Investors Bailing On SCO Stock, SCOX Plummets

HailDorothy writes "SCO's stock price is plummeting in the aftermath of Judge Kimball's ruling that Novell owns the UNIX copyrights, as we discussed earlier. '[W]e will continue to explore our options with respect to how we move forward from here,' SCO said in a public statement issued in a futile attempt to calm investors. SCO's stock price has fallen 70 percent during trading today, reaching a 52-week low. It looks like the end is near for SCO, which still owes Novell 95 percent of the SVRX UNIX royalties it collected from Microsoft and Sun through the SCOsource program. As Judge Kimbell noted in his ruling, it's unlikely that Novell will ever be able to collect on those royalties."

Comments

Wow!

[Jugalator]

The most surprising thing here to me is that this implies some share holders actually believed SCO had a case here.

Re:Someone bought those shares today.

[KingSkippus]

Who's buying the stock and why are they buying it?

If something's cheap enough, there will always be someone willing to buy it.

If it gets low enough, someone could snag it if for no other reason than to liquidate its assets. All of those desks, computer monitors, and coffee machines have got to be worth something.

Re:microsoft trial balloon

[Chris Burke]

You'll notice they won't even tell you which patents of theirs linux infringes now. SCO got bad PR instead of them and IBM got good PR for defending linux.

No, they won't tell, and they most likely never will unless they get in a SCO-like situation where their actual revenue stream is drying up fast and it's either sue-and-pray or just die quietly.

I believe this is the primary lesson MS learned from their SCO experiment: The implication of IP infringement is much more effective at scaring people away from Linux than actually trying to prove it. As long as the infringement is a non-specific threat with only a hint of reality behind it, it works on the basic fear-centers of the brains of IT management. As soon as it becomes something real, like a lawsuit, then it instead it invites the managers to use the analytic portions of their brains. FUD and fact checking don't go together.

The concept of FUD is really nothing new to Microsoft of course, but this was an actual test run of "can we scare more people away from Linux with an actual IP lawsuit instead of just claiming that it is unsafe?" and it turns out the answer is "no".