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SCO's Other Investor: Sun Microsystems
Vicegrip writes "Apparently Sun not only bought extra licenses from SCO, but also obtained the option to buy a nice stake in the company: 'The pact, signed earlier this year, expanded the rights Sun acquired in 1994 to use Unix in its Solaris operating system. But there's more to the relationship: SCO also granted Sun a warrant to buy as many as 210,000 shares of SCO stock at $1.83 per share as part of the licensing deal, according to a regulatory document filed Tuesday.'" A reader points out Ransom Love's 2000 Linuxworld keynote speech.
Granting Sun a warrant to buy shares, eh? Sounds pretty overconfident to me. I'll hop right on that bandwagon and buy into the sinking ship!
KappaStone
If SCO wins, and their shares skyrocket, Sun can still buy at $1.83. If they don't win? Well, no sweat off Sun's back - the deal was done in the past and is a sunk cost. I'd love to be in that spot.
Since the stock deal represents roughly 1.5% of SCO's outstanding shares, Sun would probably be better off taking the cash and running. Since SCO is currently trading around $11 a share, Sun could buy at $1.83, sell immediately and pocket about $2 million profit. Given the recent runup in the SCO stock price, perhaps Sun is waiting to see how much more they could make...
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What are Sun thinking? They want everyone to migrate off Sun boxes like people have been doing to SCO?
Stuff like this annoys techies and techies have quite a lot of influence over IT purchasing decisions in many businesses. Do Sun think that supporting SCO is going to win them more business than it will lose them? My understanding of business is that it is a very bad move to do stuff that your customers dislike...
Reading the article it seemed that this was primarily a purchase of code.
Sun purchased drivers and other stuff to use in its i86 version of Solaris, along with the rights to show that code to others.
As for the stock options; SCO probably needed the cash, Solaris had the cash so the directors of Sun decided to gamble. Solaris gets options for a price, and if SCO does good they stand to make a really nice profit. SCO gets some additional cash and has a little protection from Solaris since any action by Sun has to include potential profits from using the stock options.
Who really cares anymore? Technically, this isn't news either. This is boring old propaganda which attempts to arouse the brainwashed masses (your typical Slashdot reader). SCO is just evil company of the month. Next month it will be Microsoft again. Just wait.
SUN probably wouldn't call that "without any costs what so ever".
Installed the Bubblemon yet?
I'm sure this was far from the only reason. They could have just adapted drivers from BSD with little licensing restrictions. Also, Sun had Solaris working on Intel long before this deal. My guess is that one of the primary motivations from Sun is the FUD factor. "Switch to Sun , the ONLY 100% in the clear, IP legit UNIX vendor."
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
On the other hand, it could be a case of marketing foot-in-mouth without clearing stuff with lawyers etc. *shrug*
... they *did*! Who donated the SMP motherboard Alan Cox used to write the initial SMP code in the Linux kernel? Oh, right. It was *SCO* (nee Caldera).
Um, yeah, but
My journal has hot
Face it...Sun is a business, and all businesses have the number one goal of making money. Sun makes money off of proprietary software. There's no way that they will risk any of it becoming open source, unless it makes good financial sense. Jumping on the bandwagon and promising to add to Linux gave them good publicity at the time. I have no clue whether or not that move actually made them money, but it definately couldn't hurt. Fast forward a couple of years, and now it makes more financial sense to protect your source and buy code, rather then use GPLed software and be forced to release your code.
I honestly don't believe SCO has a snowball's chance in hell of winning, but there's a chance. And Sun, like any business, is looking to cash in with as little risk as possible. If that means kissing SCO's ass and throwing them some money, it's a calculated and well thought out risk. And if/when SCO get's beaten like a red-headed stepchild in court, what happens to Sun? Like Microsoft, they'll say they were protecting their interests as any business would. And people will lap it up, and their involvement in the whole thing will become a footnote in history. It will be business as usual, with the company looking at what moves will potentially make them money. If open source is where it's at again, then they'll throw some weight behind. It makes good financial sense...
3. All the firms who've picked up a stake so far in the Unix code patent have been American firms. This could be the beginning of some polarisation, where all important IP is within the US. This could have serious repercussions for firms like Fujitsu, Siemens etc. who aren't based in the US.
Huh? How so? Linux is by far not US bound IP property... Neither is Word Perfect *, or Open Office... Need I continue.
Besides, how does that impact the rest of the world? It doesn't there is enough talent outside the US (I know shocking) to produce any missing piece to the IP puzzle in a short timespan*.
*That is if IP laws of the US are to be respected globally (another discussion alltogether)
So in short, No this will not change anything on the global market. It might however make working IT in the States hell.
Profiting? No, what they're actually doing is telling customers (current and future) that while SCO is wielding that axe trying to find someone to hit and profit from, Sun has already got all the licenses in place (since 1994) and people with Sun products don't have to worry.
Remember, SCO is running around telling people that even buying and running Linux will get you sued. Sun's just trying to say "whoa...none of our customers are going to get sued for things they've been running for quite some time now.
While the grandparent may have overstated the case, Sun is indeed going through some rough times these days, rougher than most big tech firms. Linux is presenting a tempting option that's eating away at Sun's customer base, forcing Sun to move into lower-end markets than they have in the past, and providing a drag on their high-margin business. The future outlook for Sun is cloudy at best (pun intended).
In short, Linux threatens Sun in the short- to medium-term far more than it threatens Microsoft, and if there's any third party who stands to gain by SCO succeeding in this current mess, it's Sun.
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Because they're up to something. What do microsoft and sun both have in common? An interest in seeing linux dissapear. Think about it...
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Remember that the "you" in this case was Ransom Love, who led the pre-SCO Caldera. Nobody who's at SCO now seems to have any conception of the history Caldera had with Linux. It's not clear they have much conception of the history the original SCO had with Unix, for that matter.
To the person who answered this with "And you believed this?" I'd probably say, "Sure, I believe Love meant what he said." Unfortunately, while corporations may be legal persons, they very often are legal persons with no long-term memory. (As someone pointed out, Darl McBride has claimed that SCO owns C++; while I have to give the man points for ambition, I don't think he has the faintest clue about Unix and Linux history.)
" My boss showed me the letter and asked what I thought because I work in IT. After I controlled my laughing, I told him to ignore it and make sure that we do not ever buy anything from Sun..."
Then if your boss has half a brain, you'll never be in a position of authority, because you're a moron. You don't make hardware and software purchase decisions based on politics or your personal feelings. You buy the best for the job at hand at a certain budget. If Solaris on Sparc makes the most sense for the task, then that's what you buy.
Good administrators and managers leave their personal feelings and pet causes at the door when they come to work. They bring in Linux because it makes sense for what they're doing, not because its cool have open source in the shop and they want to stick it to SCO/Sun/MS/Whoever.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Yeah, he didn't laugh because it would entail throwing out all their perfectly functional existing hardware and replacing it with Sun hardware in order to actually run Solaris, coupled with the inevitable problems that would only surface in the transitioning from AIX to Solaris and the lost revenue it would entail, he laughed because of personal preferences.
Since when was saving the company money by making the best use of the available resources and not making frivoulous purchases made a bad admin? Are you actually implying that a good admin should destablise the IT infastructure of his company once every decade or so by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on all brand new kit from a different vendor with whom you have an unproven support track record?
Oh, I don't know. I've always felt that taking the ethical track record of my vendors was only good common sense. If they have screwed their business partners and/or customers in the past, what would prevent them from doing the same to my company?
I haven't seen this letter from Sun. If I received a copy and I was still in a line position as opposed to staff, I would look long and hard at any new proposed purchase of Sun products.
Consider that Sun bought a 300K$ license in Feb, a month or more before SCO publicly went after IBM. Sun may be entirely innocent of anti-Linux actions. Or even intent.
300K$ is chump change in corporate circles. That's less than the cost of 2 programmers for a year.
If they got options that are now worth 2 million in the process, I'd say they are good businessfolk.
Some of use disagree with the notion of I"P" itself. It is immoral to claim exclusive rights over something that can be duplicated infinitely.
Debian is not a company. Even if every other linux user on the planet was killed, I could keep my debian tree going, and make sure as many other people as possible got a copy, legally or otherwise. Legality is not morality.
Its more complicated than that. When you set up a major system you need to look long term and think about support and licencing as well as technical merit.
He may be letting personal feelings into this but that doesn't change the facts that some people wouldn't be happy using software from a company that has resorted to trying to obtain customers from that sort of method, I'd personally like a little bit of trust in a provider-client relationship.
Anyway he may be going a little OTT, but when there's a lot at stake, simply 'choosing the best tool for the job' is more complicated than it seems.
Maybe SUN just thought that paying for an expanded license now was good economics. It's certainly going to be cheaper to buy it now than it would be if (by some bizarre course of events) SCO wins.
Sun claims to be the only Unix vendor still committed to maintaining their unix version. That claim would appear to be more-or-less true. This purchase just looks like an attempt to enforce that committment.
As a Sun customer, this news is a good thing. It means that Sun is working to make sure that nothing gets in the way of their ability to sell/support Solaris. There's a definate comfort in knowing that whatever madness happens in the courts, the effects on our systems will be minimal. Stability is a good thing.
I expect IBM will win against SCO, But if I were an AIX customer, then this court case would be another headache I don't need.
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Bullshit. I see this on here all the time and it makes me gag. Just because a business is a non-human entity does not mean it must be soulless. Yes, businesses exist to make money for their owners, but that does not require that those in charge of the business drop their convictions at the door. I don't think is wrong for decisions to not be based solely on money, rather, a modicum of morality added to the process it is a good thing. This is just as true for corporations as it is for individuals.
I see no reason why a company needs to be a totally rational system, deviod of any feelings or beliefs. If you and your business have the choice of buying the newest widget from company A that is slightly more expensive, or from company B that is slightly cheaper but is known to anally rape baby seals in the manufacturing process, which do you choose? If you are in a position of making such decisions, it seems idiotic and immoral to ignore everything outside the bottom line.
-Ted
-=-=- Quantum physics - the dreams stuff are made of.
I think the february deal right before the case makes it MORE suspect. And so do the stock options. It's not common to buy these kinds of rights with stock option deals... that's a bet on SCO's future, made right before the coming case went PUBLIC. We would have to assume at least SCO knew at the time the case was imminent. It looks to me like Sun did too.
And no, I'm not a paranoid kid or linux fanman, I'm just a regular cynic.
-pyrrho
Who would think better of SCO just because they were acquired? Instead, a SUN acquisition of SCO would just drag SUN's quickly-fading reputation down even further. I guess Sun might gain some goodwill if they were to buy SUN, fire current management, and cancel all the SCO legal attacks. But that won't happen, as Sun is presently PROMOTING the SCO attacks in full-page WSJ advertisements and letters to corporations. Sun has no interest in stopping the SCO barratry. And for anyone to buy SCO would give Mcbride et. all exactly what they want. We need to show them that crime doesn't pay!
Good point.
But let's assume for a minute that you're right on the second point. Let's say it was a misjudgement.
Why then would they exploit the situation in the NYTimes with full page ads explaining how they are legal and that AIX users should all switch, in turn adding to the FUD themselves.
I wouldn't consider them the "good guys" in this by any means.
As far as open office and Java support, they're still competing with Micros~1 no matter what the situation in the IX world looks like.
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