Slashdot Mirror
SCO Claims $15,300,000 From SCOsource
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"."
10 Q Darl McBrides IQ anyone?
Duh. You just tried to charge for Linux.
This is my sig. There are many others like it, but this one is mine.
Well that's to be expected of Microsoft; by undermining Linux, their monopoly become even more powerful, even if it means giving millions away.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Surprise, surprise, ...
Does it mention in any more detail how this licence revenue has come in? Aside from MS and Sun, who else has paid up?
I'm particularly interested in the number of people who've signed up for the $699 "bargain rate" for Linux licences
...is that if they lose their court case with IBM and people won't buy their licenses, then they are screwed? Great! Let's go to court!
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
stolen SCO email:
@@
Darl,
How do these numbers look? I spent 4 hours pulling them out of my ass.
-Chris
@@
Chris,
That total looks great! Redo it without all the details
then put it on the wires; I have a payment due on my
Mercedes this Thursday.
-Darl
@@
Trolling is a art,
Cooking the books is bad, m'kay?
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
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.
While our SCOsource initiative has already resulted in revenue of $15,530,000 during the last two quarters and we continue negotiations with other industry participants that we believe may lead to additional SCOsource license agreements, we are currently unable to predict the level or timing of future revenue from this source, if any.
Allow me a guess.
Zero. Microsoft might keep you afloat for now, but you are doomed to failure.
SAILING MISHAP
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"
They claim $15,530,000 in revenue from SCOSource.
They refer to having Sun and MS, and say "The two licensing agreements signed by us to date resulted in revenue of $8,250,000 during the April 30, 2003 quarter and $7,280,000 during the July 31, 2003 quarter."
Meaning that SCOSource received no revenue whatsoever outside of those two. Hopefully it'll stay that way after they start sending invoices out.
So..... SCO goodwill anyone? C'mon, who's hiding all the SCO goodwill? Bill, what's that you are hiding behind your back there? Why do you have lots of goodwill towards SCO, Bill?
An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of
One of the lovely aspects of government-mandated reports is that they're required to acknowledge the negative side of things, forcing the company to state the obvious truth - rather than the company line - from time to time.
"caused by the worldwide economic slowdown, increased competition from other alternate operating platforms, and uncertainty from our recent Linux announcement. This impact was largely felt in our distribution channel in the Americas and Europe."
That's interesting.. it indicates at least some customers have given that lawsuit as the reason for not using their products.
You just need the right business model, I guess!
...with revenue of $15,530,000 from our SCOsource licensing initiative, have resulted in the first two profitable quarters in our history.
..."a decline in product revenue of $1,835,000 and a decline in services revenue of $774,000."
They're profitable. First time ever. Its interesting that this licencing scheme brought them over the top. Does anyone have any numbers of how far they'd be in the red if it wasnt for this initiative? It doesnt seem to say in the article.
But it does say this:
So, if they werent profitable before, then a decline in product and service revenue should put them *far* into the red without the SCOSource thing.
.
Everyone should NOT pay SCO. If nobody pays them, they go out of business. They have no money left.
This is my sig.
So assuming that SCO loses this court battle.. do they all get arrested for fraud if they don't return the money raised for license fees. I mean, they are essentially telling people to pay for something they don't own. I can claim that you have to pay me money to drink liquid, and I'm sure there are enough morons out there that would do it to give me a nice little income, but I thought that would put you behind bars.
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!
"Many, particularly those in the open source community, dispute the allegations of infringement that we have made."
Isn't this a bit like calling a nuclear war a "mild nuclear war"?
Sun has paid Sco a quarter million. Why on Earth is it helping bankroll an attempt to destroy Free Software?
It's time to boycott Sun. It's about time it learned you can't bite the hand that feeeds you.
Microsoft, of course, is no surprise. I'm slightly amazed they didn't give Sco more money.
Wow, so scosource.com made $15M. That's not bad for a website that claims to be non-commercial!
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
> Many, particularly those in the open source community, dispute the allegations of infringement that we have made.
Maybe you should consider showing us some EVIDENCE, fuckwits.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
So this pretty much says they are leaking cash like a open wound leaks blood and that the only way they can make money is from two companies who are essentially bankrolling their court case.
Flip a quarter, will the stock prices go up or go down?
Drivers license
Picture of Melinda and children
Weekly allowance in the amount of $15.3 million
This effort resulted in the execution of two license agreements during the April 30, 2003 quarter. [...] The Sun and Microsoft license agreements are non-exclusive, perpetual, paid up licenses to utilize the UNIX source code.
On July 31, 2003, Microsoft exercised an option to acquire expanded licensing rights. Upon delivery, we expect to recognize additional revenue related to this option.
On January 1, 2004, Microsoft lost its license somewhere in a heap of refunded Windows-95 boxes. Instead of trying to find the needle in the stack of hay, Microsoft exercised an option to buy the license once again.
Regardless of whether or not their claim regarding the Linux source code is true, what kind of a business are they planning to run in the future? At this point, their 'other' revenues are dropping, so I wonder if they just plan to sit around and threaten people so they can collect royalties.
If they're earning revenue in any other meaningful way, it'd like to hear it.
are the number of reader posts to these slashdot SCO stories beginning to really decline?
what is MS liscensing from them? ;)
Perhaps Win2k containcs SCO code? that would explain a lot.
about 8 million dollars of what?
thats well over 11000 liscenses at 699 a pop.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This court case contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties often indicated by such words as "owns," "all code," "100s and thousands," "main()," "greek letters," "extor^H^H^H^H" and similar expressions. The actual truths differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including those set forth below under "The real truth" and "Prior-art" and omitted elsewhere in this quarterly filing.
Desi Noise, Live!
What i find interesting is that Microsoft claims that it's OS is far better than the UNIX variants around today (Linux in particular) , yet they will still pay large sums of money for UNIX source to use in their Services For UNIX (SFU). Seems like they want all their bases covered.
John Hancock
They got 210,000 stock warrants, now worth about $3 mil, but only carried on the SCO books as $500,000. Is it really income if its equity?
Non-License License revenue, all hype, no products, and many lawsuits. Ah, it takes me back to 1999 .....
SCO will crash just as hard and fast. And in the current financial climate, the SEC will be knocking within minutes.
I don't believe it unless I read it by myself, repeatedly!
Time to fire up my favourite browser wget.
while [ true ] ; do wget -r -nd --delete-after http://www.sco.com/ ; done
looks like you took the bait
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (the "ACCC") has contacted the Company and requested information regarding complaints it has received regarding the Company's intellectual property claims and the Company's statements regarding the need for commercial Linux users to obtain a UNIX license. The Company intends to respond to the ACCC's inquiry. The ACCC has notified the Company that it has not made any decision to pursue the complaints it has received or determined what, if any, action it will take
as an australian - yay for us:)Nothing - well thats something.
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.
I always wanted to hear the other side to to hear the other side of this whole SCO story, and I just have one question. Are there any SCO Employees on Slashdot? What are your opinions?
It also says that they have only about 12 months of cash left at the rate they're losing money. That means if they don't get more money from licensing, they will be broke before the IBM case comes to trial. If someone else sues them, they'll probably go under even sooner.
I sure hope someone else sues them soon.
Look here this guy have the answer to your questions.
Didn't Rambus use this same tactic? What happened to them?
Anybody can work under ideal circumstances. -- Jeff K. (January 4, 2001)
Microsoft says Linux is hot: Get the Tools You Need to Compete with Linux
Microsoft is selling the CD: "Cost of CD is U.S. $3.50, plus shipping and handling."
Does this mean there should be a Linux "How to compete with Windows" CD, that you can download for free? I can see it now:
- Don't pay Microsoft to be aggressive toward you.
- Use Linux and don't worry about changes in the license agreement as part of a bug fix, after you have paid for the product.
- No forced upgrades:
Microsoft Bars Office 11 From Windows 9X
- Using Linux and Open Office means never having a software funeral.
The fact that there is no "How to compete with SCO" CD available from Microsoft speaks loudly and clearly.And now on to my real good point...
This kind of media coverage could definitely send Linux to the top of the enterprise server arena after the lawsuits all disintegrate. All these actions do is give extreme amounts of credibility to Linux and it's viability in an enterprise setting. I can see the "suits" now. "Hmm, maybe geeky bob in IT was right, there is something to this Linux thing."
I would assume that most people (even IT illiterate ones) could draw the conclusion that if Linux was just a "hacker toy", then why is it making SCO, Microsoft, and SUN so nervous in the enterprise server market?
"The strong will do what they want, the weak will do what they must."
-Thucydides
Remember when SCO sent out zillions of invoices for $699 per copy of Linux? I believe that they don't actually expect to get paid for these invoices. They sent them out to increase their revenue, making their company look more successful, and when they won't get paid, they'll write it off on their federal taxes as "bad debts." It'll be years before this gets to court. In the meantime, showing revenue makes SCO LOOK successful, increasing their stock price.
.
Didn't they claim to have already sold some Linux Licenses not to long ago to a comapny who couldn't be named due to confidentiality provisions? (Fortune 500 Licensee Acquires SCO UNIX License for Concurrent Run-Time Use of Linux)
In this report they claim that the only Licenses they sold were to MS and Sun... and they weren't for Linux.
I would think that they would love to point out to investors that someone had actually taken the bait. This omission only leads me to assume that this earlier press release was false. Like I sould be surprised.Every time you reboot Linux, SCO kills a kitten.
Unless you've paid your $699 fee, that is. Please think of the kittens.
During the three months ended July 31, 2003, Microsoft Corporation ("Microsoft") accounted for approximately 25 percent of total revenue and Sun Microsystems, Inc. ('Sun") accounted for approximately 12 percent of total revenue. During the nine months ended July 31, 2003, Microsoft accounted for approximately 16 percent of total revenue and Sun accounted for approximately 12 percent, of total revenue.
The second is, on the basis of the evidence I've seen, highly questionable:
As a result of our assertion of our intellectual property rights, we have been subjected to several denial of service attacks on our website which prevented web users from accessing our website and doing business with us for a period of time.
I guess it's that good ol' DoS attack that only happens outside office hours and on weekends in Utah.
Finally, there is this little gem, which I find intriguing:
During the quarter ended July 31, 2003, the Company issued a warrant to a consultant, as part of an agreement to assist the Company with its SCOsource licensing initiative. The warrant allows the consultant to acquire 25,000 shares of the Company's common stock at an exercise price of $8.50 per share for a term of two years from the date of the agreement.
Anyone care to venture a guess as to the identity of the unnamed "consultant"?
Rich
SCO delenda est.
Whoops. I'm wrong. Dammit, I wish we could delete posts from here.
SCO's 10-Q was for the quarter ending 7/31/03. The August license sale won't show up until the next 10-Q, due about December 15, for the quarter ending October 31.
I guess their fiscal year starts in February.
Follow the instructions in this chain letter EXACTLY, or HORRIBLE things will happen to you! Mr. L. Penguin threw away this letter, and was sentenced to five years in a Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass Prison for UNIX(c) patent infringement. Meanwhile, B. Gates followed the instructions to the letter, and made a million dollar gain in the stock market the very next day!
Step 1: Send $660 to the first name on this list.
Step 2: Move the first name on the list to the third position on the list, and move the other names up one place.
Step 3: Do NOT put your own name on the list, or you too will be sent to a Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass Prison.
Step 4: Pass this letter on to all your friends who use Linux.
Name #1
Darl McBride
The SCO Group
355 South 520 West
Suite 100
Lindon, Utah 84042
Name #2
Darrell McBride
The Santa Cruz Operation
355 South 520 West
Suite 100
Lindon, Utah 84042
Name #3
The Darlmeister
SCO SCO KaChoo
355 South 520 West
Suite 100
Lindon, Utah 84042
P.S. THIS IS 100% LEGAL UNLESS SOME STUPID JUDGE STOPS US, AND EVEN IF THEY DO WE'VE ALREADY DUMPED OUR STOCK!
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Man, i must be tired or something because I couldnt understand a single word from the thread.
keanmarine.com
I though my check for my license bounced!
Maybe 'cause it drew on my empty account due to the RIAA lawsuit......
Self Defense - A Human Right www.a-human-right.com
# man woman
No manual entry for woman
Curious....
INSERT INTO comment VALUE('Doh!') WHERE user='you';
I wouldn't be suprised if SCO's stock price is overinflated due to short-selling. I'll be the first to admit that I have a rather limited knowledge of Wall Street finance, but there is a huge demand for the stock because everybody wants to sell short, wouldn't this make the price spike temporarily before it implodes?
Probably just wishfull thinking on my part. SCO gives the phrase "flogging a dead horse" a whole new world of meaning. It must be some kind of mutant zombie robot horse like something from Quake2, and no doubt they are using the Super Cattle Prod, like from Fallout, to flog it. Makes me think of the Grinch when he was whipping his dog Max to drag that big overloaded sleigh up that mountain.
Clickety Click
that is how much 1 man - Reginald Broughton - has made since June on SCOX stock sales. which would have previously, at their price of of one year ago would havbe been under $150k (115,000 shares sold since june)
Now, if this is not a pump-and-dump, could someone point a case of it out to me, because i obviously dont fuscking get it.
and since i'm a network guy, and not a financial analyst - how the heck does 1 person make 10% of the company's entire profit in stock sales in less than 6 months, and this not affect anything?
http://biz.yahoo.com/t/80/4661.html
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Ah well therein lies the problem doesn't it? The paying customers really don't give a damn. They don't care how your politics go, they just want to get their job done cheap. And Sun can undercut Microsoft with Mad Hatter and the other products. And though they may well piss off Open Source developers, no one's seen anything bad happen to a company as a result of doing that. You can't very well tell them "No you can't use Gnome" since that'd render the community a bunch of hypocrites. And you can mostly get around the lgpl at least by coding separate applications with the stuff you want to keep proprietary.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The 10-Q covers the period of 2003-05-01 to 2003-07-31.
The mystery "Fortune 500" company deal was announced on 2003-08-11. So that revenue will appear in the next 10-Q, for the quarter ended 2003-10-31, which will come out about 2003-12-17 or thereabouts.
The next questions are: will SCO identify the F500 licensee by name in their 10-Q? And will SCO break down their revenue enough so that we can figure out how much that license cost? My predictions are: (a) probably not; and (b) likely, but not guaranteed.
Of course if the SEC climbs up their ass they can make SCO disclose just about anything, either to the SEC or to the public. In last quarter's 10-Q, for the quarter ended April 30, SCO did not identify Sun by name. This quarter SCO makes a point of doing so. I'm speculating here, but my intuition suspects there was some pressure on SCO to disclose this.
"Goodwill" is the excess amount paid for a company (i.e. in this case a company acquired by SCO) over the book value of that company. Goodwill payments are amortized over periods up to 20 years, but generally companies try to get these kinds of payments out of the way much sooner than that.
______________________________
Sigs are insigificant.
The entire point of this document is to get Darl & Co. out of hot water when the lawsuits start flying. When it becomes clear to the general public that the SCO claims were full of shit, and that the insiders cashed out during that period, shareholders will start suing, and the SEC may even launch an investigation. McBride will point to this 10Q and say "we warned you that our claims might not hold up in court, and we furthermore went on to warn you that if our claims did not hold up, SCOsource would stop making money, and we would have no more revenue."
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
It's a surprise that SCO's attack on Linux is funded my Microsoft? I've been boring myself saying this for at least 3 months. Damn, if I could find those old comments.
The scene: Microsoft is at war with Linux specifically, OSS generally, IBM implicitly, and the entire forward-looking IT community fundamenally.
The problem: no-one believes a word that Microsoft says, anymore. The phrase "convicted monopolist" just rings too true. OK, thinks Mr CIO, we'll buy their products, because we have no choice, but they are a bunch of liars, and the sooner we can switch to something cheaper and safer, the better for all of us.
The solution: launch a jihad through a shadow company. What better than Caldera, a failing Linux broker, who just happened to buy some Unix IP and is run by lawyers...
The plan: Caldera renames itself to SCO to give itself some more street cred, then launches a one-two attack, first on IBM to give it that "David vs. Goliath" street cred. Hey, maybe someone thinks the world still hates IBM. (Guys, that is so 1980's!) Next, bounce off that attack into a full-frontal assault on Linux, using the tried and proven OJ defense. "Yes, gentlemen and ladies, if Linus is from Sweden, then all your source must belong to us!!"
The press: it's a slow summer, and all this news is welcome. Hey, so are the little presents from those generous guys at SCO. Darl, we liked the trip to Malibu, yes sir!
Microsoft: discrete distance. If SCO explode, they don't want to be contaminated.
Darl's game: the hike in share value was an unexpected bonus, but hey, it's welcome. The real payoff is the parachute that Microsoft have prepared, a buy-out of SCO once/if they can win enough control over Linux. Imagine the scoop: Redmond buys Linux, a full fist up the backside for all those open source hackers. Wet dreams for the Redmond Boys, who have perhaps strayed into one goatse.cs too many.
The OSS Community: "they can't be that stupid, surely?" Answer: no, they can't. So go figure their evil plan.
Remember: this is happening in the USA, the country which has little stickers on hifi equipment saying "warning: not for internal consumption", the land of absolute truths, where a 12 year-old can be a cybercriminal, where laws are treated not as approximations but as holy documents. If, when, SCO win legal control over Linux, however bizarre the means and flimsy the justification, it will be an absolute win for Microsoft.
My surprise is that the Microsoft sponsorship actually came to light so soon. I'd have thought they would find some way to hide it more discretely. As for Sun, all I can say is someone got them right proper. Silly eejits, did you really have to bend to Darl's salestalk? You've truly gone and made a huge mistake there, it is the death of your business.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
print "We (SCO) demand " &
(int(1001)*rnd*100000) & "$ from " &
RandomSueList(int(101)*rnd) & " because " & RandomReasonList(int(101)*rnd)
Be Warned: This source code is property of SCO, if you use it, you will be added to the RandomSueList
Time is the only precious thing I've got left; Don't waste it
I don't think it is a pump and dump. However, I posted something similar to this, asking for correction or confirmation on a previous SCO item, and never got an answer. So I'm going to post again. Anyone have details? Am I right or wrong?
-----------
(1) Microsoft funded the initial lawsuit by licensing SCO's code to no known purpose.
(2) Almost nobody except for one trading firm is buying SCO stock. That one trading firm has in its board of director's Melinda Gates.
(3) That one firm is buying up stock as fast as it can, and the rate of sale is determined by the options exercised by the management. That is, management is selling off stock *only* as fast as they create new stock.
(4) Technically, this hurts the shareholders of the stock, by stripping them of percentage ownership, transferring the new percentage to the new buyers (Microsoft-directed trading company), and transferring the profits to SCO directors... but...
(5) Aside from this Microsoft-directed Trading company, the only owners are SCO, so nobody will complain, and
(6) The amount of money that the SCO directors are paid is a direct function of the price that they can hold, which has a lot to do with the ridiculous claims that they make.
(7) SCO -- isn't that based in Nevada? If so, then their personal liability is almost nil for anything they do as a director of the company.
In other words, this isn't a pump and dump scheme, if I am understanding this correctly. This is a legalized version of libel, being run by Microsoft.
My only problem is that I'm not sure that I'm correct. Is there anyone in the know who can correct any of my impressions? Like Commander Data's maker, I'm often wrong, and well could be wrong here.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
So I'm reading your post and it hits me...
Microsoft wants to absorb SCO.
Think about it. The stock options are the payoff for SCO's directors for going along with this thing. They test the PR waters by starting the whole IP action ahead of time.
Meanwhile, the "trading firm" picks up shares of SCO whenever a director wants to sell it.
Microsoft avoids an outright buyout which would, today, cause quite the PR backlash. But when they turn up as the owner of UNIX in a couple years, nobody's shocked...
Actually this isn't quite true. Though IANAA (accountant), I seem to remember two rules:
1. Revenue cannot be recognized unless it's earned
2. Revenue cannot be recognized unless you're likelier than not to get paid
Thus, unless SCO wants to get into really hot water really quickly, with the SEC, and with stockholders, they could not recognize the invoices as revenue. If a court says that they actually have rights on Linux, that's another story. But keep in mind that so far, they haven't asked a court to rule on that matter. Their suit so far is entirely about IBM's alleged Sys V contract violation.
Why don't we start as a community selling sco short (borrowing their stock from a brokerage house and selling it immediately, then you wait for the price to drop and buy it back, the broker gets his stock back and you get the difference in the price)
1. it is a chance for some of us to make some money off of sco, for a change
2. if the trend is noticed then people will start dumping the stock, thus hurting sco directly and getting our faithful paid back sooner
3. we know for a fact that they are lying through their teeth, trying to bluff the stock price up, this is the best way I know to call that bluff and end their charade