> >> AT&T sold Unix to Novell for $1 Billion dollars in the middle
> >> of this and in reallity it was Novell that settled. BTW, this
> >> $1B almost bankrupted(sp?) Novell.
> > 
> > Novell bought USL for $80M, which is only 8% of the figure
> > you quote.  This is the same price they charged Sun to get
> > out of royalty payments, and the later sale of USL to SCO was
> > nothing but gravy for them: very good ROI, in fact.
>
> The figure I'm quoting was one I was given.
> If it is incorrect, then I need to get the correcting
> reference. Both John and I are working on a History of BSD.
> As such, the correct nature of facts becomes us.
> 
> If you can please Terry, and reference information, rather
> that word of mouth, would assist us greatly.

I got "uncooked" numbers, as a senior employee with stock, so
it's not exactly "word of mouth".  8-).

Not only that, Novell almost made 100% ROI in one year.


> > The $1B purchase made at around the same time was the purchase
> > of Word Perfect.  Along with AppWare (another company started
> Terry, I've forwarded this information to John as a
> possible error in our notes.

See:

	http://www.secinfo.com/dr6nd.b43.htm#191stPage

The $268.7 includes a $9.4M debt assumption, does not include
the $80.5M Sun paid, does not include net sales by USL, and
the value of the Novell stock at the time the transaction
actually went through.

I guess you could subtract out the earlier "investment in USL",
which was actually a stock swap so that both companies had
some skin in the game over Univel, so I think it shouldn't
count as anything but a $17M paper cost.

See also pg193 for income figures (you have to multiply the
missing percentage, but it's simple algebra):

	http://www.secinfo.com/dr6nd.b43.htm#193rdPage

Not including the overvaluation, the cost was $178.8M.  If
you include what Word Perfect did to the Novell stock, the
cost drops to about $87.3M; I guess it depends on how you
want to cook the books...

For more more fun, look at the 1992 numbers for the VAX/VMS
deal; I was one of 3 engineers responsible for that nice $15M
number.  Robert Withrow, also a FreeBSD person, was on the
DEC side of that deal, as their primary (IMO) engineering
contribution...

I figure that I personally paid for almost 6% of the USL
purchase with around one year of work, and between the 3
of us, it was over 17%.


					Terry Lambert
					terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.