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SCO Goes Private With $100 Million Backing
AmIAnAi writes "Just when you thought it was all over, the SCO story takes a new twist. SCO has received $100 million financing from Stephen Norris Capital Partners to get them out of Chapter 11 and go private 'The move gives Stephen Norris, whose namesake founder was a co-founder of private equity giant The Carlyle Group, a controlling interest in SCO, which now has a platform to continue its court battle with Novell Inc. over royalties from the Unix server operating system, SCO's main business ... According to a statement from the company, SNCP already has a business plan for SCO that includes pursuing its legal claims.'"
... the Stephen Norris group. When do the judges get sick of barratry?
Dog is my co-pilot.
Man oh man...
This news completely ruins my day.
I just know that tonight while my lady is receiving the annual ~Valentine Fisting~ my mind will be on SCO and their ridiculous lawsuits, not on the work at hand. She'll know something is bugging me, get pissed off and make me stop. I'll have KY to my elbows for nothing.
Thanks SCO.
Trolling is a art,
...that sucks.
-GiH
What kind of genius investment group thinks sueing IBM is a winning proposition?
Man oh man, talk about a massive waste of money. Does SCO even produce anything anymore? I thought SCO was basically Darl in a hotel room somewhere with two of hookers doubling as his "legal team"...
... that we can boycott? (Or is Microsoft, in fact, at the root of it?)
I don't know how multiplying zero is going to help in this case...
from their diseased monopoly fronting corpse.
This program was made possible by a grant from the Ultra-Humanite, and viewers like you.
Step 1. Pile money onto a sinking ship
Step 2. ???
Step 3. Profit!
I have a very poor financial outlook for the near future, why can't somebody give me $100 million? Hell, I'll use that to make legal claims about somebody else's IP! I can probably even develop an operating system nobody in their right mind would use.
Oh, a lesson in history from Mr. I'm my own grandpa.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
When I mis-read it, I thought: "Chuck Norris can make SCO viable!".
I'm glad it's just *Stephen* Norris.
Lets take inventory.
* Taking a beating in court.
* Its only valid business is a dying operating system.
* Your customers and pretty the entire tech industry hates you.
* The company is in chapter 11.
* The company has a negative cash flow.
* The judge in your case appears to hate you because of your court practices.
* I hate you.
Yeah, lets throw $100 million at them...
-----
Thanks to spacelifeform on GL:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/12/bloomberg/bxfour.php
NEW YORK: Four Seasons Hotels, the manager of 74 luxury hotels, said Monday that it had agreed to be taken private by Bill Gates, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and the chief executive for $3.8 billion, including debt.
Coincedence?
----
Who is Stephen Norris,
http://www.snpartners.com/norris.html
Looks like there could very easily be some behind the curtain financing of this through foreign nationals.
---
Mr. Norris acted as a principal financial advisor to Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal Al Saud of Kingdom Holding Company, in structuring and negotiating the re-capitalization of Citibank, which returned over $15 billion in profits on about $590 million of equity invested. He also advised or played a key role in other Kingdom Holding Company investments. He was appointed by former president George H.W. Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as one of five governing members of the $100 billion Federal Retirement System Thrift Investment Board.
Since 1997, Mr. Norris, and certain members of his team, have worked on a number of investments including real estate investments in Europe and the United States. They were involved in amongst others the privatization of Thompson CSF, the recapitalization of Suez, the acquisition of portions of Credit Foncier's real estate portfolio in Paris by the German firm of IVG, the formation of Nomura's (London) bid for a Dutch mortgage bank, the offer by a major Saudia Arabian investment firm for Lamborgini in Italy, and the formation of a bid by Leucadia International's for the Labouchere Bank in Holland. He also negotiated and structured investments in Synxis Corporation, which was backed by George Soros and Mr. Norris, and MARC Global Holdings.
---
Oh good, looks like Novell and IBM can acually get some money out of SCO now.
Victory or awesome!
You'd think someone that rich could find cheaper ways to get abused!
For some time, it seemed the only thing the good guys would get out of SCO would be some old stationery and a few logo pens. With $100 million more, there's a chance that someone can be made to pay at least a little something for the many sins of that den of iniquity which calls itself SCO.
Tell you what, let's have all the evil team come right out and invest *everything* in SCO. That way we can have enough to pay for some really nice pyres and ale for the victory dancing.
My understanding was that the company imploded because it was ruled that they did not own the Unix copyright, upon which the majority of its legal claims were based. What legal claims could they possibly have left?
Also, buying a company for the sake of being able to earn legal awards should be illegal, strictly as a matter of financial sanitation. A good solution to this would be a statute that makes a buyer liable for claims up to the amount he paid for the company, but make both him and the company unable to claim any rewards in suits pending on the company's behalf.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Novell is now assured of getting every penny they've got coming to them.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
i for one welcome our new SCO rescuing overlo...no, wait, ffs!
I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life
In other words, when their contracts with SCO expire, they better be prepared to bend over and spread'em wide. The Norris Capital Partners did not get into this to loose money. They have a plan and no, I seriously doubt it is based on profiting off of litigation. Any money that is received from litigation will be just icing on the cake.
This can be a huge opportunity for you Linux vendors out there. Just saying.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
Looks like one of their senior people is in with George Soros. So they have potentially some very serious money behind them now.
Dog is my co-pilot.
-sarcasm?
OH MY GAWD!!
Make it stop!! This was an interesting story to follow two or three years ago. Now, it's just brutal! Stupid people with more money than brains... Walk away from SCO. It's dead. Make it stop!! Feel like throwing money away? Drop me a line - throw some at me. I promise you, you won't get it back. Just like you won't get any money back from SCO.
Oh my gawd!
Now maybe Novell will have where to get their money from.
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
They have some kind of business, much less a main business?
At least the resources to stand against them exist. Unless IBM alone does a complete about face then the legal issues will eventually be settled for good or ill. I believe that if IBM pursues and rightly win's this confrontation then in a way its a good thing because it means that on the condition of win that Open Source will have a firm base on which to develop for the forseeable future. FUD will be dead. If they lose, then we'll just have to cooperatively organized our legal defense funds I guess because attacks will just not stop.
Shh.
"The Big Guys Work For The Carlyle Group
What exactly does it do?
To find out, we peeked down the rabbit hole.
FORTUNE Monday, March 18, 2002
The Carlyle Group, a Washington, D.C., buyout firm, is one of the nation's largest defense contractors. It has billions of dollars at its disposal and employs a few important people. Maybe you've heard of them: former Secretary of State Jim Baker, former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, and former White House budget director Dick Darman. Wait, we're just getting warmed up. William Kennard, who recently headed the FCC, and Arthur Levitt, who just left the SEC, also work for Carlyle. As do former British Prime Minister John Major and former Philippines President Fidel Ramos. Let's see, are we forgetting anyone? Oh, right, former President George Herbert Walker Bush is on the payroll too..."
http://www.carlylegroup.net/thebigguys.htm
So now the Bushes are going to send Jim Baker to court to steal Linux.
"Hahahaha. Maybe this is the key? That's code, I think, for 'this will enable the company to continue to attack Linux'."
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080214125705140
Can't believe they forgot the Groklaw link!
which now has a platform to continue its court battle with Novell Inc. over royalties from the Unix server operating system, SCO's main business
So, is their main business the Unix server OS, or the court battle?
-g.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I
This is pretty apt. It's not often that comedy songs are funny, especially when they're nerdy comedy songs, but this one does it for me...
Its like some really bad slasher flick where the bad guy just..... won't.... fucking.... die...., and the audience gets tired of all the inventive ways in which they are bought back to life....
After a nuclear holocost the only thing left will be cockroaches, twinkies and SCO. If you chop off the heads of SCO lawyers they continue to live for a week. Just when you think they're dead those tiny little litigating arms start moving again.
Roberts. Alito. Scalia. Thomas. Kennedy.
SCO makes Scientology look like a glee club. I'm not advocating DDOS, which is certainly illegal and immoral, even against these two cults, but after all of the protests that Anonymous was able to drum up against one cult, why not go for the SCO cult? Like the Scientology cult, the SCO cult supposedly has offices worldwide, making it a challenge worthy of the merry band of pranksters that is Anonymous.
Then Jim Baker went to court for the Bushes, the vote counting stopped, and the Supreme Ct. handed the White House to the Bushes. Stealing Linux will be nothing compared to that.
He'll just roundhouse kick them until they sue themselves.
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
My wife went to law school and is now a practicing Attorney at a pure IP (Intellectual Property) NYC firm for a few years now.
/. is wrong, and the market is right.
There is an ongoing mad scramble to snag IP assets of all kinds.
(Key word: ALL KINDS)
I have been a long time IT person, and I happen to also be able to this peek into this neo-IP world, so I have a sense of deja vu -- similar to the dot-com frenzied land-grab --except that there are NO joe six packs doing the investing, just ultra-rich+ultra-smart professionals.
If anything is copyrighted (not patented) it has value for an infinite time frame. Grab onto it.
This may be yettunnadder instance of where
Stupidity cannot adequately explain this move, which leaves...
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
but he can kick its assets until they liquidate.
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
Hire your brother (Kevin McBride) as a lawer and pay him a pile of legal fees (thereby getting the money out of the sinking ship and back onto dry land, but out of reach of the investors).
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Until the fat lady runs out of money.
As long as the attorneys smell money, we can expect this to continue on for decades. They really don't care about the underlying attempt to undermine OSS by the funders, its all about getting paid. Once that stops flowing, they are gone.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The only explanation that seems plausible for this move, beyond utter lunacy, is that the investment company is hoping to become such a thorn in Novell and IBMs side with continuing litigation that they entice them to purchase SCO to get rid of them.
SCO is proposing to go private.
Right now they can't buy paperclips without Judge Gross's permission (ok, I'm exaggerating, but only a little).
The US Trustee, Novell and IBM are all going to over the plan with a fine-tooth comb and the judge isn't going to approve it just on SCO's say-so. This could be like the York deal that SCO tried to push though last year, all smoke and mirrors.
So don't go getting your shorts in a bunch just yet.
Watching the shenanigans of SCO has turned into the geek equivalent of Dallas for geeks.
This week on SCO
Novel "oh my god!, Im sure I killed him"
SCO "Im baaaaack and I have 100 million dollars"
Red Hat "what crack monkey gave him money ?"
Send it to me. I think it's a pointless venture giving an embarassment like SCO 100 million to pursue litigation for a lost cause. On the other hand, if they gave me the 100 million I'd be happy to create a business dedicated to designing corporate networks using UNIX and even give some of the SCO engineers a chance at a career.
To avoid corruption, one must remain dishonest.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
You LOSE, GOOD DAY sir!
"continue its court battle, SCO's main business, with Novell Inc. over royalties from the Unix server operating system" or am I crazy?
#include <disclaimer.h>
#include <beer.h>
> SCO has received $100 million financing
SCO has received nothing except offer (which is probably contingent on many conditions). They cannot accept it without permission of the bankruptcy court. To read some actual facts go to Groklaw.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
And the patent trolling continues!!
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
Novell might get its money back!
The rule of threes applies: that said Stephen Norris manages to lose at least three times what he's putting in.
Even more, I hope the judge imposes triple sanctions for this rampant barratry.
And you can't do a deal like this without authorization from the Bankruptcy Court. This will probably all be part of a Chapter 11 plan of reorganization the details of which have yet to be filed by SCO. The devil is in the details with these things and you can be sure SCO will be out to screw all general unsecured creditors; that's pretty much par for the course in all Chapter 11 plans. Also, expect a lot of Bankruptcy Court litigation over the status of Novell's claim, i.e. SCO will attempt to lump them in with the other general unsecured creditors and Novell will assert its trust theory. At any rate the post petition funding here will not be available to SCO's pre-petition creditors, including Novell. All those claims are dealt with in the CH 11 Plan and are discharged by the approval of the Plan.
Today isn't april fool's day. It's valentine's day!
I've heard that geeks confuse Haloween with Christmas (because 31 OCT = 25 DEC).
How does Valentine's Day equal April's fool's?
n/t
you had me at #!
Indeed.
Why not just invest $100 mill into Novell instead?
This new capital infusion in SCO is good news if you are a developer in New Delhi .
$100 Million is far, far more than what is needed to prolong this case. The real question is what is Microsoft going to do with SCO after all the dust from this case has settled? For that amount of money, they must have something in mind.
But wait, it gets better. Microsoft, along with some partners, recently invested $100 in Plaform Solutions, Inc. For those of you who follow this kind of business tactics, PSI is IBM's only competitor in the very lucrative (yes, still) Mainframe market. IBM sued PSI about a year ago on the basis of some bogus software patents. PSI threw in the towel by getting rid of nearly all their employees, and used the remaining VC money to fight this lawsuit, and countersue IBM. They have an excellent case there, by all accounts.
But they were dead as a company until Microsoft and their partners came along.
So, in short, Microsoft is dumping a LOT of money to fight IBM. On multiple fronts.
The main question here is what else they have up their sleeves now, with this investment in SCO?
What we need now is lots of garlic and some wooden stakes to ensure that it stays dead!
At Bulls & Bears Market Group we look for unusual investment opportunities that will send you into deep existential confusion.
We call this our Surrealist Investment Strategy(TM)
None of SCO's claims in any of their lawsuits involve patents.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Let me guess, somehow Microsoft is behind it again.
This is not capitalism at work, it's predatory behavior and something anti-trust lawyers should sink their teeth into. There is no reasonable expectation of return on SCO's "business" because SCO is full of shit and every decision has been against them. This is just another $100 million that M$ does not mind pissing away. The "investment" harms the reputation of all involved.
i think we should be welcoming this, this way novell ibm and the rest of the linux community will get every penny of the money they're owned, which goes back into linux and into opensource, if the bin laden / bush coalition want to pour money effectively into linux to stop MS's dirty laundry from being aired it seems a good thing to me than the far more shady ways they would doubtless otherwise employ.
The only thing Chuck Norris fears is IBM's lawyers.
Wow. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. It's like finding out that The Easter Bunny is real. I did not see this one coming.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
30 minutes (and some bashing about) after the purchase...
Norris: "Look here, I've had just about enough of this! That company is definitely deceased, and when I purchased it not half an hour ago, you assured me that its total lack of movement was due to it being tired and shagged out after a prolonged squawk."
McBride: "Well, it's... probably pining for the FUD."
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
Speaking of Gates and Carlyle...
"Gates and Alwaleed have collaborated for at least two years. After attending a dinner at Gates's home in Bellevue, Washington, in early 2004, Alwaleed agreed to explore ways to assist Microsoft's expansion in Saudi Arabia."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/12/bloomberg/bxfour.php
These people seem like they are busy trying to take us back to the "good" old days of kings, feudal lords, and private empires. And spending $100m to taint Linux a little more (through SCO) is pocket change to them. Scary.
I didn't know The Carlyle Group was related to Microsoft in any way. Although there is PLENTY of documentation on all their other evils...
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
This is the funniest thing I've heard since I last read xkcd (when my neighbours were doing a genius stand-up routine).
To put $100M back into SCO to keep it afloat, Microsoft and its supporters must be wetting themselves with fear. No-one in their right mind wastes $100M idly, people only do it out of irrational exuberance or extreme white-knuckle terror. Given SCO's performance lately I'm not minded to think it's exuberance.
Even as a Free Software Maniac I hadn't realised how well the war was going, I thought we still had 10 years to run before we owned the playing field. Now it looks more like 5.
Congrats Microsoft and co. for confirming you're 5 years from irrelevance - apparently you know better than we do.
Obviously there's a sucker born ever minute. And some of them have $100M to flush away.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Nobody running a successful LBO firm is stupid enough to make this ridiculous lawsuit the central part of an execution plan.
The Statements in the release are quite lawyerly indeed. The funding is in place, IN PART, to "see SCO's legal claims through to their full conclusion". PJ interprets this to mean "continue to attack Linux", and indeed the deal suggests that is something these investors would like to see returns from: the vast majority of this $100M is not hard cash to be handed over in one lump sum loan, it is a "line of credit" to fund continued operations and part of financing this line of credit would be, IIRC, 17% of any monetary judgments in SCO's favour.
However, I cannot believe that the smart people behind SNCP sincerely think they have a good chance of actually WINNING the lawsuit. I think it's more of a "lottery ticket"--lawyers make sure their butts are covered, and that they'll be able to screw ove...errr I mean "receive compensation" under all circumstances. "Continue to pursue" litigation "to their full conclusion" could very well be code words for "finally put it to rest". They apparently have a plan that includes the legal stuff but haven't released details (and taking SCO private would mean they don't ever have to do so). That plan very likely incorporates (or entirely consists of) a contingency plan. It looks pretty bleak to reverse the decision on copyright ownership, but they can appeal a judgment on royalties owed to Novell and get out of paying tens of millions. The same goes for any counter-suits from the likes of IBM or Red Hat. SNCP may think they have the ability to get SCO out of hot water without paying out as much (or any) money.
In short, their legal strategy might (wisely) be a defensive strategy to cut their losses and move on. To paraphrase that cute song "if I had a (hundred) million dollars", well, I'd "buy me a SCO" too actually, and that would almost be my legal plan, though I'd be more apt to not put too much effort in "cut the losses" and settle out of court. If I was some LBO billionaire dude I'd buy SCO, and when judgment came I'd say "here's your money Novell", and subsequently settle all other disputes quickly. Then I'd promptly GPL UNIXWare and OpenServer and use what's left of the technical people to refocus SCO as a "solutions provider" to target the thousands of SCO users around the world with UNIXWare/OpenServer-to-Linux migration plans. Anything of redeeming value in the newly-GPLed legacy OS products would then be incorporated into a "LinuxWare" distribution tailored to be as close as possible to a drop-in replacement for existing SCO customers.
The background of SNCP and their "middle eastern partners" really make me uncomfortable though. Those stated partners include the Saudi prince who is Bill Gates' investment partner in the Four Seasons hotel chain. These are legally-savvy business tycoons. I cannot see them taking the "Mark Shuttleworth act of benevolency" approach that I'd take. They are no doubt acting with convincing insider knowledge. I think that there might be a few motivators for this investment:
* They might have a convincing legal argument to overturn some of the judgements against them--for example they might be able to retain copyright to at least portions of UNIX, and that would at least allow the IBM lawsuit to move forward and keep the FUD coming for Microsoft.
* They are trying to stem customer migrations to Linux. I have no doubt that even if Microsoft isn't tied to this deal that BillG *is* in some capacity, and he obviously has the betterment of Microsoft in his self interest. The business plan outside the legal battle may be in fact to steer SCO customers towards Microsoft solutions, and perhaps to eventually have MSFT absorb SCO entirely. If you combine that with the first point, that would mean MSFT could end up with some UNIX copyright ownership--a great piece of IP to leverage if you wished to embrace, extend and extinguish *real* UNIX operating systems of all kinds (like
Does anyone here work for USPS/FedEx/UPS/Your favorite delivery company? Does anyone here have a chicken farm, keep pigeons or otherwise tend to numerous avians?
If we want to defeat Microsoft properly and deliver ourselves into a Brave New World then we must discourage those people who are considering working at Microsoft to change their mind and work at more enlightened establishments.
To this end I propose a daily drop-off of bird guano at Microsoft Headquarters, and ideally anywhere a Microsoftie may ply their trade or their closest supporters may be.
Get collecting people!
* The company's market cap was less than two million dollars, so the size of the investment is more than fifty times the value of the company on the open market.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
All of you should to to youtube right now and search for "Confessions of a hit man".
This is sick.
He's also the guy who got seriously dissed by Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Find another sucker and pay yourself years of salry and bonuses look busy.
As long as you actually go through the motions, is it really fraud?
You see, that's the problem. If we don't stop mixing our metaphors we will never destroy the monster, Dr. Frankenstein!
Can't someone come up with a really new joke about SCO? It seems like all of them have been used by now. I really thought it was dead and buried, and I was amused to see SCO used for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Talk about a jinxed label...
Or maybe they were hoping to coast on the publicity? It was organized around 2001, which seems to be about when the SCO lawsuits started. It just feels twice as long as that.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Valentine's_Day_Massacre
I am thinking they are sticking their dropping in worth dollars (and paper financial IOUs that are near worthless now-the jig is up on that con) *someplace*, and it doesn't matter right now where or what that someplace is as long as it is sort of something. All the rich farts are lining up all over the planet scarfing up cheap companies and other sorts of assets. The big real estate buyouts will start once the recession is more severe and the prices drop more, then dime on the dollar wealth transference begins, just like in great depression vs 1.
They are just dumping dollars without it looking like they are. Who knows, but I doubt MS is done with Linux yet, like a lot of people stated oh so long ago, the SCO case was just a very small scouting expedition. Linux OS and Open Office (and google on the net and now going into cellphones/mobiles) is a "clear and present danger" to MS old cash cow business model. They can and will throw billions at protecting hundreds of billions. 100 mil is just covering some bases to that sort of money and interest.
Somewhere in that mess is something that's worth more than $100 million to more than one group. Otherwise, these guys would have waited and bought it at auction.
Chuck Norris gets involved.
He would deliver a round house kick so hard that it would actually propel Linux onto desktop!
Zing Pow! Easy shot.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Team...
General Wesley K. Clark, U.S. Army (Retired) Weird.
Pamela J. Newman extensive experience in working with major private equity groups, including The Blackstone Group,
I've heard that name somewhere recently..
Also Mr. Paperin has created $600 million of incremental value for the fund by managing its turnaround and liquidation of a portfolio of distressed investments in securities and private equity in Russia.
I'll admit that last sentence makes no sense to me. A wild guess is it might be saying..."selling out the fledgling Russia democracy to the oligarchs whilst losing vast chunks of other peoples money."
They could be on to something. I think it goes well with SNMP, SNMP, SFTP, SMPTE, SNES ...
Perhaps if someone, anyone published a "Isn't Vista Great" article M$ wouldn't hate Linux sooo Much!
Cockroaches don't fare much better than humans to radiation.
From wikipedia:
It is popularly suggested that cockroaches will "inherit the earth" if humanity destroys itself in a nuclear war. Cockroaches do indeed have a much higher radiation resistance than vertebrates, with the lethal dose perhaps 6 to 15 times that for humans. However, they are not exceptionally radiation-resistant compared to other insects, such as the fruit fly. The MythBusters of Discovery Channel had tested this popular belief in an episode aired on January 30, 2008, and had confirmed that fruit flies do indeed have a higher resistance to radiation than cockroaches.
The cockroach's ability to withstand radiation better than human beings can be explained in terms of the cell cycle. Cells are more vulnerable to effects of radiation when they are dividing. A cockroach's cells divide only once when in its molting cycle, which at most happens weekly in a juvenile roach. The cells of the cockroach take roughly 48 hours to complete a molting cycle, which would give time enough for radiation to affect it but not all cockroaches would be molting at the same time. This would mean some would be unaffected by the initial radiation and thus survive, at least until the fallout arrived.
Kevin Bacon is the nexus of the Universe, so I'm only going to post the closest IMDB listing to al-Walid bin Talal, that for King Fahd getting special thanks for Malcolm X,
http://imdb.com/name/nm1145255/
Y'all take it from here. I too busy computing my Elvis Number.
So what are they buying? Oh, yeah, the IP turned out to be less than real.
Oh, they're buying SCO's reputation?
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha
Consider this: SCO has a hard time right now (according to its 10-K) paying its staff including its s/w engineers. I doubt that any quality s/w engineer with a desire to avoid resume poisoning would want to work at the place. Therefore, it's unlikely that any of SCO's current or future offerings will be any more attractive than they are now, and that's not much. However, SCO will still try to push its products.
And that's where Linux developers and open source advocates can molest SCO with suit after suit because any feature that shows up in an SCO product will likely already have an existing implementation in an open source, GPL'ed program. Perhaps not an exact functional duplicate, but one close enough for grounds for a non trivial lawsuit. Certainly the grounds will be as strong as, if not stronger, than those of SCO's suit from 2003. And while the lawsuits burn away at SCO, open source proponents will conduct their own FUD campaign against any SCO product and any company that uses SCO products.
Is a Saudi prince saying casually to his nephew "you could learn strategic thinking from a man such as Gates. Various and subtle are his means." And then the third level assistant getting confused and funding SCO.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
This doesn't do that much for SCO. It gives Novell, IBM and Red Hat cash to go after. Remember, there are substantial legal claims against SCO, and those claims are on much stronger grounds than SCO's claims against anybody.
SCO is headed for their day in court:
U.S. District Court - District of Utah - Court Calendar
Honorable Dale A. Kimball
Tuesday, 04/29/2008
08:30 am: SCO Grp v. Novell Inc (2:04-cv-00139-DAK-BCW) Bench Trial
The only question in that trial is how much money SCO owes Novell. SCO will appeal, but they are unlikely to win.
Or at least, that's the theory.
In Starcraft terms, this feels more like an 11th hour act of desperately throwing troops and equipment at a bug infestation which you know you have no hope of winning.
Oh, and the Bush family having had sitting members on the Carlyle board for several years. All the evil-doers of the world are linked up in a 3 degrees of separation kind of deal.
-FL
rip off the Saudis.
I'm so sick of reading about this "beast that would not die!"
Now some oil sheik is going to be on the hook for something he won't even notice at the pump (100 mil is what? Less than a week's worth of flow?) while we are subjected to reading about this utter bull-shit litigation for the next year.
And I can't even wipe my ass with the tissue of lies that Darle has hatched.
I hope there's a SPECIAL CIRCLE OF HELL FOR HIM.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
This is the "other shoe dropping", the "pipe fairy waving the magic wand".
Mr. Norris knows EXACTLY what he is doing. This SCO investment is only part of an overall plan to control significant areas of economic development, worldwide. Study the Carlyle Group sometime, and note that they are very well connected, international, quiet and powerful.
Mr. Norris is backed by *huge* money, $1e8 isn't even pocket change for them. They won't even notice the investment, but that relatively minor investment will have exactly the effect that their friends and minions want. This infusion of cash will enable a continued attack on those who freely implement significant productivity tools, such as the Linux kernel. They want *every system* that people depend on, to include the monetization tax that people like Microsoft wish to impose.
Students of history should recognize this event: It is reminiscent of the Guild System in Europe.
The guys funding SCO are merely funding an ongoing threat to those who would implement freely available productivity tools. This is a small skirmish in a much larger war. These guys have financial resources that are literally, uncountable, because they have so many layers of corporate veil. I had no idea the SCO linux issue would bubble so high up into the chain of command...
SCO has received enough funding to lock this case up in appeal all the way to a freshly packed supreme court. Novell will run out of money 40 times before SCO's funders will even begin to notice the dent in their portfolios. IBM has deeper pockets and masterful lawyers backed by solid evidence, but even with those advantages, a well-enough funded opponent can bleed them pretty good in today's legal and political environment.
And let there be no mistake: This issue reaches into politics in a big way. I believe that if the Linux kernel and and various supporting tools and applications were given a clean bill of legal health, many very powerful people will not be able to assert the control that they think they deserve over the way we earn our incomes.
I wonder if the Carlyle group didn't get exactly what they wanted here? Sure, 100 million is a lot of cash to most people (one 100 million dollar hookerbot....100 million one dollar hookerbots....) but to an investment group, you have to wonder if they haven't decided to bet a stake of money on a losing horse, then take the write-off.
The firm was (apparently) valued at 13.5 billion dollars in '01, and one would think they've grown slightly ahead of the rate of inflation since then. So realistically they've sunk what? Far less than half a percentage point of their total value into SCO. SCO can keep pissing away money on court cases, further devaluing the company, while Carlyle's accounting department laughs all the way to the bank.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
win.
I won't include the URL to her "article" because I don't want to give her the clicks:
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Feb. 14, 2008 06:00 PM
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SCO's back from the grave with a doozy of a reorganization plan and $100 million to spend pursuing its legal case against Linux.
This is top-drawer coin-of-the-realm kind of money put together from the deep-pockets of the Middle East by Stephen Norris, the co-founder and former president of the ultra-posh Carlyle Group, the guy who had Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal Al Saud salvage Citibank on a cold call and turn a $15 billion profit on mere $590 million equity investment.
After leaving Carlyle, whose chairman is now ironically ex-IBM CEO Lou Gerstner and whose resources, shall we say, include from time to time politicos like the Bushes, père et fils, and former prime ministers like John Major, Norris started Stephen Norris Capital Partners LLC, another chi-chi private equity firm that's done things like, oh, recapitalize Suez.
It's Norris Capital Partners that'll be buying at least 51% of SCO and taking it private.
We're talking about people who can buy all the legal talent in the world who've looked at SCO's evidence against IBM and Novell and Linux and think that - despite all the monumental setbacks - the case is still eminently winnable - and if not the case that's filed then a new case they'll file.
People who, if they do win, won't just take IBM and Red Hat and Novell to the cleaners, they won't have a bit of compunction or an ounce of political correctness about demanding a SCOsource tax from every Linux user on the globe.
We're potentially talking billion here, folks, the only numbers these kind of people think in.
They also reportedly think that with them in the picture SCO can restart some of its Unix revenues and like the possibilities of its mobile technology. Heck, it might be a short-term investment, if a settlement offer come in and takes SCO out. Or SCO could eventually go public again.
Anyway, the way they get there from here is for Norris to buy 51%-85% of SCO, which yesterday had a market cap of all of $1.31 million, for $5 million and make the other $95 million available to SCO as a five-year line of credit secured by all of SCO's assets and legal claims - present and future.
The memorandum of understanding between SCO and Norris was filed this morning with the bankruptcy court in Delaware as sort of a downpayment on a final, polished reorganization plan to be filed later to get SCO out of Chapter 11.
SCO was never really bankrupt - though it's verging on it now - but in a clever legal move sought bankruptcy protection as sanctuary from the Utah federal court that it was afraid would slap it with a constructive trust and so prevent it from appealing the court's devastating - and supposedly wrongheaded - summary judgment that Novell owns the Unix copyrights.
SCO will be asking the bankruptcy court to okay the Norris deal and release it from Chapter 11 but at the same time will also reportedly be asking it to stop Utah from confiscating its last dime before it can post bond and appeal to the Denver appeals court.
If Delaware, which has already claimed dibs on the imposition of any constructive trust, says no, the worst that can happen at this point is that SCO has to draw down the money to pay Novell from its interest-bearing $95 million line of credit, something it wants to avoid. But one way or another it'll go to Denver, something neither IBM nor Novell reportedly want to see happen.
According to the MOU - which, by the way, specifically calls for "aggressively" pursuing SCO's case against AutoZone as well as the Novell/IBM imbroglio - how much of SCO Norris and his money people get - 51% to 85% - depends on the amount of damages SCO ultimately has to pay to settle - by virtue of a "final, non-appealable judgment in the Novell/IBM litigation (or to settle the Novell/IBM litigation in a settlement transaction that requires a net payment to Novell/IBM)."
If it's zero to $30 mill
This means there's more money around for people to collect when we take SCO to court for its wrongful actions. Assuming, of course, there's anything left after IBM and Novell are done with them. So basically these guys who are investing in SCO are really just handing a bunch of money to Novell and IBM.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/12/1856240
With the right to be safe in one's person and possessions and the requirement of search warrants so close to being nullified, I wonder whether software choice will be permitted five years from now. To put $100M back into SCO to keep it afloat, Microsoft and its supporters must be wetting themselves with fear. No-one in their right mind wastes $100M idly, people only do it out of irrational exuberance or extreme white-knuckle terror. Given SCO's performance lately I'm not minded to think it's exuberance. I don't know what else he has up his sleeve, but the liquid capital to "waste" $100M on a worthless property brings to mind the power to ignore the Constitution and do things like this. Do you play chess? Do you try to protect your pawns, or put them in your opponents' way?
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/13/2331224
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
Somebody is protecting his investments that are somehow threatened by Linux.
It is possible that 90% of software companies and RIAA earnings would drop without popularity of Microsoft and Apple as the supplies of the operating systems? What about the retirement funds with investments in companies that are addicted to Microsoft or Apple?
What are the chances that the money trail does not lead back to Microsoft or Bill Gates or both?
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Wonder if it's time to buy some of those 8 cents shares this morning ?
I can afford 1000 of those babies right now ; )
In hindsight it is obvious that someone should have offered to buy the remains of SCO while in Chapter 11. Once they had ownership they'd turn over all "assets" (assuming there are any) to public domain or the Linux Foundation (or whatever, you get the gist) and then immediately dissolve the company.
Anyone got a time machine?
Wake me up when the Dubai Royalty flies two jumbos into New York city landmarks, why don't you. Double points if they manage to hit the Pentagon as well.
Remember Corel? They got taken private for a few years and then came back with an IPO. I've read this is a well known strategy for private funds to make large profits. As long as there is some value in the company's products to entice investors to buy the offering.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
Nice analysis, you are very likely completely correct on this.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
heh..
I was going to say, 'ok, so now we have a whole new group of idiots to put out of business'
and
'you know, anyone who could even have the thought of doing this is fundamentally evil, and we should declare open season on them'.
Then, I found out gwbush may be involved, and suddenly it was just the status quo.
Watching the fall of America (unfortunately from directly underneath).
Who'd want to buy software/solutions from SCO?
The SCO Group (TSG) gets bought and the holding company decides that things are just not working out. Can the holding company just write off it's "investment" and TSG just stops existing? No more company, no more lawsuits?
No. Think of it this way: maybe Novell and IBM will now be able to screw SCO to the wall and get that 100 million.
Bitter and proud of it.
This case never was about "stolen IP", it was about spreading FUD. With this new "investment" they have created a new weapon: "See, all these very SERIOUS business people (look at the names!!!!) are investing millions of dollars in SCO!!! There MUST be something in those allegations!!!!! Better stay away from Linux!!!"
For a mere $100M, quite a bargain at the price.
No, the case is not over, unfortunately. I think we are now seeing stage 2 of the Plan.
Meanwhile, this is the funniest comment I've seen so far, from Slashdot