SCO: 'Someone wants to buy our software biz!' SCO says it has selected a buyer for its software product business: a mystery company known as UnXis Group. "We are extremely confident that, with the support of our customers and business partners, we will rapidly restore SCO to its former glory and that UnXis will soon emerge as a major player in the information technology …
"We're betting against SCO being restored to its "former glory". "
In light of their somehow managing to stay around long after they should have faded away, I'd rule nothing out. My bet is on something of a balance between the two extremes taking place. It's also worth what you paid to hear it, so please keep that in mind.
> Sorry, not sure it was ever a "glorious" compagny ...
Oh, it was.
SCO Unix used to be a sound product. And SCO paid Red Hat to put SCO Linux together, which is how they got sufficient funding to launch Red Hat Linux. In days of yore, SCO did plenty of really good stuff.
Then along came Darl.
Vic.
According to a post on Groklaw, here:
http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20090711015440158
Hans Bayer himself bought the unxis.de domain, and several other SCO managers bought other versions. So maybe this is one of those little manouevres where the managers have set up a new company to buy the assets of the bankrupt company and carry on as before.
Then Microsoft will be entitled to distribute a version of UNIX, which would seem something of an admission of defeat. I have a feeling they're not allowed to though, because they once owned a UNIX-like product and sold it with a non-competition agreement - anyone remember the details?
Microsoft bought an AT&T licence to edition 6 or 7, ported it to the 8086 and called it Xenix. It also ran on 68000 Tandy machines. Actually the work had been done by two guys (father and son) who called themselves the Santa Cruz Operation.
At one time MS called Xenix and MS-DOS 2.0 a 'family' after adding some resemblances of Xenix to MS-DOS. eg hierarchical directories and the driver interface was similar. They also used Xenix for their development work and for accounting until the late 80s at least.
MS sold Xenix to Santa Cruz and entered an agreement that they would not sell another Unix system. Much later Santa Cruz sold stuff to Caldera and this included the name SCO so Caldera renamed themselves The SCO Group.
Santa Cruz were OK, the SCO Group were not.
I did do a fair bit of work with a medium sized retailer who heavily used SCO Unix, but I've just checked our records and they moved to Windows five years ago.
There were a couple of nice bits of their Unix, but on the whole it was a pain in the arse, especially since they used a custom mail server instead of standardising on Sendmail or similar.
I wonder if this means they will finall credit me with my Open Source software that they stole for their 'supplementary' disk? I was pleased to see it included there, until I found out that (a) they had stripped out the Credits file, in violation of the license agreement, and (b) they hadn't notified me, and turned me down for an interview when I applied to work there (although that turned out to be lucky after all)
The software was 'Wanderer', a text/graphics Boulderdash clone, if anyone wonders, and was my first C program of any size written in my first year at uni.
that the only thing they want to sell actually is under control of Novell and they have the right to stop them selling and indeed they have asked the judge to stop any sale.
So there's actually nothing for unXis to buy.
If my weirdness counter hadn't overflowed on this case many years ago it would be overflowing now.
The method behind the madness in SCO is just more madness.
This is the second time UnXis tried to get hold of SCO through the bankruptcy court. First time around Novell objected since the deal would have given Novell nothing of the money that SCO owes them. This time around the purchase price is still too small to pay Novell, so they have objected again. plus Novell have stated that SCO cannot transfer their ownership of the Unix business to a third party without Novell's explicit permission, something that Novell has stated they will *not* give. So this is probably going nowhere.
We need a drain icon, since that's excatly where SCO is going down.
Surely it is MS behind this; as has been said if they buy both parties to the dispute then they own whatever they need to own, and they have a company that can compete for them or which can release them from a non-compete obligation.
MS don't care if the whole world uses something called Linux as long as they pay MS for the pleasure of it.
And why switch to RedHat Linux if you can stay with Microsoft Linux? With windows compatibility? Just like the old Unixware that could run your dos programs (supposedly).
SCO keep telling the bankruptcy court that if they are allowed to continue their claim against IBM, and win, that they will have enough money to settle the money they owe.
Unless someone convinces said court that the claims are fatuous, and will never be more than a way of paying lawyers, then the court *HAS* to listen, because they have a duty to recover as much value as possible for the creditors.
And although there have been rulings on the admissibility of the evidence and who owns the copyright, the original case is still outstanding. There may still be a small chance that there is a case against IBM because not all of the documents are in the public domain, but even if there is, it is unlikely that SCO would actually be able to collect any of the money.
I keep feeling that the case against IBM has to reach court and be finally ruled on, so that this whole mess can be consigned to the history books.
What worries me is that Novell are the ones who objected last time this UnXis tried to by the assets, but Novell is not the company it was. Microsoft had a finger in the pie when Attachmate bought Novell. If Microsoft had some way of suggesting to Attachmate that MS would pay more for the IP they bought in the deal if Attachmate/Novell would not object this time round, the whole circus could start anew (shudder).
The courts have ruled, TWICE, that the SCOundrels don't own the UNIX copyrights they claimed. So all they have rights to are the added bits that make generic AT&T UNIX into OpenSewer, er, OpenServer. Given their vast customer base out there, that they can't support 64-bit CPUs or most current peripherals, the value of this add-on is pretty thin.
Then add in the countersuits from IBM, Red Hat, etc, and you have an actively toxic asset here. Best bet is that the Phantom Buyer is just trying to keep the under-the-table dealings with the Vole from seeing daylight.
SCOX(Q) DELENDA EST!!
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