Predicting SCO's Actions Post Bankruptcy 102
eldavojohn writes "SCO lost last year and began the bankruptcy filings a long time ago but PJ has some speculative bad news on what they retain through the bankruptcy proceedings. SCO proposes to sell a number of assets to an outfit called UnXis, which PJ characterizes this way: 'It starts to hint that this is more a renaming, taking in some new management who seem to have financial expertise, and SCO keeps skipping along as unXis, with the dangerous litigation spun off safely into a litigation troll.' In their filings SCO says they retain 'their litigation and related claims against International Business Machines Corporation, Novell, Inc., AutoZone Corporation, Red Hat and certain Linux users which are not material customers of UnXis (excluding certain large-scale users of Linux servers) that are claimed to have infringed against UNIX copyrights.' So that's still a possibility they could go after anyone who is a 'certain Linux user.' And what's even worse is that they'll retain a patent for running multiple Java applications on a single Java virtual machine. We may not be out of the SCO litigation woods yet."
So... (Score:4, Interesting)
Litigiousity (Score:5, Interesting)
"... with the dangerous litigation spun off safely into a litigation troll."
Don't count on it. The deal with their lawyers for the lawsuits was, a cut of the winnings if they won, a cut of the company if they lost. They lost. The landsharks inherited big chunks of the bloody corpse. Just imagine them trying to keep from turning the company into a perpetual replay of the last couple years. They'd bust a vein with the effort. I say the company will become the lawyers' hammer for every nail worth suing.
Whipping a dead horse (Score:5, Interesting)
To be honest we've been worrying about SCO for years now, "the sky is falling" worrying, a couple front page /. articles a month kind of worrying, and to date SCO has won basically nothing, and have done very little actual harm excepting that caused by people worrying about and being scared by them enough to do stupid things they didn't need to do. They've run up some legal bills but they were mostly paid by companies that could afford them like IBM and Novell, and those big companies usually have lawyers sitting around spoiling for a fight anyway.
I'm making a resolution to absolutely stop caring about SCO until they actually win something in a courtroom or do ANYTHING which actually proves to be a real and substantive threat. Everyone constantly worrying about them has done more damage than if we had just yawned, and said "move along, nothing to see here".
Re:Why worry? (Score:1, Interesting)
My understanding was that there was proxy investment going on with SCO - ie: the money behind SCO will keep materializing from somewhere until the large company funneling the cash gets tired of this little game.
I don't know the specifics, but I heard this from a number of usually reliable sources.
Re:Litigiousity (Score:3, Interesting)
it would be a way too low risk method to move forward for the lawyers. The counter suit was the downside, so it would be a real disservice to allow SCO to drop their obligations/debits to Novell and the other legal agreements they signed, then broke (allegedly), to get these patents in the first place. Then allow some new company to just assume the patents. Not that all laws are fair, but it would be insane to assign any of the patent portfolio to anyone but IBM or Novell, without lugging all the obligations along with those patents. Seams Novell has already raised this point, I am guessing this whole speculation of the article, is not really a possibility.
Awesome synopsis!! (hint: ATTENTION MODERATORS!!!) (Score:3, Interesting)
Very well done, sir!
I would tip my hat to you but for two reasons:
1. I refuse to wear a hat unless it's a warm one during winter.(it was 100+ F[38+ C.] here in Oklahoma today, so no hat in sight)
2. Your User Name lists you as a Colonel, and I only ever made it to Corporal...**twice, and still came out as a Private, First Class[PFC]!
So, I hereby salute you, proper-like, Colonel, sir.
I am curious what comes about with their claimed Java patents, but I am personally getting tired of this circus.
Daryl and company reminds me more and more of a regional, severe cockroach infestation every day, just laughing at the exterminators since they have somewhere else to move to/change company names, etc.
This is a prime example of where corporations are not 'real' individuals/people, even though US law treats them as such at other times.
It seems like evidence that corporations have undue influence in politics here. (how much does a congressman or senator cost now days?)
I wonder how this will play out [slashdot.org], and what effect it will have on cases like this whole SCO circus in the future.(I imagine it will not affect this specific case)
Sorry for the ranting, but an intelligent discussion seems to be a rare thing on /. anymore, so I had to try!
**US Army claimed I did/could not respect Authority; I claimed that respect is earned, and thus could not respect assholes and idiots...rank be-damned. They 'won' the argument, but I came out having learned a lot.