Slashdot Mirror
BayStar Sets Lawyers on SCO
myster0n writes "According to The Register: 'SCO's attempts to rescue its relationship with BayStar, its biggest backer, have come to naught. On Friday morning, Eastern time, SCO announced that the stock buyback deal it agreed with the unhappy investor had closed. Two hours and five minutes later, Baystar issued a statement saying that a) no it hadn't and b) we'll see you in court, matey.'" Thanks to The Reg for the write-up.
The fools, or the fools that back them? It's a tough question, eh?
as an attempt to shut down the SCO fiasco before any really harmful judgements are handed down that prevent further Microsoft-funded FUD against Linux.
Obviously there are regulatory hurdles on the way to Longhorn. Slowing Linux adoption is clearly in the best interests of Redmond, and sowing doubt through litigation is pretty much the only strategy they have left that will work.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I see the vultures circling over...
And I bet there won't be too much rotting flesh left on that carcass when they're done feeding.
They couldn't afford to sue IBM, RedHat (ok RedHat sued them but still), Novell, AutoZone, or DC, but that didn't stop them from doing it. I would agree though that this is more of a PR move to show who's is longer.
Why not make some money off of SCO's woes, then? Short their stock make money and have double the entertainment value. :)
You can see the real effect of the decline if you look at the two-year chart. They're almost back to where they were before they started the FUD campaign.
Bankers on a Friday morning? I still think it was golf.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I don't consider your investor threatening to sue you a healthy situation. SCO is a big old machine that's at the end of it life; everything is shaking, and soon it will just fall apart.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Wouldn't it be great if Google went took some of that IPO money and ended this whole fiaSCO? Google is one if not the biggest Linux house there is. With SCO's stock price down it would chump change for google.
Google... Buyout SCO and release all UNIX IP to the public!
Zoid.com
I believe that deep in my heart I am a calm and balanced person but it is amazing how angry this whole thing makes me. It really scares me how satisfiying it is to see them get what they deserve. SCO really did a great job in getting all the worst feelings from the techcommunity.
"myster0n writes 'SCO's attempts to rescue its relationship with BayStar, its biggest backer, have come to naught. On Friday morning, Eastern time, SCO announced that the stock buyback deal it agreed with the unhappy investor had closed. Two hours and five minutes later, Baystar issued a statement saying that a) no it hadn't and b) we'll see you in court, matey.'"
Nope, The Register writes.
If you're going to plagiarize, at least try to make it a little less obvious than a cut-and-paste of the article's opening paragraph.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
No inside info or anything, but there has been no successful attempt on IBM or Novell's part for a summary judgement in their favor. This does bring to question..."What if SCO is right?"
Now, of course they were completely smoking crack to say the Linux community owes them ~$700 per copy of Linux used. But if they do indeed own the IP to some of Unix AND IBM did indeed slip a few bells and whistles into Linux without getting the propper blessing....then I would say the slashdot boards are going to be an interresting sight to see.
Don't get me wrong. I'm rooting for Big Blue, The Suse guys, and Joe Linux user. But the length this has drawn out does make one wonder.
I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
I don't believe SCO has any UNIX 'IP' to be released anyway.
---
We spoke for about a half an hour. I don't recall a thing we said. - Colorblind James Experience
SCO can't afford to have a protracted fracas with BayStar
Really? Just wait, I read somewhere that Microsoft is going to need some Unix(tm)(r)(patent pending) technology to replace all those open source parts of Microsoft(r) Services For Unix(r). I'm pretty sure Microsoft is not going to mind if the price is a little bit higher than the going rate.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Perhaps BayStar just plans to acquire SCO (and thereby its claims to Unix rights) so that they can pursue the rest of us more effectively ?
Well, as a Canadian who lives in Toronto (one of the country's largest population centres), I haven't heard ANYONE say 'aboot', EVER, except when quoting South Park. 'Eh?' plenty of times, and I even catch myself saying it once in a while, but 'aboot' never. Perhaps the Newfies say it that way, but I'd want a Newfie to confirm it. Have you ever travelled in Canada and heard 'aboot' yourself, or had someone you know directly (not a friend-of-a-friend) tell you they heard it?
I grew up in Maine. Plenty of visiting Nova Scotians said "aboot". We have one at work here who says it.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
Anyone who believes that Baystar is SCO's biggest backer is forgetting about a little company in Redmond.
The things that SCO is doing are blatantly suicidal and correspond in time with activity on the part of others, such as Ken Brown. I'm not a big conspiracy theorist, but give me a break. I'd be willing to bet my balls that Microsoft is funding not only SCO, but also all the other groups that have all of a sudden started attacking Linux and open source in general.
They may not be alone either. The other player that I suspect is Sun. Linux has hit them FAR harder than it has Microsoft. For the most part Microsoft has limited the ability of Windows to penetrate the server market, at least without becoming a much better product. Sun on the other hand, has directly lost market share to Linux, and not just a little bit either.
Ever find it funny how SCO went out of their way to declare that Solaris was "ok?" This was said in multiple PR notices. This makes me very suspicious of Sun. They have a LOT more to lose than Microsoft does. Their bread and butter is the server room, not the secretary's desktop, and that is exactly where Linux is kicking butt and taking names. This isn't just a matter of Solaris vs. Linux either. Its a matter of Linux on commodity hardware vs. Solaris on fabulously expensive proprietary hardware. Sun is behind the eight-ball in both regards. When Sun wants 100k for a quad processor system when you can easily buy an far faster Opteron based quad processor system for 1/5th the price, it makes you wonder what it is that Sun is smoking and why they haven't passed the bong.
I personally think that Sun is toast. If all they sold was an OS, then things wouldn't be so bad for them. But as it is they are stuck having to field both an OS AND the hardware it runs on. This isn't something that a struggling company can do well.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Remember that SCOX has an announced stock buyback plan. So the support is, we have to assume, by SCO itself, spending its own money to keep the stock price up. Unsuccessfully. Support at $4 will probably be about as successful as the previous support attempts at $15, $10, and $5.
Well, as a Canadian who lives in Toronto (one of the country's largest population centres), I haven't heard ANYONE say 'aboot', EVER
:)
Yes you have, you just didn't realize it because the difference isn't as pronounced as the parady in the South Park movie. I too, used to think it was just an old wive's tale, and that the pronounciation was identical, but a couple of months ago, there was a special on CBC called "Talking Canadian," which examined the regional dialects, inflections, and differences in our language.
They demonstrated the slightly different pronounciation of several words, most famously, "about." Like you, I used to think that the joke was that Canadians said "aboot", as in, "look at my foot, I'm wearing a boot." Since I personally don't pronounce it that way, and have never heard anyone else say it like that, I thought it was just a myth. But in fact, we do pronounce it differently than USAmericans, just not that strongly. If you listen, you can hear it.
Canadians pronounce it as "a-bout," like a wrestling "bout". Think of how you'd say, "I'm going out." That's the sound Canadians (and me too, I realized" employ when we way "about." I incorrectly assumed that that was how USAmericans say it, too. But the CBC special opened my eyes, and now I notice it when watching USAmerican media, too. They don't say it like we do. They say it like "a-bowt." The sound is more like we'd say if we stubbed our toe: "Ow!" Say it to yourself, "Today, the US President talked abowt the upcoming election..." Doesn't it sound surprisingly accurate?
There were other fascinating differences they highlighted, too. Like "stocking/stalking." Canadians pronounce them identically, but USAmericans put more of an "aw" sound in "stalking" than they do in "stocking." It was a pretty cool special.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
That baystar and RBC haven't been sued by their stockholders for not doing their due diligence. I mean, come on. I don't know if baystar is publicly traded or not but I'd be surprised of RBC wasn't.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
All the SCO's executives are millionnaires now. That was the point of the operation. So why exactly should they care about SCO now that it's all done?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
The only company that could even possibly get at SCO's investors REAL identities now would be IBM, as they are the only ones with valid discovery claims towards their counterclaims.
As for 'instructed', I take it that you've had limited exposure to venture capital?
I'm acquainted with both investment capital and shill companies much more intimately than I would rather be. Both looking for and getting denied VC, and watching undeserving companies get VC money due to large corporate interests.
In Today's tech climate, how many places do you think they could have found with a business plan worthy of their VC ? And they just ACCIDENTILY invested in the worst / most hated / sleaziest tech company that there is ? Or do you think they might have been induced into doing it........