During World War II, he served in the U.S. Navy for two years as an electronics technician, working with radar systems.
[3] In 1983, Noorda assembled the SuperSet team whose members included Drew Major, James Bills, Dale Niebaur and Kyle Powell.
Under Noorda's watch, Novell acquired several companies and products with the goal of countering Microsoft's rapid spread into new markets, including Digital Research, Unix System Laboratories, WordPerfect, and Borland's Quattro Pro.
[9][10] One of its holdings, Caldera, purchased the Unix assets in 2000 from the Santa Cruz Operation, which had acquired them from Novell in 1995.
In 1996, it also acquired the Digital Research assets from Novell and immediately brought a lawsuit against Microsoft that largely duplicated the claims that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice had pursued in the early 1990s.