Editing Novell (section)

=== Acquisition by The Attachmate Group===
[[Image:Novell building in Provo in 2013 during Attachmate era.jpg|thumb|right|The main building in Provo in 2013 during the Attachmate Group era; the name Novell was kept on it. A 'For Sale' sign for some of the property can be seen in front of the building.]]
Novell had long been rumored to be a target for acquisition by a variety of other companies. In March 2010, [[Elliott Associates, L.P.]], an institutional investor with approximately 8.5% stock ownership of Novell, offered to acquire the company for {{US$|5.75}} per share in cash, or {{US$|1&nbsp;billion}}.<ref name="Elliott_2010_Novell"/> The company declined the offer, saying that the proposal was inadequate and that it undervalued the company's franchise and growth prospects.<ref name="NW_2010_Novell"/>

Novell announced in November 2010 that it had agreed to be acquired by [[The Attachmate Group]] for {{US$|2.2&nbsp;billion}}, and planned to operate Novell as two units, one being [[SUSE S.A.|SUSE]]. As part of the deal, 882 [[Software patent|patents]] owned by Novell were sold to [[CPTN Holdings LLC]], a consortium of companies led by [[Microsoft]] and including [[Apple Computer|Apple]], [[EMC Corporation|EMC]], and [[Oracle Corporation|Oracle]].<ref name="FORM_8-K_2010"/><ref name="Novell_2010_Attachmate"/><ref name="CPTN_2010"/> According to Novell's SEC filing, the patents "relate primarily to enterprise-level computer systems management software, enterprise-level file management and collaboration software in addition to patents relevant to our identity and security management business, although it is possible that certain of such issued patents and patent applications read on a range of different software products".<ref name="SCHEDULE_14-A_2011_Novell"/><ref name="PCW_2011_Patents"/> The Attachmate Group expressed in advance of the deal closing that there would no change to the relationship between the SUSE business and the openSUSE project.<ref name="Attachmate_2010_openSUSE"/> The merger completed in April 2011, with {{US$|6.10}} per share in cash being paid to acquire Novell. Novell became a wholly owned subsidiary of The Attachmate Group.

Concurrent with the closing of the acquisition, some of Novell's products and brands were transferred to another of the Attachmate Group business units, [[NetIQ]], and the [[SUSE Linux]] brand was spun off as its own business unit. The fourth business unit, [[Attachmate]], was not directly affected by the acquisition.

Immediately prior to merger being finalized, Novell completed the patent sale to CPTN Holdings for {{US$|450&nbsp;million}}.<ref name="Novell_2011_CPTN"/> The U.S. Department of Justice announced that, as originally proposed, the deal with CPTN would jeopardize the ability of open source software, such as Linux, to continue to innovate and compete in the development and distribution of server, desktop, and mobile operating systems, middleware, and virtualization products; to address the department's antitrust concerns, CPTN and its owners had altered their original agreement:

* All of the Novell patents would be acquired subject to the [[GPLv2]] open source license, and the [[Open Invention Network]] (OIN) license
* CPTN does not have the right to limit which of the patents, if any, are available under the OIN license
* Neither CPTN nor its owners will make any statement or take any action with the purpose of influencing or encouraging either Novell or Attachmate Group to modify which of the patents are available under the OIN license

With the acquisition, Novell's headquarters were moved back to Provo.<ref name="DH_Provo_2011"/> But by then considerable consolidation had occurred, and the original six buildings of the Provo campus were sold.<ref name="SLT_buildings_2012"/>
During April and May 2011, The Attachmate Group announced layoffs for the Novell workforce, including hundreds of employees from the Provo location,<ref name="Koep_2011_Employees"/><ref name="DH_Provo_2011"/> raising questions about the future of some open source projects such as [[Mono (software)|Mono]].<ref name="Vaughan-Nichols_2011_Mono"/><ref name="Clarke_2011_Android"/>