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SCO Claims $15,300,000 From SCOsource

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the dry-understatement dept.

Hollins writes "Yesterday, SCO filed their latest 10-Q. In it, they claim over fifteen million dollars in revenue from their SCOsource initiative (mostly from Microsoft and Sun) with a decline in revenue from all other sources. A lot of interesting statements are in the 10-Q, including "The success of our SCOsource licensing initiative, at least initially, will depend to a great extent on the perceived strength of our intellectual property and contractual claims and our willingness to enforce our rights. Many, particularly those in the open source community, dispute the allegations of infringement that we have made"."

7 of 404 comments (clear)

  1. Two companies by sharlskdy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's clear that MS is exploring how to support their offensive on Linux, but why Sun? Same reason? I guess Solaris' greatest enemy is not MS anymore, but Linux.

    1. Re:Two companies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful
      It's clear that MS is exploring how to support their offensive on Linux, but why Sun? Same reason? I guess Solaris' greatest enemy is not MS anymore, but Linux.

      They should definitely be worried. Sun has sat on it's ass for years riding it's reputation while stagnating. There is NOTHING interesting happening at Sun at this point. I don't wait with baited breath about a hardware announcement anymore or have hope that we'll see anything but 250MHz bumps in speed every 6 months or so if we're lucky. Sun is becoming irrelevent and they are their own worst enemy.

    2. Re:Two companies by jellomizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well Sun just hates IBM. IBM and Sun make similar products for a similar business. If SCO Wins it is a great loss to IBM. So Sun Makes out. If SCO Looses oh well at least they didn't bother Sun during the interim. either way Sun comes out smelling like roses. At this point Sun doesn't want to be bothered with legal stuff on their Linux Strategy. Although they support the open source model they are not bound to it. So if they have to pay to "Legally" own Linux and use it, so they will. Sun has enough problems and they probably cant take on the legal battle. And if it allows a pot shot at IBM at the same time then all the better.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  2. 10Q and all those warnings by Dancin_Santa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The 10Q is known as the Chicken Little of financial documents precisely because of the warnings it lists in the forward looking statements.

    It wouldn't be too far fetched to see something like "In the event that a terrorist attack destroyed the databases containing proof of our IP claims, it is possible that we may not be able to meet our cash flow expectations"

  3. Hang on a minute... by Zocalo · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It mentions the IBM court case and it mentions the Red Hat case. What happened to the German case that they lost pertaining to their defamation of Linux? The one that undermines their position in the IBM/Red Hat cases to the potential investors that will be reading this?

    Can someone familiar with the 10-Q requirements explain whether this omission is permissable (because it was brought in Germany?) or has SCO done something else naughty?

    --
    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
  4. "perceived strength" by dtfinch · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Perceived is the key word here.

    Notice that the licenses sold to Sun and Microsoft account for 100% of their SCOsource revenue, and neither appear to be Linux related, meaning that they've fooled noone into buying their $699 licenses, not even a single idiot.

    This means that absolutely linux users, out of the millions out there, believes they have a valid argument enough to buy a license. Not 1%, not 0.00001%. Not a single one. This should say something to investors, but looking back on history, it probably won't.

    Their quarterly report shows that their IP claims have no perceived strength at all, but rather it shows producers of operating systems threatened by Linux pumping money into FUD marketting business to make the campaign last as long as possible.

  5. Re:Slashdotted! by kfg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    According to people who have actually tried it it isn't even possible to sign up for a user license, at any rate.

    No license is actually available.

    It's all a big dog and pony show (with fake dogs and ponies) and even SCO staff are puzzled and frustrated, particularly the sales staff who actually have to tell people to take a hike.

    Cute, huh?

    KFG