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SCO Preps Appeals Against Novell and IBM
An anonymous reader writes "It looks like SCO will be emerging from the almost dead soon, with new owners and $100 million on board. SNCP is adjusting the business strategy, according to this report on TG Daily, SCO is saying goodbye to CEO Darl McBride and is also preparing to appeal the summary judgments in the cases against Novell and IBM. If you have thought the chapter was closed, think again. Those $100 million can go a long way (even if SCO has to pay 17% interest on it)."
Use your bail-out money to dig the hole deeper.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Who keeps giving/lending these clowns money?
It looks like SCO will be emerging from the almost dead soon, with new owners and ... is also preparing to appeal the summary judgments in the cases against Novell and IBM.
This time please use holy water and lawyers made of silver.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
Doesn't the bankruptcy trustee have to approve the sale first? The article sounds like this is already a done deal.. Dang, I need to start reading Groklaw again.
But who knows stranger things have happened. Do they still have the money to bribe a judge ?
This is like a bad Ed Wood movie. "Plan 10 from SCO"
INSERT INTO comment VALUE('Doh!') WHERE user='you';
They won't be emerging from the almost dead, and they won't have $100M, and it's not 17%
They're still almost dead - this deal doesn't change anything about the fact that they owe a ton of cash to Novell, and will soon owe more to IBM.
The $100M is really $5M, plus a LOAN of *up to* $100M.
And the loan's interest rate is 17% plus prime (so closer to 21%.)
This is like you claiming that MBNA invested $50,000 in you when you signed up for a new credit card.
First of all this is at least a few weeks old. Check Groklaw. Second they are not giving SCO $100 mil outright. They are giving $5 mil with an option to loan another $95 mil over 5 years.
Enron tried this I think, don't really know if they do much anymore though.
In a way, it's kind of poetic that these trolls are going to get raped by a loan shark (SNCP) at 17% interest. 95 million times 17% times 5 years is 80.75 million dollars, not compounded. That's an ass raping if I ever heard of it. Plus, they're going to have to pay 37 million to Novell, if they lose their appeal. It feels like something much deeper and more sinister is going on here, and it stinks. I just can't put my finger on it yet.
Other than this text, there is no discernible information contained in this sig.
Who keeps giving/lending these clowns money?
Pay no attention to the largest proprietary software company in the world behind the curtain.
...as long as SCO has a pulse, Groklaw has a reason to exist.
They don't have squat until the BK court approves it. Even then they only get 5 million and 95 million in flash cash. If the trustee tells them to put the money in escrow against potential judgments from IBM and Novell, that will flush this deal. This is all show but I haven't figured out who the audience is supposed to be. The BK court isn't going to be impressed.
I'm not sure what they're going to appeal. SCO dug themselves a really deep hole, an appeal is a long shot.
No one with a brain would loan SCO a nickel. It would take a cash cow like Microsoft to convince anyone to get in bed with SCO. Maybe that answers who the audience is supposed to be. Like there are serious players who think SCO's IP claims have merit. Ooooo, scary. If that's the case this is to business strategy what the Zune is to Apple.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Why in the world would someone take $100 Million perfectly good dollars and just throw them into this worthless money pit? Incidentally, if you write SCO as $C0, and then move the C to the front, you've got, "See? $0." And it seems to me that's what everyone ends up with who touches this thing with a 100 million foot pole! Who in the heck wants SCO's OS anymore? You know what? Even if they do want it, does anybody really want software from a company that might disappear at any moment due to all this litigation drying up it's well of money? Where will they get support?
Especially, why would they do this when Linux and the *BSDs are so far superior at this point due to the efforts of millions and the incredible amount of support, mindshare, and money behind them from individuals, small businesses, large businesses, and even governments. Not to mention that all modern Apple Macs are running a UNIX operating system that can accomplish all, or at least nearly all, of the functions that can be accomplished by any other UNIX or UNIX-like system out there. Not to mention further that all of the aforementioned OSes are superior in an uncountable number of ways to SCO's OS. Not to mention that the entire code to Linux and the *BSDs is available for your perusal or participation, as with a tremendous variety of programs that are run on these systems, from Apache to something that starts with a Z. Why would anybody pay good money to SCO for it's stuff when SCO is acting like the bully at the playground and when all of this is available for free, both libre and if you want to download and build stuff yourself, gratis...
In my opinion, SCO is no longer a software company, but a litigation company.
I think this comic applies here too...
:(){
Using this 21% loan to file appeals is a lot like using your credit card to buy lottery tickets.
They're that desperate, and I can live with that.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Even a large infusion of cash is unlikely to do SCO any good. They have no income to speak of and no product likely to generate any. Their lawsuits have no chance of succeeding given the ruling that they never acquired the Unix copyrights from Novell. Even in the extremely unlikely event that this is overturned on appeal, they still have to prove infringement of their copyrights, which, with discovery complete, they have still been unable to do, and they have to overcome the problem that they themselves distributed Linux under the GPL, which is a huge problem for them. Finally, no matter what happens, they are going to have to pay millions to Novell since they failed to pass on to Novell the income from their franchise to sell Novell's Unix property, for which they (SCO) were merely to receive a 5% fee. Money will pay the lawyers a little bit longer, but it isn't likely the lawyers can postpone the end very much.
Everyone knows that the final boss is supposed to have three forms. We're not even halfway through the battle yet.
Personally, I'm expecting some sort of cyborg octopus as SCO's final form. 9999 HP? You better believe it.
SCO is a penny stock now. Somewhere between $0.17 and $0.20 a share. Market cap is $4.3 million.
/. regulars that read this were willing the company could be taken over and put down, permanently.
How many of you would contribute $50 to take a controlling interest in this festering pimple of an "IP" company? If the next ~80,000
Create a non-profit (name it SLASHX, perhaps) or some other legal entity, raise funds and buy shares. The percent of ownership remaining appears on a sidebar with a link to some collection agency. Make Stallman or some other credible figure chairman and just keep buying shares till "we" hold 51%.
I'm no financial guru. Perhaps the idea is naive. However, you can damn well bet I'd contribute.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
I had the impression that in both cases the judges have been extremely scrupulous in framing their judgments to rule out successful appeals. It's not as if SCO had any facts to present for consideration, let alone new ones. Appeals to clearly shut cases get dismissed, right?
I wonder if there's any way to find out who else this firm has invested in? I'd like to contact those companies and explain that I'm boycotting them and their products out of spite.
I don't care how slick the lawyer is, SCO had a summary judgment against them. Provided the judge in the case dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's those things are damn near impossible to successfully appeal. I'd put the odds against successful appeal at 20 to 1. More likely than not the appeals court will simply say, 'No' and that will be the final whimper of SCO.
is a death will.
I want to be SCO's attorney. These 100M are mine, mine, mine. All of them. 'nuff said.
-- The Online Photo Editor - http://www.phixr.com
Just a FYI, this deal has not been approved. So all this "SCO is going to be saved" stuff, has no factual basis whatsoever. Bankruptcy court would have to approve of it, and that is not likely at all. So the slashdot article here = incorrect.
Thats what would happen if every individual made their purchases independantly but what would happen if you kept the money from each individual purchase in a safe place and didn't buy any shares until there was enough cash to buy your 51% all at once ?
Basically, after the loan shark and their lawyers are done, they are going to be so far in debt that Novell will never see a dime. That might in fact be their strategy.
Darl just walks away?
If I were NOVELL and IBM I'd be having a party, thats a 100 million dollars that can they can collect in damages. Before there was basically nothing to collect. Now they can win AND get some $$$.
... which collective did provide 100 million to keep SCO alive and keep its Linux harseling... no really, I cannot see it, but how are they? :p
SCO - The Thing that Would Not Die.
Eh, no. They don't have $100M at this point. They only get something like 5M to start. Which might not even be in stone at this point. Anyway we have not seen any evidence that 100M even is available.
should that not have been: 'adjusting the EXIT strategy' instead? How could anybody consider their putting 90% of their efforts into legal threats( threats with no proof I remind you ) and call it a business strategy? They surely were not minding their UNIX customer store because they ran those customers away very quickly.
So I wonder what they have planned now? Is SCO going to become a Law firm?
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
... and some shark we have here ! Stephen L. Norris, from Utah, co-founder of the Carlyle Group.
What do I know, he might even have hired his brother Chuck to collect the debts.
(*shudders*)
(*ducks to avoid roundhouse-kick*)
You can't avoid a roundhouse kick from Chuck Norris. It's like death and taxes, only faster.- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It's always important to notice when an article starts off with "The SCO Group plans ..." and then doesn't seek out any verification or outside opinions. It's probably another lazy journalism piece where the author simply rewords a press release and calls it "news". All this article does is lay out a motion with no investigation into the context.
For example, you would think he would have noticed that Novell has already objected to the reorg because of the sketchy details. Like, does SNCP even have access to that kind of money? There is this article that says Norris might have Middle East connections, but no explanations of why those connections would want in on the SCO case. Or how much of the bill they'd be willing to cough up. The schedule's a bit iffy too. Novell points out that SCO's hanging on to the "definitive documents" on the reorg and isn't planning on releasing them until the day that objections to the reorg are due. Read carefully and you'll see that objections are due by March 26th at 4:00pm, while the documents are to be released on March 26th, but with no time stated. Any bets on SCO planning on providing those at 4:01pm?
Keep in mind that SCO has already proposed and scrapped a bailout deal. In that one, they were playing a shell game where all the company's assets (and execs) went one way, while all the company's liabilities went the other. Needless to say, the courts weren't going to let that happen.
The bottom line is that this is SCO, so you already know it's a scam. It's just a matter of waiting and watching to determine what kind of scam they're trying to run this time.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
Anybody else read this as SCO Perps appeal??
Which I don't see happening...
Novell's judgement.. ~30 million, plus interest..
IBM's judgement.. ~300 million or more..
SCOG will need to post both a appeal bond and a supercedeas bond.
It's unlikely that Judge Kimball will NOT rule in favor of any delay in the execution of judgements without a full bond amount being posted.
SCOG's lawsuit has cost IBM ten's of millions in needless/pointless discovery.. Hunting for the copyright violation that never existed..)
I don't see the Court of Appeals granting the stay either.
I doubt that SCOG is capable of scraping up that amount of free cash to continue this fiasco.
Here we have a guy whose name is well known for:
- Destroying a company
..
- .. for purposes of manipulating stock prices to make cashing out work better
I doubt any legitimate business will ever hire this guy, but I can see why crooks might. Let's all watch where this scumbag goes next."Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
If they've got their mitts on some more money then more legal work is a good way to pump some of that cash into a safe place. No point in them leaving cash in a sinking ship.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
While it is annoying that SCO continues to exist, the injection of capital will mean:
1. Novell will get paid their licensing feels
2. Counter claims from IBM, novell and Red Hat may proceed
It isn't like SCO actually has a case.
meh
The court ruled that SCO *converted* money that was actually Novell's in the licensing racket, so SCO never had actual ownership of that cash. That is way different from normal debt, and can't be discharged under bankruptcy. The only reason this liability isn't "on the books" yet is that the original court hasn't figured out how much it is, but it's safe to assume that it will be "a lot".
As a bonus, the court that will be deciding how much it is will be the same one that SCO told no trust fund was required because bankruptcy wasn't imminent just a few weeks before they filed for bankruptcy. They are almost certainly well and truly fucked here, and "spin" isn't going to change that. Their whole strategy seems to be to provoke the judge to anger so they have an issue for appeal, but Kimball is a pretty cool customer who will make sure that his ruling is air-tight.
The Utah court's summary judgment held that SCO does *not* own the copyrights to the code they are licensing. SCO built their entire case around a theory of "but... we paid a lot of money for this business, and of course it transferred the copyrights to us! Never mind what the actual contracts said." Too bad for them that the court rejected that argument totally.
And, this article presumes that the BK court will approve the deal, and do so over the objections of the major creditors. The judge may well not approve the deal as written, as there is no real guarantee of the additional $95M being actually available, and further since the $95M is a line of credit at a 17% interest rate it could magically evaporate at any time.
The deal really doesn't provide any security for the creditors at all, nor does it put the post-bankruptcy SCO in a financial position where it is unlikely to be back in bankruptcy in the near future. Indeed, it puts the company squarely in debt for even more than it faces to begin with due to the interest. The creditors names change, but the debt remains and really grows exponentially.
The only way I can see the court approving this is if the entire $100M were a straight-up equity purchase which was a cash infusion sufficient to pay off and retire all the debt. Just moving the chairs around on the deck isn't going to pass muster here.
As for the appelate courts, SCO's behavior prior to summary judgement will be a huge factor. They dragged the case out, refused to comply with discovery orders, and changed their arguments constantly.