Novell snubs hedge fund's $1bn takeover bid

Mathematics

Well beyond my intelligence (not the first time) but still if I pay 1000m, that is 1bn for somebody with 991m in his pocket, and also I receive some of the money I pay as I am also part of that person with the 991m in our pocket.

Then how much am I actually paying. The 940m mentioned in the article.

I do not get it, or have I dropped zeroes (again).

biggest mistake Novell ever made

Novell made a huge mistake by not suing Microsoft for antitrust when MS bundled networking with the OS.

Networking technology can not and never part of any OS. Rather it is just bundled for marketing purposes. And in Microsoft's case it is illegal purposes.

Why can it not be part of the OS? Simple. Networking assumes multiple computers and you can not make any assumption that all systems will run the same OS. That has never been true. Nor will it ever be true. So networking by its very nature is independant of any and all operating systems.

You may argue that is not true with Netware. But, even with Netware the client component has nothing to do with the server OS. So the client component has always been and will continue to be independant of the OS. I has to be.

Nobody wants a network that can only communicate with systems running the same OS. And that is true for Microsoft as well. Even they have client OSs and server OSs. So which one is the networking technology a part of? Neither is the correct engineering answer.

Microsoft just illegally bundled their client networking technology to eliminate competitive client networking technologies. And Novell is not the only company that was illegally harmed by that practice. Remember the days when you could buy client licenses even for the Microsoft systems? That changed with the illegal bundling. But, Novell, the fools they can be, did not sue Microsoft and instead just arranged with Microsoft to bundle their own client software.

Sounds fine you say? But, it eliminated a whole host of alternative networking technologies from the marketplace. Technologies that would have made multiple systems much easier to network.

You might be able to get NFS for Microsoft systems. But, you can not get Microsoft technologies on Unix or LInux. And you can not get SAMBA on Microsoft.

You should have a choice of about 3-4 complete networking technologies to install on multiple systems. But, that just does not exist today due to Microsoft's illegal business practices.

And now Novell is up for sale? No surprise.

Why should you not be able to buy a Microsoft OS sans networking and install SAMBA instead? Or, even a Novell networking stack?

Answer for the slow learners is that Microsoft continues to illegally bundled key technologies with the OS simply for the reason that it precludes fair and open markets for competing technology.

You have to be a real slow learner not to know and understand that.

Even Microsoft did not start out bundling networking technologies. Initially they sold separately. But, that let Novell compete. Bundling does in fact eliminate competitive technologies. That is why the idiots at Microsoft engage in illegal activity. Simple enough.