO's desire to voluntarily waive some claims and then bring them back to the table after an appeal, should it prove successful. Here's SCO's motion to voluntarily dismiss, and Novell's response, so you can verify that this judgment indeed represents another loss for SCO. You'll see that it was Novell that suggested the wording regarding SCO's voluntarily dismissed claims that we see in the judgment, that they be dismissed...

The decision is in, and SCO has gone down in defeat. The U.S. District Court in Utah has ruled in favor of Novell in SCO vs. Novell, the keystone case in SCO’s long, and ultimately unsuccessful war against Linux. The foundation of Judge Dale Kimball’s decision, that Novell, and not SCO owns the IP (intellectual property) rights to Unix, remains as solid as ever. Instead of showing that Linux violated SCO IP rights to Unix, SCO’s actions has lead to the revelation that it never owned the IP rights to Unix in the first place.This, within the narrow confines of...

Reality, as good writers know, is sometimes stranger than fiction. SCO's recent performance in the U.S. District Court in Utah is a perfect example. With years to prepare, SCO executives made some remarkable statements in their attempt to show that SCO, not Novell, owns Unix's copyright. While this case is not about SCO's claims that IBM and other companies placed Unix IP (intellectual property) into Linux, Novell's attorneys decided that they would address this issue as well. One presumes that, since this may be their one and only chance to attack SCO's Linux claims in a courtroom -- what with...

A reinvigorated SCO Group Inc. goes to trial Tuesday to once again defend its claims to a widely used computer software code against Novell Inc. Although what's at stake in the scheduled four-day trial pales in comparison to the unresolved major claims in the case that have rattled parts of the software community for the past five years, millions of dollars are on the table in a legal battle that has been widely watched. In play in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball is as much as $37 million that Novell claims it is owed in the dispute...

Novell Inc. and Microsoft Corp., trying to expand the reach of their unusual alliance, say they plan to put a bigger emphasis on the Chinese market. The companies say they will make an extra investment to sell more support subscriptions for Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server operating system in China. The idea is to court companies currently using Linux without any software support, often for free. China is "quite a large and growing market in terms of Linux," said Susan Heystee, Novell's vice president and general manager of global strategic alliances. There is "a very large nonpaid Linux market" in...

The extent of Microsoft's generosity to its open-source patent partners has been revealed in Novell's latest financial statement. Novell's SEC filing reveals the company received $355.6m from Microsoft during 2007, although some of that payment is "being recognised over future periods". The payment forms a significant chunk of Novell's revenue, with the company turning over $932m in 2007. Novell was heavily criticised within the open-source community for signing the deal with Microsoft. The agreement saw the two ADVERTISEMENT companies agree to work on a series of interoperability initiatives, and not sue one another's customers for patent infringement. However, Novell came...

Ding. Ding. Ding. We have a winner in the contest for the all-time best title for any document ever filed in the SCO v. the World litigations. I know that some of you have gotten attached to the Sur-Sur-Sur Replies of yore. But this tops everything. SCO has filed the following:Senior Secured Super-Priority Debtor-in-Possession Credit Agreement Teasing. It's what they call these things. It's about the "Litigation Credit Facility" mentioned in the APA, the $10 million York is willing to loan SCO to fund the "Specified Litigation". And guess which that is: "the IBM litigation and the Novell Litigation and...

The SCO Group, working to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, hopes to sell its Unix assets to York Capital Management for up to $36 million, the company said this week in regulatory and bankruptcy court filings. Through the deal, York would provide SCO with $10 million in cash; up to $10 million in credit to fund its Linux-related legal fight and to get 20 percent of revenue from that action; $10 million for a 20 percent stake in the company; and $6 million to license the Hipcheck products from SCO's Me mobile device software effort and to share revenue...

Patent Infringement Lawsuit Filed Against Red Hat & Novell - Just Like Ballmer Predicted Thursday, October 11 2007 @ 09:41 PM EDT IP Innovation LLC has just filed a patent infringement claim against Red Hat and Novell. It was filed October 9, case no. 2:2007cv00447, IP Innovation, LLC et al v. Red Hat Inc. et al, in Texas. Where else? The patent troll magnet state. The first ever patent infringement litigation involving Linux. Here's the patent, for those who can look at it without risk. If in doubt, don't. Here's the complaint [PDF]. And now let's play, where's Microsoft? You...