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SCO Preps Appeals Against Novell and IBM

Posted by samzenpus on from the harder-to-kill-that-the-tarrasque dept.

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)."

6 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. Put SCO down by TopSpin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    SCO is a penny stock now. Somewhere between $0.17 and $0.20 a share. Market cap is $4.3 million.

    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 /. regulars that read this were willing the company could be taken over and put down, permanently.

    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
    1. Re:Put SCO down by greg1104 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      IBM could have bought them out at a couple of points cheap--when they started this lawsuit they weren't trading for that much more than they are now. They didn't because it's more important to make an example of these idiots, and therefore to the larger group of potential future intellectual property trolls, as to what happens when you mess with companies because you think using Linux makes them vulnerable. No one should even consider spending a penny to buy them out, they need to die the hard way to make that lesson stick.

      Also, it's quite possible Novell will own them anyway before this has finished playing out, because of the $37M SCO owes them. This shell game with loans won't necessarily change that. While they're posturing hard now, I have my doubts as to whether these "angels" will really cough up all that money when the courts force the company to do that.

  2. Re:poetic justice by clem.dickey · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Don't forget that the loan shark gets a controlling interest in the company. What are the chances the shark (acting as SCO) is going to ask itself (SNCP) for millions of dollars to pay a judgment to Novell? If/when that happens, the shark needs to ask itself whether its worth the risk, even at 21%. It only makes sense if SNCP really believes that SCO can get the Novell judgment reversed on appeal and win some money from IBM. That could be a big, risky bet.

    The deal appears to be that SNCP is committed to loaning SCO $95 million, but only once. If the SNCP loans SCO $95 million on Monday and SCO repays the loan on Tuesday, it appears that the commitment has been fulfilled.

  3. Re:poetic justice by dbIII · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think the deeper and sinister bit is that Darl created a corporate train wreck and funneled a lot of the legal fees directly to his brother. IMHO that was the plan all along - IBM was the wall to audaciously run into and linux was the excuse, and whatever cash fell off SCO was the goal. I think it's worth paying attention to where he goes next and what happens there. To some people he would look like the underdog that got the share price up, took on IBM and he would have beat them too if it wasn't for those darn educated communist geeks and their penguin. He'll have an opportunity for a bigger scam next time.

  4. Won't stick by Frantactical+Fruke · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

  5. Re:PJ must be relieved... by TropicalCoder · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The current top article, for example, is about the ISO BRM on OOXML.

    I am really amazed that Slashdot hasn't picked up this story yet. I mean, I just can't believe it! This is the story of the week. This is a huge thing, as those who have been following it are well aware. The process at the BRM was so flawed as to bring into serious question the integrity of the ISO/IEC JTC-1. I won't add to the tens of thousands of lines of text that have been written about it here, in fear of being ruled off-topic. I only want to question why this hasn't been aired on Slashdot.

    Beginning on Friday, I was scanning the news anxiously to see how the BRM went, and shortly the first reports began to emerge. By Monday, the first report from an actual BRM participant came out. By Tuesday, the available information was growing exponentially. I was following all this on Groklaw, and kept flipping back and forth from Groklaw to Slashdot to see if they had picked it up yet. When a second blog by Andy Updegrove became a resource of links to every report by BRM participants, I could wait no longer. I wanted to see how this story was viewed by my fellow Slashdotters, naturally. I was so concerned that this still hadn't reached Slashdot that I reluctantly submitted the story myself. Then I started backtracking on the Firehose and discovered that there had already been 6 submissions at that point, and that was on Monday. I'll bet there have been dozens by now, besides thousands of people people clicking on those "Submit to Slashdot buttons all over the place". I just can't imagine why the editors haven't put this important story in front of Slashdot readers yet.

    Please forgive me for interrupting the current story. I just had to get this off my chest.