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NRF Calls SCO's Claims 'Meritless'
Xenographic writes "The National Retail Federation has just put out a press release in which their CIO concludes that SCO's IP claims are "meritless," and that Novell is the last company which can show a clear title to the code in question. That SCO's claims are meritless is hardly news to anyone who has been following this, but what is interesting is that the NRF was prompted to release this because of legal threats to their membership, specifically SCO's threats to sue "major retailers." So the businesses being menaced by SCO are banding together, making it that much less likely that SCO will be able to generate easy money from mere threats of litigation. SCO's stock, meanwhile, appears to have taken a small dive from this news. Also, you can find further details and analysis on Groklaw."
(from their Mission Statement)
Yikes. One in five American workers and $3.8 trillion in Sales can't be wrong!
Or can they?
No.
Q: What did the comedian say to the crowd?
A: If I knew, this joke would be funny.
In related news the SCO group lays off 275 to "re-allign" their organization.
Besides, the downward trend has been going for some time - they were hovering around $7 last week, now they've dropped a dollar since. So one day's stock variations is not going to make or break somebody in the general sense.
This sig no verb.
Google's results are based on a democratically perceived relavence. In other words, the reason why GrokLaw is #5 doesn't mean they have the 5th largest source of SCO stuff, it means they are the 5th most linked to site from other sites that have the word SCO on them. In otherwords, if that many people felt Groklaw was reliable enough to put links to it from their page, then Google can be fairly sure that their site holds relavence to your search.
So yes, in theory, if a particular site could get every page on the internet to have a hyperlink to it, then it would appear #1 on every search that contained a word that was on that page, even if the page held no gramatical structure or information.
So, no, Groklaw is not the top Anti-Sco site on the net, nor is it the 5th ranked one. It just happens to contain the 5th most relavent source of info on SCO as perceived by other webmasters regardless of whether the content if pro, anti, or just a neutral view.
I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
It's called Groklaw, and I couldn't agree more - they don't need Slashdot's help.
TFA reads "Novell Corporation is the last company that can demonstrate legal ownership of Unix System V."
For those of you who think it's kind of odd that a CIO is offering what's a legal opinion - yes it it. The NRF is the largest retail lobbying association. But it's all just a small office in DC. (Used to have a larger office in NYC but the biggest retailers didn't like that some of their dues where going to the NY office's mainly educational mission, which was of most worth to small retail members who didn't have their own in-house educational arm. So they staged a coup in the early nineties and moved the focus just to the lobbying branch in DC.)
Anyway, the NRF has a handful of people given the same titles as typical top retail executives, including CIO and VP of this and that. Each of these has about one person reporting to them - the title is more so that when they organize conferences in their areas they'll have equivalent rank to the top attendees. Most of the have actual backgrounds elsewhere in the departments they're posing as head of, but they're all basically retired from that and in a second career with the trade association.
So this is not a lawyer saying this, and not even a real, current CIO. The NRF has on retainer some of the biggest names in American law. Might make you wonder why they didn't have one of them make the statement (although it's a sure bet one of them put these words in the CIO's mouth). All a bit odd....
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Yeah, but if you check, they're not even at the level of their 52-week low. (Closer to it then their 52-week high, however.) What would break them would be a dismissal of their suit against IBM, because if that one goes, then the ones against AutoZone, etc. might as well be dismissed as well.
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The price of a share of stock is supposed to be the total assets of a company minus the total liabilities divided by the number of shares (outstanding and otherwise).
(TA - TL) / S
This number will go up if the company earns money and will go down if it loses money. The stock market price of a share takes into account how much money the company is expected to earn or lose over the short term. If a company is expected to earn X amount over the next quarter, then their value at the end of the quarter compared with the previous quarter would be:
(TA - TL) + X
and their value per share:
((TA - TL) + X) / S
So, if you think the company will earn money, you pay more for the stock because next quarter it will be shown to be worth it. If you think the company will lose money, you pay less for the stock because next quarter you will be able to buy the stock for less. The things that influence your determination of the price at the end of the quarter change constantly. However, even if the company goes out of business, you still get your shares' value of the company. If SCOX owns a building worth a million dollars, and has a loan on that building for $250,000 and they lose $500,000 over the next quarter and decide to go out of business, you still get your portion of the remaining $250,000:
((1,000,000 - 250,000) - 500,000) / S
In order for a stock to be zero for a company, they would have to find someone willing to loan them money equal to the amount of holdings they have and at the same time lose money. This would be like you trying to borrow all of the money to buy a house without having a job (or at best a job that didn't cover your expenses plus the price of the house). Nobody has credit that good, and neither do corporations.
The market is losing interest in SCOX. It's clear now that there's no big near-term win there.
It's hard to get excited about a press release from a lobbyist from a trade association, especially when it doesn't announce any action. But it's good to have statements like that, because it discourages Congressional action. Recall that SCO was lobbying Congress at one point. With IBM, Damlier-Chrysler, Utah's Novell, Goldman Sachs, and the National Retail Federation against SCO, Congress isn't going to do anything stupid.
The real action is in the SCO vs IBM lawsuit, where SCO is not doing well. SCO has narrowed their copyright claim. SCO had a deadline coming up on the discovery front, where they have to disclose the "infringing code". They're close to the "put up or shut up" point in that case. They've stalled and stalled, but it didn't work. One motion at a time, IBM has whittled away at SCO's claims. The trade secret claim is gone. The copyright claims are steadily shrinking. The claim that the GPL is "unconstitutional" is gone. Meanwhile, IBM's claims against SCO threaten SCO's remaining cash.
For a corporation which has issued only one type of stock, this is true. However, in the real world, most companies issue several classes of stock, and some classes have preference attached. Preference essentially means that those shares are entitled to be paid first in the event of liquidation. There are also shares which are convertible to notes, shares which are redeemable for cash, shares which have options associated with them, and a huge array of other convoluted forms of preference. Typically preferred stock is sold to early investors in a private company. So in your example of a company with a book value of $250,000, if there are 1,000,000 shares outstanding, of which 10,000 are preferred or convertible at $10, $100,000 will be paid to the preferred shareholders on liquidation, leaving $150,000 for the remaining 990,000 shares. In reality it's normally not this rosy; there's rarely enough left in a liquidation to pay even the noteholders (mainly banks), and it's not unusual for the preferred shareholders to receive little or nothing as well. For a common shareholder to receive liquidation proceeds is almost unheard-of. If the company has enough value left that it could pay common shareholders after liquidation, there's probably no reason to liquidate. After all, most companies that liquidate have negative book value anyway.
This is why companies wishing to make an IPO often try to reduce their level of preference in outstanding shares; institutional investors especially will be less interested if a company has $100M worth of preference and only a $50M book value. Such a company is poorly positioned for an offering. Sometimes preferred stock is convertible to common stock and/or notes, and in some cases the preferred shareholders will exercise these options so that an IPO can go forward on better terms.
It was down that low before the news. Investors were beginning to notice the "painting" and other often illegal stock manipulation tactics that were being used to keep SCOX sailing. Royce is one of the prime suspects behind the stock manipulation, having invested $30 million dollars in SCOX through Baystar, and gradually increasing their investment by a small few thousand shares at a time, around the open and close of the market, when most of the suspected "painting" has occurred. The SCOX price always went UP on bad news, an almost sure sign of illegal stock manipulation. Another thing that was keeping the SCOX price up was a $45 price target set by "analyst" Brian Skiba. That price target was recently pulled, leaving only a more realistic, albiet still high $5 price target on the SCOX summary pages of most financial sites.
Today, SCOX price has risen slightly again, on a day when their perceived value should have dropped due to bad news. I have no doubt that the stock manipulation is still going on.
Note: This is all stuff I've read in the Yahoo! SCOX forum, nothing I deserve credit for researching myself.