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SCO Proposes Sale of Assets To Continue Litigation
gzipped_tar sends in this excerpt from the Salt Lake Tribune:
"The embattled SCO Group Inc. is proposing to auction off its core products and use proceeds to continue its controversial lawsuits over the alleged violations of its copyrights in Linux open-source software. The Lindon company has filed a new reorganization plan with the federal court in Delaware where it sought bankruptcy protection from creditors after an adverse ruling in the Linux litigation. If approved by a bankruptcy judge, the plan could mean SCO's server software and mobile products lines are owned by other parties while SCO itself remained largely to pursue the lawsuits under the leadership of CEO Darl McBride. 'One goal of this approach is to separate the legal defence of its intellectual property from its core product business,' McBride said in a letter to customers, partners and shareholders. Jeff Hunsaker, president and COO of The SCO Group, said the litigation had been distracting to the company's efforts to market its products. 'We believe there's value in these assets and in order for the business to move forward it's imperative we separate it from our legal claims and we allow our products business to move forward,' he said Friday."
So Darl is going to basically sell off most of what the company has to continue a lawsuit he has no hope of winning? What the HELL is wrong with this guy? Worst. CEO. EVAR.
'One goal of this approach is to separate the legal defence of its intellectual property from its core product business'
Then why not drop the case and focus more fully on your 'core product business'
davecb5620@gmail.com
They want to pay Novell in worthless stock.
And the directors will get their pay in worthless options going forward.
It's amazing how long this zombie company can stay on its feet.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The recent story of their cessation to "compile" the history of the case seems a bit premature now.
That said, I'm beginning to wonder if Darl is playing "weekend at bernies" with the board of directors, because no sane board would authorize the liquidation of the bulk of a company's assets so an obsessed executive can go tilting at windmills.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
They're finally owning up to what we've known all along: SCO's business is litigation. Server software? Pffft.
I love the fact that they're willing to sell the very products they're supposedly protecting from unauthorized use of "their" code, just to keep the legal fight going.
What company would want to adopt or standardize on a product developed by a company that is, for all intents and purposes, dead? Everyone has moved on, be it server side apps or embedded, there are ample companies that have a superior product with a healthy roadmap and no indication that they will not be around in 5 years.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
Darl has now gone from rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, to throwing them overboard...
Where is reads :
Jeff Hunsaker, president and COO of The SCO Group, said the litigation had been distracting to the company's efforts to market its products.
it should read :
Jeff Hunsaker, president and COO of The SCO Group, said the efforts to market its products had been distracting to the company's main litigation activity
There, that's it.
Now a prediction. I predict that they are going to find a very generous buyer, that will pay much, much more than the market value of the actives, allowing the new, rather hollowed-out SCO to keep on litigating for years. Call it a hunch.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
McBride said in a letter to customers, partners and shareholders.
ie.
McBride said in a letter to his father-in-law, his wife and his mistress, and his grand parents.
@neonux
... of the Black Knight in Monty Python's Holy Grail.
"None shall pass!"
Have gnu, will travel.
It sounds like they're going to sell their assets off to someone else, leaving SCO as just a shell from which to continue the lawsuits and hide away the assets from future claims against them.
Ah but if the sale fails to raise sufficient cash the company directors will take a 10% cut in their salaries.
Is $280k a year a good salary for a CEO of a company that is in bankruptcy and has so far burned through $0.25B of investor capital.
Oh and there are only 66 employees. I would bet your nearest grocery store is larger than that.
I'm actually a little shocked that they haven't requested government financial assistance. It seems to be all the rage for companies with poor products, insane leadership, and failing business models.
mod this flamebait if you want, it's still true.
Hrm..
Perhaps IBM could buy them and write itself an unconditional irrevokable retroactive perpetual license to the products. And release them under GPLv3...
SCO has a market cap of just over $3 million. IIRC, McDonald's Corp is one of their major customers. That $3mil is pocket change for the $66.95 billion market cap McD's Corp.
What if McDonald's buys SCO? McD's could hire a couple devs (since that is all SCO needs, apparently..) for maintenance and some support personnel, then service their own stores as well as other existing customers. Maybe they'd wind up saving, if not making, some money in a few years. Perhaps give Darl a store to manage...
Heh. :)
Point being, with a market cap of only $3mil, SCO and anything they have/own are basically chump change for a real corporation. So, if the judges (have) let this happen, then, and I hate to even think of it, we'll see this zombie keep stumbling forward...
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
That's one of the reasons so many companies incorporate in Delaware.
Imagine, a company selling off its primary assets to fund a shakedown lawsuit. If this is not proof that america is too litigious, what could be proof. This demonstrates just how sick this sue-for-profit legal system is. If sue-for-profit did not exist, SCO would be off trying make good products now and linux users would have never been intimidated. Sad sad day for our culture to see this continue yet again.
SO, SCO wishes to give up any pretense of doing anything productive at all now or ever again so they can divy up the only remaining value amongst the lawyers and executives and have nothing left to pay their creditors. It sounds like they've also given up all but the slimmest pretense of even attempting to provide ROI for their stockholders.
SCO's lawyers include Darl's brother, Kevin. Turning SCO's assets into legal fees gets the money out of the company and into the family. At present SCO is dead in the water like a floating wreck. It still has some value on board. This strategy converts some of that into cash which can be trans-shipped into the family as legal fees.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Oh, shut up, Darl.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
The law is unjustly lenient in cases like this precisely because it is being abused by lawyers, and most laws are written by lawyers. I don't know anyone else who could write them, but it creates an inherent bias in favor of those acts that lawyers perform and others don't. And in favor of those acts that people who hire lawyers perform and others don't.
Lawyers will tend to work with other lawyers because they are both... lawyers. They are part of a guild, a professional brotherhood, united by common experience and training. Whether this is a bad thing is a matter of opinion, but it's a reality shared among lawyers, and any other professional group.
Think about it; when you start talking about firewalls, routing tables, and process management, are you going to consider the input of somebody who is clueless about such things over somebody who knows the difference between a default deny firewall and a NAT firewall?
And to every non-techie person who has to try to work with you, aren't you going to seem a bit, eh, elitist when you pay close attention to an arsehole who is speaking intelligently while ignoring the non-techies, who use words like "series of tubes" to describe technical details?
This isn't an issue with lawyers, it's an issue with all of mankind. Doctors listen to other doctors and ignore "lay folk". So do IT/techies, contractors, politicians, lawyers, accountants, mechanics, engineers, architects, scientists, and pilots. A techie thinks the technically insecure doctor is an idiot for not installing an anti-virus or doing backups. The doctor thinks an unhealthy techie is an idiot for not losing weight and quitting smoking.
Welcome to life, folks. You cast the shadow you leave behind. It's OK - it's just humanity, each making judgments according to their own experience!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.