Just before we closed last night, news came through that Sun Microsystems Inc has paid Novell Inc $82.5m for a paid-up licence to Unix System V up to release 4.0 for use in its Solaris operating system, and for a new licence for Novell’s Netware Unix client software: the deal releases Sun from all royalty obligations for Unix-based licensing and also releases it from distribution and licensing restrictions for Solaris and components included in their 1987 agreement; the deal does not cover Unix releases since 1989 as Sun no longer uses the technology in its product; the agreement allows Sun the flexibility to distribute or modify all existing and future Sun-licensed products using Unix code and also to collaborate with Novell on future technologies such as the joint effort currently under way to unify Unix software specifications.
