Novell's proposal to sell its patents to CPTN Holdings could soon be under  investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) and Free Software Foundation (FSF) have sent a letter asking the DOJ to scrutinize the proposal, saying that CPTN leaders have a "long history of opposing and misrepresenting the value of FLOSS (free/libre and open source software), which is at the heart of Web infrastructure and of many of the most widely used software products and services."

The open-source organizations also point out that CPTN acknowledges the GNU/Linux and FLOSS, is a major competitive force to their business. (Much like Microsoft and Oracle).

CPTN is a holding consortium formed by Microsoft, Apple, EMC and Oracle to purchase 882 of Novell's patents. Novell was purchased by Attachmate last year, minus the patents.

The joint statement from OSI and FSF is available on FSF's website.