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SCO Group Files For Chapter 7

Posted by Soulskill on from the it-just-goes-on-and-on-my-friends dept.

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."

11 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. good riddance by gmack · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hopefully this will be a lesson to other companies who compete using lawsuits rather than customer service.

    1. Re:good riddance by dbIII · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Not really. One of the lawyers sucking the marrow from the bones was Darl's brother.
      It's like deliberately crashing the company car into a wall so your family's repair business can get some work.

    2. Re:good riddance by postbigbang · · Score: 5, Interesting

      They're making scandalous sums in royalties from Linux and Android. What do they care, now that the IP litigation is impossible? For Microsoft, this is Profit: stand up you PC and Phone Makers: On the left, is the $$ you'll pay for using Linux (so you won't get sued) and on the right is the $$ you'll pay for integrating that Android Stuff.

      And if you think we were fooling, here's our RT tablet. Open the wallets or die! That's the mantra.

      --
      ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
    3. Re:good riddance by gmack · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Buying the portfolio would have been settling and it's also exactly what SCO(TSG) wanted them to do but IBM has a scorched earth policy when it comes to lawsuits. When sued, IBM will call in the lawyers and fight for every penny even if the resulting litigation is more expensive than the settlement would have been. It makes each lawsuit more expensive but it discourages others from trying and you can see the result: IBM doesn’t' get sued anywhere near as much as other tech firms.

  2. Let's not forget by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:Let's not forget by Chas · · Score: 5, Informative

      Nonono.

      That was Santa Cruz Operation.

      COMPLETELY different outfit.

      The people hearing the *FLUSH* right about now were The SCO Group (aka Caldera Systems, later Caldera International).

      Essentially, they bought some of the original SCO UNIX IP when Santa Cruz Operation became Tarantella Inc.

      Later, they entered into a licensing agreement with Novell to collect fees based on THEIR copyrights.

      Caldera, having delusions of grandeur, decided that they'd *bought* all that UNIX IP, didn't pay Novell a dime, changed their name to The SCO Group, and decided that they'd try to take ownership of ALL *nix by trying to collect royalties on anything *nix derivative (including Linux, which they'd contributed to). They somehow thought that holding huge companies like IBM hostage. Apparently they forgot that IBM's lawyers were INFINITELY nastier predators than ANYONE they could afford to hire.

      Not to mention incoming and outgoing lawsuits squaring off against RedHat, AutoZone, SGI, and Daimler Chrysler.

      The only thing that kept them afloat that long was intervention by Microsoft, looking to chum the waters further.

      In short, the asscreants at The SCO Group (a group of litigation-happy IP trolls who didn't do their homework) have jack and shit to do with the original Santa Cruz Operation (a group of technologists).

      --


      Chas - The one, the only.
      THANK GOD!!!
    2. Re:Let's not forget by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
      This.

      I had the pleasure of working for the Santa Cruz Operation. Say what you will about its flavor ("The McDonald's of UNIX" and the inexplicable "SCO OK" attempt to ape "Designed for Windows" branding, which was immediately renamed by techies to "WTF? Scook?!"), it was a fantastic place to cut my teeth.

      The SCO Group can die in a fire, and should have done so years ago. The Santa Cruz Operation was a place where techies could tinker on stuff largely unimpeded by management, and I remember my days there findly.

    3. Re:Let's not forget by NJRoadfan · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I'm still trying to figure out what happened to Caldera. They used to have a their own Linux distribution and tried to make it user friendly with the Looking Glass Desktop. They even ported Sun's WABI to x86 Linux. Back in 1997, they were pretty much viewed as a Linux company. Groklaw did a nice piece about it: http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20080807125817699

  3. Oh no! by Billly+Gates · · Score: 5, Funny

    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/
  4. Correctm they are just rebooting by tlambert · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  5. Re:... and on this day... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... 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.

    The reason why it took so long was the huge injection from BayStar and the cash train from Redmond. If you know anything about what really went on just look into how and why Novell/Suse is surviving this nonsense. Fact is the real target of all this crap was RedHat and the server side of Linux and the main antagonist was and still is Microsoft.

      Sco was just a fishing and fud throwing expedition and to a large extent it succeeded. Windows has gained server market share because of all the fud. The money channelled into Sco from Microsoft to do all this bullshit is small change in comparison to the market sales they gained in the high end server game.