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SCO Postpones Lawsuit, Now Threatening Two
zzxc writes "In a surprise turn of events, SCO says that they need more time to prepare an announcement of who they are going to sue. According to SCO, the lawsuits will be announced tomorrow morning shortly before a phone-in conference in which will be outlining their financial report. You can call 1-800-818-5264 code 141144 Wednesday at 9:00am MST to join in with your questions, or listen to the webcast. They also have said that these first two lawsuits will be against companies that hold SCO Unix licenses. (EV1.net servers or Lindows?)"
That's only in Germany and other smarter countries.
And im an American =\
EV1 holds a linux license. Unix licensees are people who pay to use Unix, i.e. AIX, Solaris, etc.
Because originally SCO architected and did the preliminary work as a Service deal. Part of the contract that SCO delivered to Lindows stated that SCO would 'take care' of the GPL aspects of the code and would not provide anything that might get Lindows into trouble such as tainted source code etc etc etc.....
Lindows later went their own way and pursued a more debian focused route, however the contract still stands, though is ulimately open to interpretation
Ahh the magic of the linked article:
Google, which uses thousands of Linux servers to power its search engine, is not the target of the initial suits, Stowell added.
Besides, I don't know what legal principle they can use to sue any Linux user. Copyright violation? No. Contract violation? No, most don't have any contracts with SCO. Patents? They've never said anything about those. Trade secrets? Nope.
So, what are they mumbling? Anyone they can sue has to have a contract with them, i.e. be a licensee, so they can allege a contract violation (like IBM). Maybe SGI? Novell? Sun? Who knows. They have exactly nothing to go after Linux users in general.
I bet one of them is AutoZone. SCO is pissed that AutoZone switched from SCO Unix to Linux, and claims that couldn't have been done without violating their IP. The meat of their argument is on groklaw here (Supplemental #8), and if you scroll down you can see some AutoZone employees refute the argument. Search for the comment by 'jbgreer'.
Yeah, they're known as "bagholders". These are the imbeciles that know nothing about the company, the case(s) or in fact anything, except a) that the PR says "We'll sue" and b) When companies announce that they'll sue, they go up. Also, there was the "We sold an IP license" thingy, you might remember? The one that noone know if it brought in any money for SCOX, but it sure made a lot of PR!
Anyhow; The bagholders are then sold into by insiders, which make a tidy profit.
The job of the bagholders then is to sit around and watch the stock slowly fall down again.
Typically they'll panic and sell at a big loss. Some bagholders are smarter and hang around for the second wave of bagholders and make it out at plus/minus zero.
Do you want to ask Darl McBride an embarrasing question or two in front of most of the financial world? Sure, we all do!
The problem, however, is this: In a financial results call, not just anyone is allowed to ask a question. The people presenting the call get to pick and choose who gets to speak. Usually, private investors, media, and anyone from a company that has generated bad press do not get called on. So what can we do to weasel our way to the front of the question queue?
Well, if SCO has set up their call intelligently, nothing. The access code, 141144, might be the public access code, with a different code (or even a different phone number) given to people who can be trusted to ask "good" questions. But if everyone is coming in on the same number, then we have a chance.
You'll know you have a shot at a question if, instead of being joined to the call immediately after entering your access code, you instead talk to an operator. The operator will most likely ask you your name, your company's name, and maybe your phone number. If this happens, lie to them. Make up a name and phone number, and tell them that you are with an investment firm. Just pick something: CIBC World Markets, Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse First Boston, Goldman Sachs, anything like that will do. Bonus points if you pick a company that has invested in SCO. Write down your information so that you can remember it! The trick is to make yourself look like you'll ask a safe question, so that they'll look at you in the queue and say, "Hey, let's take that Eddie Smith from CSFB next..."
If you do get called on for a question, remember:
1) Be polite. "OMG Darl SUXXORZ!!!" will just generate a "There are no further questions at this time" from the operator.
2) Ask a difficult question that Darl hasn't answered before. Let him hang himself, it'll sink in better with the investors that way.
3) Keep going until they cut you off. They're not likely to let many more unfamiliar names ask questions after this.
4) If anyone asks, you didn't get any of these ideas from Slashdot.
Here's hoping for a great conference tomorrow!
You can listen to the call online here, once it starts:
http://biz.yahoo.com/cc/3/39693.html
John Susek
Hi, we have been in the discussion with being a high profile candidate for SCO (advertising our Linux Support for our customer's solutions)... Our Lawyer said simply : Buy a set of Linux CD Boxes and Support from SuSE, now Novell! The older, the better!
If SCO or their Lawyers show, up show them that you are using this system, and friendly point towards the case between Novell and SCO, and that once the issues have been resolved between those 2 parties, you would be willing to comply with whatever the outcome is.
Not necessarily.
:-) Of course, that's what an IBM buyout of SCO would have achieved, and what they may well have been privately hoping would happen.
For example, let's that about the time SCO announced this whole fiasco, I had gone out and bought some SCO stock (I didn't, ain't go no money, but let's say for the sake of argument that I had).
First, I have not invested in SCO per se. I have invested in stock, but SCO didn't get my money, the person I bought the stock from got it. Whatever money SCO got from that stock came the first time they sold it. They got nothing from any sale after that. Now, if my buy was part of a general pattern of buying, then that pushes the price up and Darl can sell some of his stock and make money, or SCO could issue some new stock (AFAIK the didn't), although that would tend to push the share price down (supply and demand).
So, here I sit with some SCO stock that I bought, but I have not really invested any money in SCO. The money is invested in the stock, but SCO doesn't get any of that money.
Now, am I crooked? Or do I just think that whatever SCO's chances, some fool is going to come a long later and be willing to pay a lot more per share for this stock than I did, allowing me to sell it at a profit before the trial is over and walk away. SCO later goes down in flames and the stock is worthless. I made my profit, and SCO benefited not at all from my ownership of their stock.
Is anything about that crooked, or even supportive of SCO? No, not at all. Is it a gamble? Yes. Perhaps less of one than sitting down at a table in Las Vegas, but a gamble nevertheless. I suspect that most of the holders of SCO stock are not particularly supporters of SCO, except to the extent that their hope of having the stock go up makes them hope that SCO prevails; most of them are probably simply people who believe (or at least hope) that the stock will go up and they will therefore profit.
Oh, and in the meanwhile, my owning stock would give me voting power in shareholders' meetings; a hostile takeover of SCO could have stopped this suit dead in its tracks. Imagine if Linux supporters had bought all available SCO shares
Now, of course, it would be a bad time to buy. However, anyone who could and did buy SCO stock back when this first started to brew up made a shrewd move, and if they have since sold, a tidy profit. There's nothing wrong with that, and certainly no support of SCO in it. It's just buying a thing and later selling it for more than the purchase price. SCO gets nothing of either.