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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?)"
Somebody get on the call and ask them "If you have such a strong company and case, why do you feel the need to couple lawsuit announcements with your financial call?"
When SCO does finally sue someone, it will not be for using a Linux distribution like they want you to think. When the court filings are examined, it will probably be a breach of contract suit for some silly violation, which means they will have to sue a current SCO Unix customer. But they will do their best to spin it to the press as a Linux IP infringement suit, and lots of dumbasses will eat it all up and buy more SCO stock.
If you had read the article the other day on Groklaw it stated that (I'm paraphrasing) that purchasing this license doesn't allow that user to actually USE SCO's intellectual property. All it really does is say "look, we know we're in the wrong here, so let's settle up".
Now because of the fact these people signed up for their license that shows they "admit guilt". So not only did they pay SCO the $799 (or whatever it is now) extortion fee, they also paid SCO to sue them. That's how the legal system works, my friends. EV1 and Lindows (if it's actually true) will get a first hand lesson now.
In a sense, buying a license under these methods and terms is basically the same as signing a confession to a crime that wasn't even committed.
There is no SCO before Unix in that sentance.
Further up the article you will see
It's a safe bet that who ever they are going after is in that list.
Lindows is a technology company, and isn't in the Fortune 1000, which doesn't seem to match the profile of the targets announced yesterday.
Of course, SCO has said one thing and done another many, many times. If they did attack Lindows.com, then that would certainly dismiss any notion that they aren't shilling for Redmond. Given the potential multi-year delay in the MS trademark litigation, there are probably more than a few experienced IP lawyers on retainer by Lindows.com that are looking for someone else's leg to chew on. And certainly Robertson would love to squeeze more than a little PR out of such a suit.
That somehow it backfires such that when the press spins it, it comes out with headlines like "SCO begins suing own customers".
All this would take is the press paying any attention to anything not directly from SCO's mouth. But maybe that's wishful thinking.
Is this a new business model or a non existant one?
It's a brilliant business model. They don't have to actually claim ownership of anyone else's product because they aren't distributing or granting anything related to that product. They don't have to follow the terms of the GPL, because they aren't actually using the GPL. They don't have to cease distributing GPLed products, because they aren't actually violating the GPL, just loudly and constantly threatening they will violate it.
They are selling you a license from SCO to use someone else's product. Can they do this? Well, yes, they aren't actually licensing you anything. It's just a piece of paper that says "SCO says it's okay for you to use Linux". And they can certainly give you a piece of paper that says SCO says you can use something. The trick is that they're then trying to create the impression you're required to have an SCO license to use linux but never actually *DIRECTLY* saying those words-- and seem to be pulling it off.
It is like McDonalds was selling licenses to eat Subway sandwiches and strongly implying it was illegal to eat at Subway without one of these licenses and doing absolutely everything possible to convey this impression without actually saying the exact words "it is illegal to eat at subway without one of these licenses" (which would open them up to a preliminary injunction).
So what, a company that is broke that gets counter sued is still broke.
SCO has nothing to lose, that's the main reason they are doing this.
They just found a loophole in our legal system and are abusing it. They didn't get that 50M infusion to piss it away trying to sell a product. They already proved they couldn't make money doing that.
But they can can take that 50M into court and cause a lot of problems and increase the FUD.
Since they scheduled the announcement for their earnings call, the numbers must be truly awful this quarter. If they had good numbers to report, they wouldn't need a distraction like this.