In a recent blog post published by CNET News, Matt Asay, Vice President of Business Development at Alfresco, reveals Novell tried to acquire XenSource nine months ago:

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It's also the reason that Novell failed to entice XenSource into an acquisition when it was knocking on Peter Levine's door nine months ago. It tried the "fork" argument, and gave a low valuation as a result. Guess who acquired XenSource?...

After the XenSource acquisition by Citrix, a Xen fork may become a needed option for virtualization competitor Virtual Iron. If Novell was contemplating this scenario nine months ago, it may reconsider a partnership with Virtual Iron, or even an acquisition, to achieve the task.