"So Novell really does now finally seem to own the Unix copyrights. Linux finds itself on a high-ground pedestal of long-term, low-risk use (unless Microsoft buys Novell [should have when they could have, eh?]). And IBM and Novell are closer than ever."

Yesterday we wrote about Novell’s news from China and warned that Microsoft and Novell had begun to share some more vocabulary. Several more articles have since then been published to cover the new announcement, including this one.

Give Novell credit. Rather than slamming The VAR Guy for a particularly harsh blog post about the software company, Novell reached out to him and engaged in a healthy dialog. During a lengthy telephone chat, Novell Senior VP and Chief Marketing Officer John Dragoon (pictured) discussed the company’s business performance and strategy. Here’s a recap of the conversation, and some updated reactions from The VAR Guy.

BOTH MICROSOFT and Novell will have a role or at least some impact at a formal, national level. Mundie's involvement is a subject that we covered yesterday [1, 2], but we wrote not as much about Schmidt's impact. Sun, Google, and Novell are all places where he worked, so his affinity towards particular companies cannot be ignored.

Novell has just earned itself a very low position (48th) in the “most influential tech vendors” ladder, which seems very gut feeling-driven. Almost on the very same day came this press release from Novell:

Novell's and Microsoft's savings from "past glory" days enable them to pretend

Standard & Poor’s analyst Jim Yin believes that Novell is less likely than before to sell itself, but he does not rule out this possibility

The judge gives UNIX to Novell, but it is worth remembering that Novell is up for sale and its assets are up for grabs

Yesterday, at the end of the day at the trial of SCO v. Novell, there was a discussion of whether certain evidence could be let in after all, due to something SCO said. Judge Ted Stewart asked Novell to put it in the form of a motion, and they have. SCO accused Novell in its opening argument four times of slander of title "to this day".