Some might be wondering if there is a working crystal ball in the Novell corporate offices.

Friday, Novell won the rights to Unix copyrights and the name Unixware, at the end of a long battle with the SCO Group. The judgement was made in the U.S. District Court for Central Utah with the results of dismissing SCO’s suit for slander and breach of contract.

Novell also got some monetary gratification in the deal, as SCO must pay a portion of the money it received from Sun and Microsoft in licensing fees.

It looks as though Novell might have had an idea that this was the outcome, making any cooperation with Microsoft no big deal. If Microsoft somehow was able to effectively assert its patents against Linux developers and the community in general, it would be almost trivial to recompile the binaries in SuSE Linux, with the exception of the kernel, and then add them to a new, better Unixware offering.

If Microsoft chooses to keep its patent litigation in check, Novell is still in the position of offering Unixware,, direct descendent of System V, to the public, with the notion that real Unix is better. Win-win for Novell, a loss for all other Linux purveyors, and a blow to Microsoft.

Pretty cool.

[tags] Microsoft, Novell, SCO, Unix, Unixware, SuSE [/tags]