In the edgy and constantly-shifting alliances in the computer industry that characterise the brave new world of open systems, Novell Inc is becoming a pivotal player, and in the wake of the breakdown of its talks to be acquired by Lotus Development Corp now looks determined to be predator rather than prey. According to today’s issue of our sister paper Unigram.X, a key trigger for Sun Microsystems Inc’s move to acquire the operating system side of Interactive Systems Corp was word on the grapevine that Novell was not satisfied with its 14% or so holding in Unix System Laboratories Inc – by far the largest stake next to that of AT&T Co itself in the Unix System V licensor – and wants a lot more. Last month, Novell acquired Digital Research Inc and its DR DOS rewrite of MS-DOS – and on the basis that my enemy’s enemy is my friend, IBM Corp and Novell, both out to undermine Microsoft Corp in any way that they can, are getting a whole lot closer together. According to Computer Reseller News, IBM is wooing the newly Novell-owned Digital Research with a view to shipping DR DOS 6.0 rather than MS-DOS 5 with its low-end PS/2s, and getting it to design future versions of DR DOS in lock-step with IBM’s OS/2 development to ensure consistency between the two. And if Novell succeeds in its Unix dreams and IBM gets still closer to Novell, IBM would end up with a big foot in each of the Unix camps.
