Novell's First Quarter Goes into the Red
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| In the first quarter of fiscal 2007 ended January 31, Novell said
| that software license sales amounted to $38.5 million, down 9 percent,
| while sales of maintenance contracts, software subscriptions (which
| are really for support, not for the open source software itself), and
| other services came to $191.2 million, down 4 percent. Total sales for
| the quarter came in at $229.6 million, down 5 percent. While Novell
| has kept a tight rein on costs relating to the products themselves,
| the company has increased spending on sales, marketing, development,
| and general costs; it has also booked a $7.4 million restructuring
| charge in the quarter and written off $10.8 million in assets. These
| factors pushed Novell to a $31.3 million operating loss. Because
| Novell has over $1 billion in cash in the bank and $790 million in
| short-term investments, it was able to post a $20.7 million gain in
| investments and it also sold some venture capital funds for another
| $3.6 million. When all the math was done and the taxes paid, that
| worked out to a $19.9 million net loss, or about 6 cents per share,
| compared to a net profit of $1.9 million in the year ago quarter, or
| 1 cent a share.
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http://www.itjungle.com/tlb/tlb052907-story02.html
So what did Novell get via its patent deal with Microsoft?
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| While there is a short section on licensing of intellectual property
| rights for Microsoft technologies to be used internally in Section 4,
| that's about it in the technical collaboration agreement.
|
| One section of the business collaboration agreement also worth a look
| is Section 9, Indemnification/Infringement Claims, because this is
| where you would usually expect to find details of patent-related
| issues. Anything potentially interesting there is redacted, however,
| so one can only guess what it actually does cover.
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http://www.businessreviewonline.com/os/archives/2007/05/so_what_did_nov.html
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