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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...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
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.
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
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.