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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
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, but notice the bottom line. They're only giving SCO 5 million. The other 95 million is available to SCO as a loan, but not actually given. I thought the blurb was a little misleading.
But in this case, there are no legitimate viable parts of the business. Suing your customers is NOT a viable business, and suing your suppliers for owning stuff you stole from them isn't either.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
article here = incorrect
This is one of the worst articles I have ever seen! Not one bit of investigation was done, while there is voluminous information readily available elsewhere on this topic. It is like posting some company's press release and calling it news reporting. My first impulse was to do a little research to find out who is this TG Daily. Apparently it sprang from Tom's Hardware, but both are owned by TG Publishing LLC, a Bestofmedia Group company. The author is Wolfgang Gruener, a senior editor. A half hour on Google only found one little negative comment about TG Daily which I determined to be merely gossip not worthy of repeating. I found one other gripe over an article they had done on Linux. It was an esoteric complaint. In the end, that blogger posted an update saying that TG Daily had rectified the problem. Really, after scanning all the Google results, it certainly appeared that this journal had at least a "satisfactory" reputation. So then, how can such lousy piece of fluff journalism have come into existence? Maybe writers are only human, and have their good days and bad days like everyone else. This article must have been written on a very bad day in the life of Mr. Gruener.
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.