back to article SCO faces financial crunch after Unix defeat

The company at the centre of an intellectual property dispute with IBM that has lasted for years is facing the prospect of financial ruin. The SCO Group said it may be unable to continue operating as a company. SCO challenged IT giants IBM and Novell over the rights to the Unix operating system in a set of court cases which …

COMMENTS

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  1. Dan

    DIVE DIVE DIVE !!!!!!

    Yes we will continue on......oh hang on no we really are screwed.

    Does Darl or any of the management at Sco really have a clue what they are doing ? Or do they just make it up as they go along ?

  2. TLA

    All I can say is....

    Good riddance.

  3. Karl Lattimer

    Don't believe what you read these stocks are on fire!

    + Insider Profit Reporter: SCOX Is On Fire! +

    Company - SCO group

    Ticker - SCOX

    Current Price - .20

    52 Week High - 2.54

    3-5 Day target - .50

    6months-target - 1.25

    WOW THESE STOCKS ARE GONNA GO, MY COLLEAGE SAW THE PAPERS, THEY'RE GONNA ROCKET!

    +++

    Sorry, couldn't resist the pump and dump parody :)

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So lets give people a pay rise??

    The day before they posted for Chapter 11 SCO gave Ryan Tibbits a pay rise of $50,000 (from $160,000 per year to $210,000 per year) and a one off bonus of $50,000 (net of taxes).

    Seems very odd behaviour for a company that by its own admission has no money - unless of course its to stop Novell getting any money from them.

  5. Fred Bloggs

    Justice

    You reap what you sow.

  6. Ex Pat

    Good

    About time to. Maybe McBride will have to sell ice creams in a van at the seaside in order to pay his legal bills.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Primary source / Typo

    The SEC filing is here: http://TinyURL.com/2hv4w8

    And sure enough, they said "going concern" as you'd expect - not "growing concern" as above.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Lawyers own stake in SCO

    I wonder if SCO's lawyers are regretting taking a stake in the company in lieu of payment.

  9. James Blake

    McBride will end up as the CEO of some other startup

    The shocking thing is that when the dust settles and SCO are left a smoldering ruin of what the company used to be, the person at the helm of SCO during this disastrous period, Darl McBride, will be appointed by some venture capitalist as the CEO of some other poor unsuspecting organisation.

    It amazes me what passes as 'success' in Silicon Valley.

  10. Giles Jones Gold badge

    Poor Microsoft

    They were loving this court action, some say they even helped fund SCO via another company they own.

    Looks like they'll have to do their own FUDding from now on.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Dan

    > Does Darl or any of the management at Sco really have a clue what

    > they are doing ? Or do they just make it up as they go along ?

    I presume that's a rhetorical question... ;-)

    Seriously though, where does an idiot like Darl McBride go after a fiasco like this? No-one will want to take over what's left without Novell revoking it's claim for $30m in fees. I don't imagine Novell want Unixware back now. Maybe when SCO is bust and no-one can be bothered to sift the debris, we'll see Unixware and OpenServer pop up as free downloads. Oh the irony...

  12. Terry Blay

    Ha. Ha. Ha.

    After years of threats and IP terrorism,

    SCO = Broke

    So like it says above:

    mwaHAAHAAHAAHA Just desserts I say

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Ex Pat

    Oh come on, do you honestly think that board members will lose their livelihoods when the company sinks.

    Shareholders, customers and staff will be screwed but those at the top of the heap will have their ill-gotten gains safely stashed beyond the reach of creditors or the law.

    The whole point of being rich is to stay rich or get richer - losing money when you run your company into the ground would make a joke of the whole western economic system.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re: Lawyers

    The lawyers, along with Microsoft are shown as creditors of the company. Novell aren't mentioned at all!

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Disturbing

    What is really disturbing about the whole case, is that just one company, based on a false claim (which in any case was a weak claim at best) could alone threaten the whole GNU comunity for many years. The fight must not be over. Procedural laws must be reviewed. Once made a public claim, an accuser should be obblied to explain exactly what is it refering to. By not doing so, SCO made an incalculable damage for many years to the OS indusry throughout the world, damage that goes much beyond any direct damage to any individual entity. That is a very big amount of damage, and nobody is ever going to pay for it. Not only companies like SCO should disapear from the face of the Earth, but rather nobody should be able to make such a great damage. mickyx

  16. Dam

    Re: Disturbing

    Now, where's my linebreak hotkey...

    You do have a point about the damage done to the OS community and industry, put please do make it with extended use of the ENTER key to produce \n's

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Justice

    You reap what you SCO

  18. dan

    re: Primary source / Typo

    thank you for clarifying - I was starting to think that SCO's "growing concern" might be a solicitation for E.D. medication.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re: Primary source / Typo

    "growing" is now "going".

  20. Mike Green

    Is this suitable for a Corporate Darwin Award?

    Start a court case to get rich, lose and go bankrupt instead?

  21. Paul Stimpson

    Unfinished business

    As much as I detest SCO's behaviour and the effects it's had on the industry and am glad to see the back of them, in one way I think it is a shame that the matter of infringement was never settled in court. The result wasn't that "Linux doesn't infringe" it was "you can't sue for infringement because you don't actually own the thing you claim was infringed."

    Because the SCO claims were never refuted we now seem to be in a situation where Linux _may_ still infringe but the party that may have been injured is Novell. I hope Novell will "do the right thing" and issue a promise that it will never bring similar claims against anyone for using the current GNU/Linux code in future. Hopefully such a promise could be made in a way that would also be binding on any company that may purchase the Unix rights from Novell in the future. I would hate to see Novell become "the Microsoft of Linux" and use these rights for the advancement of SuSE.

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