Novell has moved to quell growing concerns that it has sold Linux out to Microsoft as part of its Attachmate deal. On Wednesday, Novell chief marketing officer John Dragoon issued a short statement saying that Novell – not Microsoft – owns the copyrights on Unix.

Novell's copyrights for the Unix operating system will remain under Attachmate's control as part of the companies' pending merger, a Novell spokesman has revealed.

Elliott Associates has filed with the SEC its own required filing, a 13D/A with all the financing documents behind the Novell acquisition by Attachmate. It says it amends a February 12, 2010 13D, which shows Elliott through its various tentacles beginning to buy Novell stock on the open market in January. First, who are all the Elliott entities?

Today Attachmate laid off an unknown number of U.S. based Novell developers that were working on the open source Mono project.

theregister.co.uk: Novell, a collection of mostly legacy software businesses, has announced that it will be devoured by another collection of legacy software businesses, Attachmate.
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It's been a while in the coming but now Novell is finally being sold off. The company is to be bought by Attachmate for US$2.2 billion. For many the move is unsurprising: Novell has been on the back foot for some time now and its flirtation with Linux served only to delay its final end.

The company received what they call an "unsolicited proposal from Elliott Associates, L.P. to acquire the Company for $5.75 per share in cash," which values the company at just under $2 billion.

SCO Group Inc. said private equity firm Stephen Norris Capital Partners and partners in the Middle East will provide up to $100 million to finance SCO's efforts to go private and get out of bankruptcy.

New York-based hedge fund Elliott Associates L.P. in a letter to Novell’s board of directors dated March 2 offered to purchase the infrastructure software company for a cash price of $5.75 per share, or $1 billion net of the cash on the company’s books.