The deal, which is pending review before U.S. and German authorities, has been changed slightly because of concerns raised by the nonprofit Open Source Initiative and other parties.

As Novell undergoes a $2.2 billion acquisition by Attachmate, 882 patents are in the process of being sold to a consortium called CPTN Holdings, consisting of Microsoft, Apple, EMC and Oracle.

The value of Novell:

The Open Source Initiative says it received notice from German competition authorities at the Federal Cartel Office that CPTN is asking permission to proceed with the patent portfolio acquisition but with new conditions.

"CPTN will now only exist for long enough to distribute the shares equally among the participants in the transaction (no more than three months), and thus will not form a new long-term patent troll itself," Open Source Initiative President Michael Tiemann . "All parties to the transaction will retain a license to the full Novell patent portfolio, thus immunizing themselves from patent actions with the shares they do not hold."