Shareholders OK Novell sale to Attachmate

But deal could still be scotched by block on patent fire-sale

Novell's stockholders have given the green light for the proposed $2.2bn acquisition by Attachmate.

But the deal could still fall apart if anti-trust authorities in Germany and the US block the $450m sale of 800 of Novell's patents to CPTN Holdings, a Microsoft-led consortium that also includes Oracle.

Novell, now best known for its Suse version of the Linux operating system, holds rights to the underlying Unix OS code that it acquired in the mid-1990s.

At the time, Novell was a credible rival to Microsoft and its intent was to fuse Unix and NetWare, its own network OS, into a "super-NOS" to counter Microsoft's push into server software spearheaded by Windows NT.

Novell clearly failed and later became embroiled in a marathon legal dispute with Santa Cruz Organisation (SCO) about the rights to Unix SVRX.

Novell won that battle, but the prospect of the much-diminished company bulk-selling its intellectual property rights to a Microsoft-Oracle combo rang loud alarm bells in the open source community.

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) cried foul to the Federal Cartel Office in Germany and similar concerns were lodged with the US Department of Justice. That led Novell to issue a statement saying that Unix was not part of the rights fire-sale.

Microsoft previously fought a protracted PR war against the very concept of open source software and in the past has alleged that some open source code violates Windows intellectual rights.

Oracle's purchase of Sun also led to a five-month examination of the deal by the European Commission, on the grounds that it included the open source database MySQL, a rival to Oracle's eponymous product.

Nevertheless, Novell owns numerous software rights associated with open software and open source developers fear they will be subject to legal assault if these were to fall into the hands of Microsoft and Oracle.

The DoJ and Cartel Office have still to make a ruling on the deal.