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Chapter 11 Trustee Appointed For SCO
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The judge overseeing the SCO Chapter 11 bankruptcy case has issued an order appointing a chapter 11 trustee to oversee SCO's operations. However, the judge's reasoning is far from clear. While the judge believes that SCO has 'abandoned rehabilitation' to bet its future on litigation, he doesn't think it appropriate to convert their case to Chapter 7 liquidation. So SCO's management hasn't been fired yet, but they're no longer fully in charge either. It's not clear why the bankruptcy judge opted for this solution, when even the US Trustee was pushing to fire SCO's management and convert the case to Chapter 7. In short, SCO is still only mostly dead, rather than all dead, and in desperate search of a miracle worker."
3D Realms has announced post-reorganization merger plans with SCO Group. SCO shares were up $0.02/share for a gain of 10000% on the news that they would be suing themselves for non-performance.
I think the first point about bankruptcy court is that the debtors are given time to reorganize and to become viable and the creditors are given an opportunity to get some of the money they are owed paid back.
The Judge is saying the guys who were running SCO were not taking bankruptcy seriously. The Judge called them out for bleeding cash, wasting time, requesting and missing multiple extensions on the deadline for them to produce a reorganizing plan, and coming up with the half-baked sales agreements all predicated on, after the particular assets are sold, creditors paid off, and attorneys funded, if, the big vaporous if, there's litigation proceeds, then SCO's owners and managers do very well. When he referenced "Waiting for Godot" and SCO's management "waiting for the dough" and betting the company on litigation, I think he chose the Chapter 11 Trustee plan so that when the appeals in Novell are decided (it is suggested that that will be by Aug. 31) someone with a clear eye can look at that decision and decide if there's truly money for the estate in pursuit of the litigation or whether it's time to turn out the lights. In the decision he repeats SCO's assertion that customers will miss them and I think he does that not as an endorsement of SCO's position but to signal that there is a profitable going concern in the server products and somebody will be glad to be in that business, i.e., there will be a serious buyer.
Between the lines, I think he does not like what SCO's management has done by following the litigation business model and I further think he sees that the only way for the smaller creditors to get their money back is to put less sue-happy people in charge. I'm sure the judge was not pleased with the way some bills got paid by subsidiaries and how Darl McBride paid for one suitor/rainmaker out of his own pocket. SCO was racing the clock and the clock ran out.
That's not likely to happen unless someone with deep pockets is willing to buy the source code and re-release it under an open source license. The job of the bankruptcy trustee isn't to punish SCO -- under a Chapter 7 his job is to maximize the value of SCO's assets so the creditors get as much of their money back as possible. Under a Chapter 11 his job is to see that they return to business as a viable entity while seeking the best possible deal for the creditors -- but seeing as how SCO has no viable business plan I'd say it's only a matter of time before it becomes a Chapter 7.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.