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i found an interesting article on john wall and vista and his product:
http://www.threenorth.com/sco/john_wall.html

23 April 2005

It seems that John Wall is selling Vista.com. Well, sort of selling it

after reading that, i don't feel sorry for this john wall guy at all.

many of you may be microsoft bashers, and maybe rightfully so. but to be illogical and say john wall deserves this payment just because you dislike microsoft is just wrong.

if microsoft was wrong, i'd say they are. but this case is pretty clear that vista does not deserve a single penny.

See Vista reverse merger benefits SCO?

Also note that Vistas CFO is Bob Bench, formner CEO of SCO.

There is another link I should've added to the submission: This site assembles some very interesting information from the Yahoo SCOX Financial Board.

It may be time to update my thoughts on the Anderer/MS timeline

McBride took over in late Summer of 2002. From ESR's Halloween VII, we know that in Sept. 2002 that MS was talking about attacking Linux via patents and the risk of a lawsuit. From Halloween VII:

"Linux patent violations/risk of being sued" struck a chord with US and Swedish respondents. Seventy-four percent (74%) of Americans and 82% of Swedes stated that the risk of being sued over Linux patent violations made them feel less favorable towards Linux. This was the only message that had a strong impact with any audience.

Now, my personal opinion is that Morgan Keegan got wind of this and introduced SCO to MS--though it could well have been someone at SCO or MS who started the introductions, but the timeline of this HP memo fits.

MS signaled this back with Halloween VII.

Interestingly enough Halloween VII was making the rounds in Sept/Nov. 2002. It was in August 2002 that SCO brought in Morgan Keegan to try to find cash for them--and it was likely Morgan Keegan who both brought Boies on board and negotiated the original "license" deals with SUN and MS.

While I think you're correct that there has been a lot of 'bad' or 'uninformed' complaints, I know that there have been some informed too, especially concerning Jonathan Cohen.

One thing that indicates that the SEC is doing something (whatever scope) is that SCO has been late with some documents concerning the Bayster/Royce-deal. The contract says that they only to SCO non-damaging way for them to be late with this particular filing is during a SEC investigation. Someone else should post the details since I'm a little fuzzy on those...

I'm thinking that 'Ole Darl may have made the final plunge into the Tin Foil Hat club.

Speaking of tinfoil hats, the following from a long, somewhat boring, analysis of SEC docs that SCO has filed:

# Jul 2002 McBride is hired
# Aug 2002 Morgan Keegan is hired
# Aug 2002 Caldera changes name to The SCO Group
# Sep/Nov/? 2002 MS memo discussing using intellectual property as an attack against open source is floating around in Germany and later publically
# Oct - Dec 2002 SCO later admits to beginning to look at its own intellectual properties and first makes noise about UnixWare binary libraries.
# Jan 2003 SCO creates stronger language to indemnify its officers of criminal activity
# Dec? 2002 - Jan? 2003 At some point Boies is brought in, likely via Morgan Keegan, to negotiate license/stock deals with Sun and Microsoft
# Feb 2003 Morgan Keegan clarifies its arrangement with SCO and includes language indicating they are anticipating an IBM buyout, though without naming IBM specifically
# Feb 2003 Boies finalizes his agreement with SCO to sue IBM
# March 2003 IBM lawsuit
# Jul/Aug 2003 Anderer joins
# Oct 2003 Anderer e-mail penned
# Oct 2003 PIPE deal
# Nov 2003 Boies has no one from law firm at key press conference
# Nov 2003 Boies gets 20% of PIPE deal
# Dec 2003 PIPE investors get veto power over Boies payouts
# Nov/Dec/? 2003 16 to 20 million deal discussed by Anderer never happens

According to Newsforge there is likely already an SEC investigation ongoing.

Also, to plug my own horn, I've written up a few things on the financial dealings. Most are from August 2003, but the most recent relates to the Anderer memo.

According to Newsforge there is likely already an SEC investigation ongoing.

Also, to plug my own horn, I've written up a few things on the financial dealings. Most are from August 2003, but the most recent relates to the Anderer memo.

It's a crapshoot, eh. Dick Faze writes " Royal Bank of Canada is part of a $50 Million investment in SCO: Has our communist neighbor to the north finally flipped completely?" (We know Mr. Faze is being facetious, here ... don't we?) This is the same $50,000,000 investment deal in which some people suspected Microsoft's involvment.

Is there some web site that documents all the companies that are investing in SCO?

I have been watching this SCO watch site for while... but it's not all that frequently updated. In depth, yes... but I just want to know every bastard company that I should be avoiding. Give me a list...

Read about Jonathan Cohen and then read MSN's objective financial quotations from him!
fair and objective media financial advice?

"Jonathan Cohen of JHC Capital Management recommends SCOX and thinks that "The company has the ability to earn in excess of $3 a share over the next couple of years"

This Jonathan Cohen?

look how Microsoft is directly trying to bias the case more with onesided biased news: check out [from today]: [msn.com article from supposed tech analyst Jonathan Cohen

then read:
More on Jonathan Cohen

Microsoft MSN a biased propaganda machine. Only shows one side of the facts (the lies).

If you look outside the jaded slashdot somebody is investing a lot of faith in SCOX.

Despite my linux allegiance, I tend to trust people spending the cash more than those trolling the message boards.

The last article looks like it'd be of interest to the SEC, though I'm not going to hold my breath on that one.

The latest SCO acquisition is Vultus, which even sounds evil. The SCO stockholders are the eventual losers, but I find it difficult to develop sympathy for someone who buys into a shakedown racket.

Worse, Vultus runs on Windows not Unix.

SCO even had a deal with a web services company called Vista.com that does run under unix and had the option to buy it, but they choose instead to go for the windows company Vultus. Presumably, this is because Vultus is also owned and controlled by the same parent company that owns SCO.

LaBrea to trap the RIAA .mp3 scanners, instead of CodeRed?

Heres what I was just about to submit:

LaBrea - The Tarpit: Keep your friends close, your enemies closer.
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With the recent proliferation in worms (Code Red, Sircam, Nimda, etc) beyond either switching to a more secure? webserver or keeping up to date with the patches for your own and hoping that others do the same; approaches to actively dealing the problem have been limited. One can try to either contact the administrator[s] of the machines infected or take a slight more risky proactive approach. 'LaBrea' - The Tarpit offers proof of concept? for an interesting open source approach.
Linux today, Wired and Linuxsecurity have covered this developing project, more information is available from Hackbusters here, here, here, here, here, or here.
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Im off to sulk. :)