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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."
Almost as if?!? I realize that lawyers include modifiers like that to lessen the chance of successfully actionable lawsuits, but come on. SCO is suing former clients, it's going through money like it's still dot.com days. For the corporation, the ONLY revenue stream is through litigation.
Of course, for the principals, the primary revenue stream is through stock manipulation, shifting assets between Canopy elements and taking everything not explicitly nailed down. But that's personal, not business.
Why isn't it zero? I don't get it.
Even if they go bankrupt, the stock will still trade for a while at a very low price like $0.00001/share. I had stock in a company that went bankrupt two years ago. At the end of last year, I sold it so I could take the loss on my taxes. The final insult in that one was paying a $65 trade fee to sell 1000 shares that were worth less than 1 cent total. I had no choice. If I wanted to claim it on my taxes I had to sell them.
No, no. Not the NRF part. Sure that's significant and interesting and all..
Look at the Groklaw link. It seems to be saying that SCO has dropped all claims that IBM did anything illegal with Linux kernel code. They're only pusrsuing the claim that IBM shouldn't be selling AIX and Dynix anymore (which is a pretty laughable claim, anyway).
Has SCO backed off of all Linux claims?!?
The significance of the National Retail Federation speaking out against SCOX may be deeper than some realize. One of SCO Unix's core markets (if not the only one) was/is retail point of sale systems. In the 1980s and early 90s, SCO Unix (and its Xenix predecessor) was one of the few choices available to run a POS system on affordable PC hardware. If SCO Unix has any market left, it is the members of the NRF, many of whom have large deployments of SCO Unix throughout their store chains. Who even runs SCO Unix anymore? The answer is these people. The companies in the NRF comprise the SCO Unix core market, and if SCOX plans on continuing to sell software to businesses, it needs them.
But now, these companies, the last customers SCOX has, have turned against them. With their previously existing relationship, SCOX could have been in a good position to sell them Linux, but they have ruined that opportunity now. What tiny market SCO Unix had is gone, and any hope SCOX had of continuing to be a software company just went with it.
On the other hand, their litigation isn't going well either. Better say goodbye, folks, because SCOX is not long for this world.
--Mythos