Novell has already been doing some interesting things with Suse and Ximian, and this (and other matters) have attracted Sun to the company, who are mulling over whether to buy it or not.
Novell has been a serious player in the computing era for many years and has recently embraced Linux as the future of UNIX. Sun may be about to embark on its own Linux program, perhaps, and if so then re-inventing the wheel is a waste of time that could be solved by Sun's acquisition of the company.
But with assets estimated to be worth some $2.64 billion as of July 30th, Novell will not be cheap.