Slashdot Mirror


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.'"

1 of 395 comments (clear)

  1. And BayStar Capital by A+nonymous+Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There are two investors; BayStar Capital is the other one, and they are an investment house. Even if you could get a list of BayStar's investors, no doubt those are also investment houses, and trying to track down any M$ investment would take a lot of poking. Especially if they are private, not public, companies ...

    Look at it this way. Anyone with a brain knows that this $50M is not an investment, because an investment expects a return on investment. You may be able to find a few nutso small time investors who believe every press release they see and buy stock just in case, but those people generally don't have $50M.

    The only other reason to spend $50M is to get product in return. All SCO has to offer is its lawsuits against Linux. Now think, who would have use for such a product? So far, two license buyers have shown up, Sun and Microsoft. Sun has already been certified as being immune to the SCO infringement claims. Microsoft just dumped another $8M into SCO for an enhanced license, which is just as useless to them as the previous license purchase.

    There may be no proof that Microsoft is behind the $50M, but it looks like a pretty good first approximation.