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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.'"
But Bob McGrath, a spokesman for BayStar, disputed that claim...
You mean Bob, of all people, is involved in this? Shameful! What kind of message does this send to children?
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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[Y]ou shouldn't take slashdot seriously for financial news or advice.
You're right. You shouldn't use us for such advice. You should listen to us for advice on code issues. And based on this advice, we can tell you that SCO is full of crap.
I also respect your right to believe in salvation through corporation. It's just that most of us here do not.
Also, if you have a gargantuan trying to kill you---one who has a history of obliterating competition through less-than-licit means---such as Microsoft, you'd be paranoid, scared, and hateful too! After all, we're just humans.
"There are only two investors in this deal: BayStar Capital and the Royal Bank of Canada."
:-(
That's my bank
Does that mean I don't have to pay the full $699 now?
Oh, and can anyone recommend another good Canadian bank now? I suddenly don't have as much confidence in my current one's future with business decisions like this!
-Pat
There are two investors; BayStar Capital is the other one, and they are an investment house. Even if you could get a list of BayStar's investors, no doubt those are also investment houses, and trying to track down any M$ 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.
Infuriate left and right
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.
OK, this is about as stupid as anything /. has EVER posted. It's pure conspiracy theory, and has been flatly refuted by everyone involved. Hell, the eWeek article only gets by at all by saying, "some in the open source community suspect..."
It's not happening. Get over it.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
But BayStar's McGrath again stressed that Microsoft was not an investor in this deal. But he did point out that the fact that Microsoft had done business with SCO was seen as a positive when BayStar was looking at SCO as a potential good business and good investment.
Let's see... zero sales revenue/growth/planning, an entire profit projection based SOLELY on a rather speculative lawsuit based itself on evidence the plaintiff refuses to divulge, but oh yeah, Microsoft immediately bought one of their licenses (and to date is one of only two or three who have) so it must be a good business investment. Never mind that Microsoft is one of the larger players in Baystar's portfolios.
You may be Overly Critical Guy, but you are frequently more like Underly Logical Guy.
Drug dealers and terrorists aren't the only people who "launder" money.. This certainly continues to smell like a Microsoft circus act.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
and when other investors, who are only after a bottom line see SCO's stock going up like a rocket, they'll dive in and it'll create a run on SCO stock, pumping it so high that it will start a rally.
In the end MS will have "bought" mainstream acceptance of SCO's slander on Linux by artificially creating a return for the market investors.
Microsoft effectively OWNING Linux simply by progressively changing their name to SCO.
What's the last step? Simple:
Microsoft shelves Linux by making it illegal for anyone to run Linux.
That way MS can keep selling yearly Windows licenses.
Eventually the licenses will be by month.
After that, they'll be like cellular phone minutes.
If they succeed in taking control of the intellectual property that Linux represents, it'll be our worst nightmare: the average man will no longer be allowed to see how technology works, and it will cast us into a dark age.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
If they succeed in taking control of the intellectual property that Linux represents, it'll be our worst nightmare: the average man will no longer be allowed to see how technology works, and it will cast us into a dark age.
Your right. With MS controlling the Linux IP, the "common man" would lose access to Free/Open/NetBSD, ReactOS, OpenBe, GNU/HURD, FreeDos, and all the other countless free OSes out there that aren't Linux. It's all make sense to me now...
This comment could also have read:
Your right. MS will use this to kill Linux. How? Through changing their name from that of the biggest software house in the world to that of the smallest litigation house. Of course. It was so obvious, how could I have missed it? It's not like they'd just buy SCO or something. I mean, that'd be crazy talk. And that's assuming there is any merit to the lawsuit, and that it can prove anything more than that IBM broke a contract, if that.
By this time 2050, after all the lawsuits would be done, MS could easily own Linux. It all makes sense to me now.....
They have no trouble pretending to believe that SCO's claims are true, even though every single bit of "evidence" turned out to be just hot air. But on the other hand they demand evidence of everything Microsoft does but refuses to admit.
Microsoft has already given SCO money publicly (for their "Unix"-license), then "an anonymous company" gave SCO money for their "Linux-antidote" license, wonder what company that was... - and now again an anonymous company pays SCO money through a fund in which Microsoft and Microsoft-related Vulcan are big players.
Why all this secrecy? Why doesn't SCO show their evidence? Why does every investor in SCO want to remain anonymous?
Questions "Overly Critical Guy" surely can't answer.
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
I found interesting was a quote from the aritcle [http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1356730,00.a sp]
by an un-named source:
Why wouldn't anyone see something as obvious as this?
At my school everyone (even the well informed) are saying 'Linux is in great trouble.' and 'Linux has an invalid license.'.
Thank you
GrimReality
2003-10-18 15:06:03 UTC (2003-10-18 11:06:03 EDT)