SCO News Roundup

Bootsy Collins managed to combine all of today's SCO stories. He writes "The firm of David Boies, SCO's attorney in charge of their Linux IP cases, has announced their compensation (so far) from SCO: $1 million USD in cash, and $8 million in SCO stock. Keeping that stock price high until they can sell is clearly of some importance to Boies, Schiller and Flexner LLP. Given the cost of selling a $50 million convertible note to fund their legal actions, the actual cost to SCO is more like $17 million USD. Meanwhile, SCO CEO Darl McBride is saying that Novell's purchase of SuSE violates a non-competition agreement reached when SCO bought the Unix source, and thus is legally actionable by SCO. Over at the Register, they've noticed that SCO's latest SEC filings indicate how firmly they're putting all their eggs in the legal basket: the filings effectively say that 'SCO has already lost business from its loyal customer base, and it expects to lose more.' And finally, in response to a poor response to SCO's attempts to get Fortune 1000 companies to pay $699/server for 'Linux licenses' before the fee jumped to $1399, SCO has announced that the $699 discount rate will apply to the end of 2003. Hurry before time runs out again."

Comments

Comments on today's SCO conference call

[FunWithHeadlines]

I found these comments from the excellent GrokLaw site by someone who was able to get in on this morning's teleconference call set up by SCO. See here for where I got the comments from, as well as PJ's commentary on recent events in SCOville:

Authored by: radicimo on Tuesday, November 18 2003 @ 12:40 PM EST

Conference call just ended. I had a *1 for questions, but they just cut off the conference before things got too hairy, with a "We have no more callers". LIARS. Also, interesting how Dion Cornett was unable to ask his question. Makes me wonder out loud.

1. They referred to SCOsource licensing as one of the contingencies that created the payment for Boies (really cagey about it too). However they also said that Microsoft in no way was funding the lawsuit. That is a patently untrue then, as MSFT has funded the SCOsource licensing.

I think this one is really important to note. IF there ever is a securities fraud investigation of TSG, some of their comments in the call are patently self-contradictory, and if I was "allowed" to ask my questions these would have come out.

2. Still seems that there are no other licensees besides MSFT and SUNW. I was going to force them to get specific about this and find out when Sun payment will be recorded, and if there were any future contingencies which would lead to additional payments by either.

3. I wanted Boies to explain how the USL v. BSDI lawsuit gave them any legal standing. It doesn't, and seems to weaken it (IANAL).

4. Compete versus non-compete wrt Novell. First UNIX is not Linux, so how are they competing with the letter of the agreement? Second, SCO legacy revenue is decreasing whereas this new partnership (word they used again and again) with a law firm suggests that their core business is now lawsuits. How is Novell competing with that (tongue in cheek)?

5. Has OSDL contacted them about their use of the trademark UNIX, and why do they continue to use this trademark without proper attribution?

The reason why SCO is able to perpetrate the FUD they do is because the press and financial community are not doing their research and asking the hardball questions. Things only got a bit tight when they got called to task on the issue of Boies payment and whether it was a contingency based on past or future actions."

Darl Named a top 25 CEO

[jaymzter]

CRN in a grand exhibition of both lack of research and insight has Darl McBride listed as one of the top 25 CEOs this year. My favorite quote is about us Open Source Communists:

"It's like back on the farm where we had to break a new colt and try and tame them," McBride says.

Now you know why Wall Street loves this guy. This is a glowing review of the man and his mission for Team Capitalism.

Re:Boycott SCO customers! Here are some tools!

[hydertech]

A boycott might actually have some positive effects. SCO, in a recent SEC filing, identified some of the "risks" involved in their operations. One specific risk mentioned was:

We rely on our indirect sales channel for distribution of our products, and any disruption of our channel at any level could adversely affect the sales of our products.

A first step toward a boycott would be to contact those distributors and let them know how you feel -- that you will not be doing business with them and will encourage your business associates to avoid them as well.

To that end SCO provides a list of their distributors. Here are their US distributors:

Avnet (formely Savoir)
(Offices located in Phoenix, Az; Campbell, CA; and Atlanta, GA area)
3950 Johns Creek Court, Suite 200
Suwanee, GA 30024
Phone: (800) 541-9801
URL: www.avnet.com
Email: Anne.Skelton@avnet.com
All SCO Lines Available

DTR Business Systems
1160 Centre Drive, Suite A
Walnut, CA 91789
Phone: 800-598-5721 or 909-598-5721
URL: www.dtrbus.com
Email: sales@dtrbus.com
All SCO Lines Available

Seneca Data
7401 Round Pond Road
North Syracuse, NY 13212
Phone: (800) 227-3432
URL: www.senecadata.com
Sales Contact: sales@senecadata.com
All SCO Lines Available

Tech Data
5350 Tech Data Drive
Clearwater, FL 33760
800-237-8931, 75289 option 1
URL: www.techdata.com
Email:eengel@techdata.com
All SCO Lines Available

Terian Solutions
7040 Empire Central Dr.
Houston, TX 77040-3214
Phone: 800-876-8649
URL: www.terian.com
Email:sales@terian.com
All SCO Lines Available

For those of you outside the US, you may find the distributors in your area by using SCO's list.

Go get em!