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Microsoft Behind SCO Cash Investment?
An anonymous reader writes "eWEEK has got a story up suggesting Microsoft may be behind yesterday's $50mil cash investment in SCO. 'As an investment firm, BayStar leads, creates and participates in a number of PIPEs (Private Investments in Public Equity). Many of these deals involve investment money from other companies, including Microsoft.'"
You heard incorrectly. Microsoft owned a portion of the original SCO many years ago before Caldera bought it, but they sold it.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
"SCO spokesman Blake Stowell echoed those sentiments, telling eWeek on Friday that Microsoft was not an investor in SCO through this deal. "There are only two investors in this deal: BayStar Capital and the Royal Bank of Canada."
Thanks for the info eweek, I was about to open a bank account there.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
I wouldn't put anything past Microsoft, but this article doesn't provide any strong evidence that MS is really behind this particular cash infusion. And who needs a conspiracy theory about MS sneaking indirect funding to SCO when MS has been blatantly shoveling money to SCO all year? MS gave SCO 8 million in the first quarter, then 5 million in the second. The just-released SCO 8K states that Microsoft just paid them Another 8 million dollars! That is a grand total of $21 million MS has paid this year for vague "expanded licensing rights with respect to SCO's UNIX source code."
Whether this alleged BayStar/Microsoft link is true or not, it is already crystal clear that Microsoft has been directly paying SCO to conduct this underhanded attack on Linux! Sun certainly appears to be doing the same thing.
-Fyodor
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> Aren't they already a major stockholder in SCO,
> since not long before they licensed Unix, the
> whole shebang, from SCO?
You are very confused. Microsoft once owned some of the old SCO. They sold it quite a while ago. Then just recently Caldera bought SCO and then renamed themselves SCO.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
At the time of this posting, SCO is around 41, Sun is around 3.
I'm assuming you meant 21.
You need to understand that the price of an individual share of stock is meaningless without considering how many shares of stock are outstanding. Look at the market capitalization instead: the market thinks that SCOX is worth $250 million (yes, it's still ridiculous), and that SUNW is worth $11,500 million.
I guess it's a given that the stock market is a game of sorts, but if the stock market gives more value to SCO than a Sun or Apple, then what good is it?
Well, in a bubble like this, it does seem unfair that the market transfers money into the hands of foolish speculators who buy stocks at inflated prices, but remember that the money comes out of the hands of idiots who buy stocks at grotesquely inflated prices. It's at least a slight improvement.
What does Google lose, for instance, by staying private?
The chance to expand their business with the massive piles of cash which an IPO can bring but without all the entanglements that venture capital may require or the low-risk business plan which a bank loan or bond sale would need. In Google's case, they're doing fine with the money they have and there's no market they'd really want to expand into.
Yep, you read that right. From a Yahoo SCOX post:
...
l
SCOX buys MSFT license -- WTF?
by: jqtechworker 10/18/03 12:40 am
Msg: 53640 of 53642
[quote]
Microsoft said in the joint report that it has "taken a number of significant steps to revise substantially" the Microsoft Communications Protocol Program, or MCPP, in response to feedback by the plaintiffs and potential licensees.
The company said that as a result of its efforts, four additional companies have executed MCPP licenses since the July 24 status conference: Cisco Systems Inc. (NasdaqNM:CSCO - News) , Tandberg Television Ltd., Laplink Software Inc. and SCO Group Inc. (NasdaqSC:SCOX - News; SCOX).
[/quote]
http://biz.yahoo.com/djus/031017/1856000958_3.htm
It's well known that MS uses Unix stuff in it's operating systems - the BSD TCP/IP stack for instance.
And these 21$ million might seem much to you but for a company with such huge revenues like MS these are just peanuts.
That's irrelevant. You're trying to mash a bunch of unrelated facts together.
SCO is claiming IP issues with Linux, not BSD. Microsoft used code (which may not even exist in the kernel any more, for all we know) from BSD in the TCP stack. Furthermore, I've yet to hear even any insinuations that the TCP stack contains any infringing code, and find it extremely unlikely.
And these 21$ million might seem much to you but for a company with such huge revenues like MS these are just peanuts. If you finish you education some day and get a job in big business, you'll see that such stuff are really minor contracts.
It's really annoying number of folks on Slashdot like to try to sound sophisticated by pish-poshing large sums of money. Microsoft is *not* in the practice of doing this. At both of the large tech companies I'm familiar with, it's standard procedure to fight almost *anything* WRT IP claims (Intel, for instance, will fight claims that want more than $100K), and as I pointed out above, any claims would be phenomenally tenuous and extremely unlikely to stick. If you're a tech company flush with money and you don't have a policy of fighting any lawsuits aimed at you, you'll be stripped of your money in no time.
A good example is the recent fight between that little company that patented web browser plugins and Microsoft. The patent is pretty straightforward and clearly covers IE -- it's a far more reasonable IP claim than the SCO business. However, Microsoft is fighting it tooth and nail.
Yes, Microsoft is funding SCO. Yes, they are doing it because it's a cost-effective way of fighting Linux.
May we never see th