SCO Wants To Destroy Business Records 113
An anonymous reader writes "SCO, now calling itself TSG, has just filed a motion (Pdf) with the bankruptcy court in Delaware asking it to authorize 'the abandonment, disposal, and/or destruction of certain surplus, obsolete, non-core or burdensome, property, including, without limitation, shelving, convention materials, telecommunications and computer equipment, accounting and sales documents, and business records.'"
Re:Small wonder. (Score:5, Informative)
I just wish someone would go ahead and pound a stake in SCO's heart and be done with them. If I never hear about those bastards again it'll be too soon.
Re:What did they do? (Score:4, Informative)
It depends, which SCO are you referring to? The early version(s) that, at one time, had decent Unix OS offerings with OpenServer and Unixware? Or the scorched-earth-that-ultimately-blew-up-in-their-face litigious idiots that took on probably the absolutely worst company to get the Linux litigation ball rolling.
Re:Who the hell is SCO? (Score:4, Informative)
TSG (and I was way ahead of the curve calling them that a few years ago, when they were dragging the SCO name through the mud) is the zombified shell of what was once the Linux company Caldera Systems. Several years ago they purchased most of the assets of the company which was known for years before that as SCO - the Santa Cruz Operation hence SCO.
This purchase was technically structured as a merger with a holding company involved, to produce a 'new' business called "The SCO Group", which then went berserk, forgetting its own history entirely, and attempted to create a new business model by claiming to own Linux and shaking down companies using Linux for 'license fees' supposedly owed. They wound up suing IBM and eventually losing hard, then filing bankruptcy.
Since the original threats and claims were made, through the resulting court battles and judgements, many legions of articles have been posted on this subject. Most readers are well aware of who TSG is, although certainly taking the time to add a link to an overview of some sort would have been a good move. But, that would require an editor actually editting. If you think that will happen you are definitely new here. We get short blurbs that still manage to be wrong most of the time and we like it! If you want to more accurate and in-depth information about this story try http://www.groklaw.net/ [groklaw.net]
it's a reasonable request (Score:5, Informative)
At least for most companies. Most nerds don't have a clue about the document management tools and processes that managers selected (especially 10+ years ago). And also don't understand the government regulations around documents.
It took me almost 8 years of training before I accepted that "copy it to a DVD" isn't a records management process for a large company. Everyone in my company has mandatory yearly "records management" training and as you move up in management, you have training to learn more and more about the reasons. And when you have a bogus (or legit) law suit against you requesting "every mention of X-Corp in all company documents", it makes sense why it's important to destroy records AND record the destruction so the lawyers can respond with "Here's ALL records and here's proof that we don't have anything else".
I know one company that keeps track of cost per document. The average per jpeg image is over $17,000 over it's lifetime. For some images, a lot of that is production or licensing. But most of it is managing the licenses. Even if a developer makes an image for a web site they keep a record of who/when/why/etc so the lawyers can respond when someone claims it was stolen. That all has to be stored, indexed, backed up, accessed, etc. A stack of DVDs in a warehouse somewhere does nothing but cost money. And takes a lot of time to find what you want if/when it's needed. Better to be able to say it doesn't exist for documents that you aren't required by law to keep or have a reasonable expectation that they will be involved in a law suit (in which case you maintain them in the records management system). As much as I dislike SCO, I'd guess they have a lot of records that shouldn't be involved in any lawsuit. If they destroy records that hide a crime, that's a different issue.
Re:What did they do? (Score:2, Informative)
IIRC they were a litigation business.
Correction: They were the puppets for Microsoft and Sun to destroy Linux, the free kernel that was taking over UNIX and threatening Microsoft's future control of the small computing platforms. What nether saw was Apple coming up in the rear view mirror.