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SCO Targets US Government, TiVo
An anonymous reader writes "According to SCO, if you have a TiVo set-top box, or those models of Sharp Zaurus which use Linux, someone now owes them $32, since the company wants money 'for each embedded system using Linux.' SCO also says government agencies must pay up to $699 for each copy of Linux that they use."
Read the article. They're demanding $32 a copy from the OEM; in this case, the TiVo company themselves. Individual users are NOT liable for this, they cannot demand this and they won't get it. If TiVo ships code it shouldn't have, then they are liable, not their customers.
A company truly serious about a genuine claim would't be behaving this way, IMO. SCO wouldn't be trying to shake down users in advance of a judgment; rather, they'd get a judgment, and then, armed with that, their shakedown would have MUCH more teeth.
They used to use a 2.1.24 (plus mods) kernel, so they should fall outside SCO's demands. I don't know if the latest TiVos are using 2.4-based kernels, but I'd be surprised if they are.
Is this significant?
http://biz.yahoo.com/t/s/scox.html
http://www.sco.com/company/feedback/index.html visit their webpage and tell them were they can stick their license fees.
Obama = Socialism.
Not to mention the fact that the Series 1 Tivos use a 2.2 kernel, and thus would not be subject to any action even if SCO's claims are true. SCO only alleges copied code in 2.4.x kernels. The article made no mention of Tivo, I guess the submitter made the assumption that Tivo would be subject to this.
Enigma
SEC reports from SCO
... read on.
The insider purchases and sales are "Form 4". Insiders have to file these within 48-72 hours or something like that.
If you wanna learn a little bit about being a stock geek
First, how to find the stuff. Start at www.sec.gov. Look in the second section, "Filings and Forms". You can read the "Quick Edgar Tutorial" if you want, or go straight into "Search for Company Filings".
Click on "Companies & Other Filers" and type in "SCO".
Choose "Sco Group Inc".
Click on all the filings and start reading financialese. Hell, if you know any programming languages or scripting languages, financialese is not that hard to figure out.
Form 4 is "insider sales and purchases".
Form 10-Q is "quarterly report".
Form 10-K is "annual report".
Form PRE 14A and Form DEF 14A are the "proxy statement".
The proxy statement is where you find out how many shares and options the executives and directors get.
The form 4 is where you see many SCO execs selling mucho stock.
An executive can be fined or serve jail time if they lie in these reports, or if they fail to provide required information, so the quality of the information is better than other stuff they say which is NOT under penalty of perjury.
Watch out for the "risk factors". The way that companies get around the "must tell truth" and "must tell whole truth" requirements is to swamp their risk factors with extraneous crap. Like, for instance, the risk factors might say: "1. Martians might invade and disrupt our market. 2. Microsoft sells a product just like ours. 3. Airplanes might fly into our headquarters in Duluth. 4. Our top executives might catch Ebola." Only #2 is a real risk factor but they swamp it.
About 80% of the financial information available on the web is derivative of these reports, so if you read them on sec.gov, you get better info and cut out a lot of crap. Anything news-related takes a good long time to get into an SEC-report so you still have to read the news, but you can dig a lot of information out of the forms.
Have fun!
SCO Risk Factors
Jesus. Read some of this stuff, it basically outlines exactly what they've been trying. It was Filed on the 13th of June.
Risk Factors
We do not have a history of profitable operations.
The April 30, 2003, quarter was our first quarter of profitability. If we do not receive SCOsource licensing revenue in future quarters and our revenue from the sale of our operating system platform products and services continues to decline, we will need to further reduce operating expenses in order to maintain profitability or generate positive cash flow. If we are unable to generate positive cash flow from operations, we will not be able to implement our business plan without additional funding, which may not be available to us.
Our future SCOsource licensing revenue is uncertain.
We initiated the SCOsource licensing effort in January 2003 to review the status of UNIX licensing and sublicensing agreements and to identify others in the industry that may be currently using our intellectual property without obtaining the necessary licenses. This effort resulted in the execution of two license agreements during the April 30, 2003 quarter. These two license agreements will be typical of those we expect to enter into with developers, manufacturers, and distributors of operating systems in that they are non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty-free, paid up licenses to utilize the UNIX source code, including the right to sublicense that code. Due to a lack of historical experience and the uncertainties related to SCOsource licensing revenue, we are unable to estimate the amount and timing of future licensing revenue, if any. If we do receive revenue from this source, it may be sporadic and fluctuate from quarter to quarter. SCOsource licensing revenue is unlikely to produce stable, predictable revenue for the foreseeable future.
There's so much more...
Pursuit of the litigation against IBM and, potentially, others will be costly, and we expect our costs for legal fees could be substantial. In addition, we may experience a decrease in revenue as a result of the loss of sales of Linux products and initiatives previously undertaken jointly with IBM and others affiliated with IBM. We anticipate that participants in the Linux industry will seek to influence participants in the markets in which we sell our products to reduce or eliminate the amount of our products and services that they purchase. There is also a risk that the assertion of our intellectual property rights will be negatively viewed by participants in our marketplace and we may lose support from such participants. Any of the foregoing could adversely affect our position in the marketplace and our results of operations.
Go read. Now. Jesus christ. They have like 3 pages of this stuff.