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SCO Group Files For Chapter 7
New submitter rkhalloran writes "The remnants of the failed litigation engine that was the SCO Group has finally filed for liquidation under Chapter 7 of the bankruptcy code. 'There is no reasonable chance of "rehabilitation."' Groklaw describes the recent filing (PDF) thus: 'I will try my best to translate the legalese for you: the money is almost all gone, so it's not fun any more. SCO can't afford Chapter 11. We want to shut the costs down, because we'll never get paid. But it'd look stupid to admit the whole thing was ridiculous and SCO never had a chance to reorganize through its fantasy litigation hustle. Besides, Ralph Yarro and the other shareholders might sue. So they want the litigation to continue to swing in the breeze, just in case. But SCO has no money coming in and no other prospects, so they want to proceed in a cheaper way and shut this down in respects to everything else.' I guess that means the lawyers will suck the marrow from the carcass and leave the bones to bleach out in the sun."
Hopefully this will be a lesson to other companies who compete using lawsuits rather than customer service.
... not a single f_ck was given.
SCO got on the shitlist of many a person and corporate entity with their senseless trolling. I'm surprised that it took this long for them to finally hit rock bottom.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
And nothing of value was lost.
the Witch is dead!
Ralph Yarro enriched himself tremendously. While SCO the company might be bankrupt, a lot of the money ended up with him.
Robert Penrose and Val Kriedel (Noorda) both committed suicide over their involvement.
Tens of thousands of us were damaged in some way.
Bruce Perens.
I went to www.sco.com and lo and behold a new company has emerged from the ashes!
Nobody who died on that show stayed dead. Like SCO, they kept bringing them back for one more episode. Well, its time to let go, SCO. Walk off into that bright light.
SCO fits the 'green and warty' set pretty well. :)
Although the Scooby Doo ending is also appropriate; "They'd have gotten away with it, if it hadn't been for PJ."
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Ding, dong, the witch is dead...
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
You gotta shoot the zombie in the head........
I am curious what SCO will do with its UNIXWare product portfolio. I would love it if Unixware source code would be made publicly available on a public domain license. There is no telling what exciting things will change in the current open source world.
Where else am I going to buy that cutting edge modern SCO OpenServer that runs on so many different varieties of hardware that has a steal price of only $1800 for a TCP/IP stack to connect to the internet plus +$799 per core!
http://saveie6.com/
SCO filed for chapter 11 back in April of 2011 and now they're filing for chapter 7. Can someone explain what the two together might mean for SCO Group?
Chapter 11 means you're trying to reorganize the company to come out of bankruptcy protection again, typically by making a deal with your creditors and/or selling off assets, IP rights or parts of the business. Chapter 7 is liquidation, it means all their assets will be sold and the company will cease to exist.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
They are coming back as UnXis, and they are still asserting that Linux is infringing their intellectual property, including the McBride letter:
http://www.sco.com/5reasons/#5
It's a coventure between Stephen Norris Capital Partners and MerchantBridge Group. Stephen Norris' biography includes the former presidency of the Carlyle Group, who tried to invest in SCO in 1998, in a deal netting his group 51% ownership with a court filing that included the statement "provides that the reorganized SCO will pursue the Novell/IBM litigation and other pending litigation claims aggressively,".
http://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_8267122
MerchantBridge Group is a very deep wallet:
http://www.mbih.com/
Eric le Blan of MerchantBridge is Chairman at UnXis.
I do not expect this saga is over.
Apparently, a shell company called UnXis bought all that was left of SCO (except the lawsuit) for $600K. I'm assuming SCO lawyers got some money from some Dubai emirate to set UnXis up and then proceeded to dump that money into SCO so they could bleed it out. Now that money is gone, so Chapter 7 it is...
All that Unixware/OpenServer source base belongs to them (not us).
But I don't think they actually have anything salable no matter how hard they try. There are enough court findings about the provenance of this IP that any going back to that will just cause a motion for sanction under Rule 11, which is about frivolous and factually baseless proceedings.
Bruce Perens.
SCO filed Chapter 11 back in 2007, on the eve of the Novell trial.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
What can you do? Do not do harm to anyone. We can wish for justice from courts or society, but I'm afraid all we can do this time is wish.
I'd like to see something like this for Mr. Enderle and Ms. Didio, but I don't think it'll happen as part of the SCO case.
As for Mr. Yarro, I hope that folks understand what he did and shun him, but I have no idea if that happens or not.
Bruce Perens.
If you read the source (the Groklaw article) you will see that it's far from over yet. SCO is asking the judge to be allowed to keep the litigation alive, despite SCO being in chapter 7.
If anything this sets an awful precedent: as in create a shell company (or bankroll an existing one) have it start litigating, pay the lawyers in a share of the proceeds, sink it in chapter-7 protection when the money runs out, and let the litigation roll on. Especially effective against Open Source.
If you feel this is far-fetched, please read up on the case (e.g. on Groklaw) because this is exactly what happened here but for the judge's assent. And this particular judge has been favouring SCO ever since he inherited the case.
What was that again you said about "good riddance" ???
(The End?)
Well, I hope there aren't as many sequels and edits in this saga......
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I am equally bothered, especially with the companies that do their best to encumber us with their patents and also act (in their own interest) as members of our community. Many of them have joined the Linux Foundation, and some are on its executive board. Many of them (including Microsoft) are part of organizations like Apache Foundation, etc. Some of them are Linux distribution companies. Try to get one of those to take a real stand about software patenting.
Bruce Perens.