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Half of SCO's Accountants Quit
Groklaw Reader writes "Apparently, SCO's lawyers were working overtime last Sunday, because they wrote a quick plea to the bankruptcy court for permission to hire accounting temps. Why? Approximately half of SCO's finance department has resigned or been fired. Two who resigned had over ten years of experience each. One can only assume that they know what's about to happen to SCO."
Heck, the accountants probably know that there is no money to pay themselves. So, why work?
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
Seriously, what about the other half? Do they have some sort of personal reality distortion field?
Groklaw says they started with seven accountants. "Approximately half" is either 3 or 4, and I'd wager that they would have said "more than half" if it were 4. Two of them were the 10-year veterans who resigned, leaving just one guy who was fired.
Well the fact is, the accountants aren't liable for any of SCO's sins.
They would be if any of those sins included some creative accounting, which is certainly a possibility.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
What's there to account at SCO besides the wages? Do they even still sell something?
The funny part is if it drops a little more, it will be such a bargain that it'll be at least as good a value as a lottery ticket...
There's a problem here. Novell's money is Novell's, SCO is just holding it for them.
As such, SCO can't legally use Novell's money to pay it's own debts. "Unfortunately" SCO has been keeping lousy books, and didn't keep straight which money was Novell's. The legal hearing that they've stalled with this bankruptcy plea was to determine the size of the amount of money owed to Novell.
As such, I think any CPA involved in this scam *SHOULD* be in serious trouble. It's not certain that this will pierce the corporate shield, and allow Novell to go after the management & the board's personal assets...but it's also not clear that it won't.
Another interesting question is criminal charges. Clearly several laws have been broken, and felonies have been committed. It's not clear that any charges will be filed. "The corporation did it" is a common defense, even when all acts of the corporation were, in fact, performed by people. Personally I would rephrase "the corporation did it" by "it was a conspiracy", but this doesn't seem to be legal custom.
Caution: IANAL
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I think the biggest worry I have now... which may actually be moot- is who ends up with SCO's assets and IP?
What assets and ip?
FalconShould there be a Law?
In the wake of Enron, etc., accountants are looking over their shoulders whenever they are asked to do something unethical. I am betting that not only are the accountants seeing that they might not be paid on time or at all, but they are also seeing that they are being called upon to do something unethical, something that would be a blight on their careers.
You can bet that these accountants were not working for SCO because they loved Daryl. So late or non-existent pay + ethical lapses = hasta la vista, baby.
In my experience, when the accountants pack up their stuff, then you should trample them on the way out, cause you are likely not going to get paid for that month - Better to start your job search early than wait for the bouncing salary cheque...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
No, I'm simply saying that while sure, in a perfect world where everyone is lawful good and all is sunshine and bunnies, it might be reasonable to expect the victim to be better than the aggressor, to show mercy even when they know none would have been shown them.
But here, in this world, it is far more likely that the many enemies SCO has made for itself will be lining up to tear bits out of them in any way they can, and while I personally take no joy in the fight now that it's over, I'm not going to start throwing moral judgments at the victors when they start doing as victors will.
It's just the way of the world.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Anybody who invests in a company without doing some basic research (I'm not talking hard stuff here, just the first page of google results) is asking to lose their investment.
And SCO is a penny stock at this point, nobody who is sane and worried about their life savings invests in those.
SCOX had seven people in the accounting department. 3 were terminated or resigned. SCOx's problems are obvious enough not to blow this all out of reason and make it sound like a thundering cavalcade ran for the door. The truth about SCOx and Darl is quite bad enough without inflating the facts. That's a SCOx tactic, and one we need not indulge in since SCOx does it so well.
Not that I am a SCOx supporter. Far from it. I think Novel should go after Darl in his own natural person to recover court costs. And if Darl dies while I'm still able to get around, count on it that I'll fly to his grave site to relieve myself on it. Twice. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well.
A more damming metric would be to quote how many engineers SCO had on staff, vs. how many SCOx retained. Answer: Not many! SCOx has allowed their product to lag behind hardware to the point that the OS is irrelevant on modern hardware. It simply doesn't work on the new stuff, and doesn't support many current technologies. That's a death knell for any OS.
SCOx concentrated on a niche market, and they didn't pick it any too carefully. That SCOx finds themselves bypassed and disfavored is a mark of just how badly they chose to grow. It's never pretty when a technology company chooses to become a litigation company, it's even worse when they choose the wrong technology to litigate against.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
By defending themselves in the lawsuit that SCO filed against them, you mean. I know what you mean, but they did what they had to do in order to defend their interests.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Or they can apply to put the company into liquidation, that is Chapter 7. At the moment SCO is in chapter 11, that is reorganization. If the company cannot continue to function it is not reorganizing and has to liquidate.
The problem for SCO here is that it can only reorganize in Chapter 11 if it has a good chance of demonstrating that it can secure the agreement of its creditors to the reorganization plan. The current management only have 120 days in which they have the exclusive right to propose a reorganization plan. After that they would have to pursuade the court to extend that right.
The question I would be interesting in knowing the answer to is what the situation is with respect to Novell's claims. Clearly SCO is going into bankruptcy before the bench hearing to determine what SCO owes Novell. Certain types of lawsuit get stayed by bankruptcy but it would seem odd if a case that had been decided on the merits and was only waiting for damages to be determined to be stayed by a voluntary liquidation when the only 'business' the company has is litigation.
The end of SCO does not necessarily mean the end of the case. I seem to remember that Boies and co have a bunch of charges against the assets of the company which allow them to acquire certain SCO assets and continue the litigation. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, given the amount of time and money that has gone into the case and given that it looks like SCOs case is utterly toast it might well be better for it to at least result in a precedent.
It should not cost $50 million to force a plaintif to state a valid claim. There should be a clear precedent that ugabugah copyright lawsuits where the plaintif fails to state what the allegedly infringing content is get tossed out in future.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
A very smart accountant I knew once deliberately left a good job in a successful company to go and work for a company that was in the UK equivalent of Chapter 11 (voluntary arrangement with creditors.) He reckoned that the experience would accelerate his career. How many companies do you think get into trouble every year? How much of a premium do you think they are prepared to pay to accountants who know how to deal with that stuff? When the shit is really deep, that's when you are prepared to pay a lot of money to the guy with big rubber boots and a large pump.
Pining for the fjords
yeah, what could possibly go wrong :
...
1985 SCO delivers XENIX 286 for Intel 80286 processor-based systems.
1998 Caldera Inc. Split off into two new companies Caldera Systems and what was to become Lineo. Caldera Inc. continued to exist until 2000. Following the settlement of the Microsoft litigation, Caldera Inc. was merged into The Canopy Group.
2003 SCO Suspends Distribution of Linux Pending Intellectual Property Clarification; Announces Greater Focus on UNIX and SCOx Strategy
Xenix was once the OS a certain B.G. insisted everyone used on their terminal in Redmond.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/03/20/bills_vision_for_the_future/
http://openacademy.mindef.gov.sg/OpenAcademy/Learning%20Resources/Microsoft/bio/bio_6.htm
Microsoft Announces XENIX OS 8/25/80
So now they are in bed with another Unix vendor, in fact THE Unix vendor.
Unless the leopard has significantly changed its spots, expect that relationship to go sour.
Microsoft can't do friends.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter