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Final Judgment — SCO Loses, Owes $3,506,526

Posted by timothy on from the seems-charitable-to-sco dept.

Xenographic writes "SCO has finally lost to Novell, now that Judge Kimball has entered final judgment against SCO. Of course, this is SCO we're talking about. There's still the litigation in bankruptcy court, which allowed this case to resume so that they could figure out just how much SCO owes, which is $3,506,526, if I calculated the interest properly, $625,486.90 of which will go into a constructive trust. And then there's the possibility that SCO could seek to have the judgment overturned in the appeals courts, or even the Supreme Court when that fails. Of course, they need money to do that and they don't really have much of that any more. Remember how Enderle, O'Gara and company told us that SCO was sure to win? I wonder how many people have emailed them to say, 'I told you so.'"

17 of 265 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Bailout by rolfwind · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You meant annoying, right? Like that fly that just doesn't get out of your face with it buzzing. Well, maybe entertaining to a third party, but not anyone affected by them.

  2. What about the license fees? by wcrowe · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wonder about those companies who paid the SCO license fees to use Linux? Are they free now to sue SCO for the license fees they have paid?

    --
    Proverbs 21:19
  3. Re:Christmas is early this year by mcgrew · · Score: 4, Interesting

    SCO gets a final judgement and loses $3.5m

    meanwhile Darl McBride is still disgustingly filthty rich. Too bad instead of stealing millions of dollars from innocent rubes, he wasn't dog fighting instead, like Michael Vick.

    Michael Vick lives in a prison in Kansas, making 12 cents an hour while plotting his return to the NFL. His houses and farms will soon be gone, the two yachts are history, and he's down to his last couple of Range Rovers.

    A race horse he bought for $60,000 died of colic, the Atlanta Falcons are still trying to hit him up for millions they paid him, and the IRS and the state of Georgia want nearly $1 million in back taxes.

    In 2006 he made nearly $15 million. Recently he reported total income of $12.89 for an entire month.

    I want to see Brainwol and McBride (while we're at it, my mortgage company's President and oil company presidents as well) in a cell with Vick.

    These people are the anti-Robin Hoods, stealing from the poor to give to the rich.

    --
    Free Martian Whores!
  4. Re:Enderle matters? by UnknowingFool · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I don't know this "hp" metric you are referring to. Can you explain it in Library of Congresses (LOC)?

    --
    Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
  5. Re:How much do they have by mitch_feaster · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If company expansion (in terms of hiring new employees) is an indicator as to how much a company is worth then sure enough they're not doing too well: http://www.sco.com/jobs/

    --
    fun
  6. Chapter 7? by maz2331 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wonder if there will be a point that Novell can force SCO into an involuntary Chapter 7 (liquidation) bankruptcy? Especially in light of the ruling that this money isn't a "normal" debt but a "conversion" - does that take it outside of what the bankruptcy court can protect?

  7. Market Cap... by jwiegley · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The $3.5M exceeds their current market cap. which appears to be only $2.81M. (pretty far fall from the $2.54B they had in 2000.)

    Don't quite know what that means but I'm hoping it means the judgment effectively wipes them off the map entirely.

    --
    I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
  8. Re:3.5M? Oh noes... by Penguinisto · · Score: 4, Interesting

    McBride and his cronies my be at the moment... but SCO the organization is not. SCO has been bleeding worse than a freshly-amputated pig, with no signs of slowing down its losses. Nobody (especially in this economy) would want to buy such a toxic and radioactive property.

    I also suspect that whoever is left holding the by-now worthless SCO stock would have little trouble in finding a contingency lawyer willing to sue McBride (and his buddies) personally for fiscal irresponsibility.

    There is also the chance that the SEC may get in on the act as well.

    /P

    --
    Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
  9. Speaking of losers... by yog · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What about all those companies that paid those don't-sue-us fees to SCO back in 2002? Are they going to step forward and demand their money back, now that the entire basis for this shakedown has been invalidated? And what about companies like Chrysler which also won against SCO? It seems to me they didn't get as much press as the IBM-SCO case did.

    One might also ask, whither Microsoft, now that their $86 million investment in Baystar has turned out to be a complete waste. Shouldn't some executive's head roll for this? God, if someone can waste that much money at Microsoft and get away with it, they must be either Steve Ballmer or Bill Gates, either of whom is too powerful to reprimand.

    I will say, SCO in its day was very intimidating, with Darl Bride as an eloquent and persuasive spokesman. His pronouncements sounded factual and reasonable, until people like Groklaw looked behind the curtain and showed us the truth. Well, it's just a testament to the power and resiliency of the open source community that Linux and friends will be around long after the world has forgotten what SCO was.

    --
    it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
    1. Re:Speaking of losers... by Lijemo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What about all those companies that paid those don't-sue-us fees to SCO back in 2002? Are they going to step forward and demand their money back, now that the entire basis for this shakedown has been invalidated?

      Blood. Turnip.

      Doesn't do a lot of good to go to the effort of suing someone who doesn't have a dime to give you for your efforts-- they'd be in line behind the people who SCO has already been ordered to pay, and SCO is already insolvent.

    2. Re:Speaking of losers... by dbIII · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I will say, SCO in its day was very intimidating, with Darl Bride as an eloquent and persuasive spokesman

      He came across as paranoid, self-obsessed and frivolous in my opinion. At a trade conference he made clients and potential clients sit through a vanity production of him as James Bond fighting the evil forces of Linux as one example. The whole fake death threat for publicity thing, bodygaurds and going about heavily armed thing really made him look dangerously mentally unbalanced. As for intimidating: to start with he had less staff and less budget than a typical high school principal, then he shed staff after that. He never was a big wheel. He was just a big noise.

      Personally I think the whole thing really was a two man scam where Darl drove the company into the brick wall of IBM and funneled as much of the legal expenses as he could to his brother. Between them I think they have milked SCO fairly dry.

  10. Re:You LOSE! by slashnik · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Not so sure
    Is Novell a good guy today
    or
    a less bad guy

  11. I remember back when this broke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Back when the SCO scandal broke on Slashdot several years ago, I remember reading several posts by guys who said they had been ordered to wipe SUSE/Red Hat/whatever off their servers and install 2003 Server.

    I wonder... Have they wiped 2003 Server and put Linux back on? Are the bosses that ordered this still around?

    I'll stop now because not only am I getting depressed, but this is turning into a Dilbert cartoon.

    But don't forget that there's a new word in the English language:

    McBride (verb): To accuse open source software of a patent falsehood in the hope of pecuniary advantage.

    Usage: "Hey, did you hear Steve Ballmer the other day? He was on stage at the Windows Expo and McBriding like crazy. The dude said that Linux stole the idea of sudo from Windows!"

  12. HP is horsepower or Hewlett-Packard by tepples · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I don't know this "hp" metric you are referring to.

    Horsepower.

    Can you explain it in Library of Congresses (LOC)?

    It depends on how many BD-Rs you can fit in a covered wagon.

  13. Now is the time by symbolset · · Score: 3, Interesting

    At long last Novell and Sun have the opportunity to kiss and make up over their little Open Solaris argument. Or not.

    Will they? Sun paid millions for the right to open Solaris to a company that was suing Novell. That money was rightly Novell's, as the right was theirs to sell and not SCO's. That money prolonged the unjust suit for a long time, costing Novell more than just the lost revenue, but also legal fees for their own lawyers to defend against the very lawyers funded by Sun's investment.

    This should be interesting, but we're not going to get the real story - just the announcement. How forgiving is Novell?

    --
    Help stamp out iliturcy.
  14. Re:"a complete waste" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Yup, my company (a fortune 1000) won't touch anything free or open source, after SCO.

  15. Re:Bailout by RichiH · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You still don't get it, do you? The whole financial crisis has been a huge success. At 25+% margins _per quarter_ for several years in a row, the people who actually did this are drowning in _personal_ wealth. And when it comes right down to it, that is all that matters to them. Especially since they will not have to pay anything back or go to jail for this. They really and truly won.