so why is this a mystery to them -- they bet the farm on suing everying like Americans do and then whinge and complain when they've lost. bloody typical Yanks, bet their lawyers get paid either way. they should count themselves lucky to not have a ton of summary judgements against them for lack of etherial common sense.

good riddance!

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAAAAAAA

I can't have been the only person to parse "...and it makes grim reading." as "it makes you grin reading"

I can imagine the violins playing outside SCO headquarters now...

Not even Paris runs SCO these days.

This isn't an accident, its part of a fallback plan to walk away from their bogus case without resolving the claims, leaving a cloud of doubt over Novell,IBM and Linux. The moment IBM didn't roll over and pay them to go away it was a choice between corporate or personal suicide, most of them chose corporate suicide... there's a good chance they'll fail at this the same way they failed at blackmail.

SCOX disappearing into BK doesn't automagically kill the cases, just changes who their victims chase for the money. McBride, Yarro and their posse seeing personal destitution will please a lot more people than SCOX vanishing up its own arse. This case was never about SCOX, it was about the bonuses Canopy and SCO officers could award themselves, they treated the company as disposable right from the start.

why am I not all broken up about SCOs death? Oh wait -- I'm NOT.

Let this be a lesson to the next greedy outfit who wants to 'own' the information age.

Was anyone else amazed by how much unix business they still appear to have? OK, so it's only $20m, but does anybody know anybody who actually paid SCO money last year?

I'm waiting for the BeOS style auction to appear soon as SCO takes its rightful place - in history.

This is what you get when you let the lawyers run the business. I haven't figured out what SCO actually do anymore relating to the technology world in recent years.

"bet their lawyers get paid either way."

Maybe not. Didn't their lawyers get some sort of stake in SCO as payment?

It's awesome that SCO took a beating, but I'm even happier at the idea that the basturds that bought shares in the company must be crying right now.

Any idea how much of a dive they got?

When supping with the Devil (you know who !) use a long spoon. HA HA. I think the violins may be playing by a cardboard box soon :)

"negative publicity of the SCO Litigation."

As said above by better folk than I, this bunch of clowns can't blame anyone for the monstrously confrontational business tactics they adopted. Their fall from a pretty respectable perception in the market to joke status should be required reading for all commercial and legal students in the years to come. Only then will we see this sort of suicidal strategy disregarded.

As for SCO I've only one thing to say.

You made your bed.

Now go lie in it.

Tosspots.

So let's suppose a charging white horse with an M$ft tattoo charges over the horizon, and buys the remains of the business including the Intellectual Property.

And then suppose the IP licensing and the litigation does not go away as hoped for but hangs around like a bad smell.

How much to buy SCO - chump change now I would allege.

Let SCO's case be a lesson to all patent trolls everywhere... "cashing in" does not necessarily have to be cashing in ON something...

The pythonesque tale of SCO is now in the "Not dead yet" scene from Holy grail... How long until it moves into the dead parrot sketch?

My power over the US lawyers is diminishing. (or maybe not)

I will hide behind my mate in company resting on some old fried tarts!

Boise, their solicitor or whatever, has booked up to go the course for 40,000 shares as far as I know. These are worth some $0.045 per share cents according to http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_%28A_to_Z%29/Stocks_S/threadview?m=tm&bn=2942&tid=450831&mid=450831&tof=-1&rt=2&frt=2&off=1 (Which didn't stop someone selling a bunch of them just before news of the French bank scandal broke recently.

And at $1800.oo, makes the firm one of the most grossly overpaid luxuries going.

Which leaves this misdirection:

"The revenue from our UNIX business has been declining over the last several years primarily as a result of continued competition from alternative operating systems, particularly Linux and from the negative publicity of the SCO Litigation."

It's not as if they made money -even when they were honest. That "revenue" was at a nett loss.

the original SCO product was used in many retail environments, as it was very stable and reliable, and required modest hardware. if SCO continued to sell and support that very consistent UNIX product, they would probably be doing well enough right now.

i personally know of at least one server running SCO, that is still standing.

they chose to take a huge, risky gamble, and lost. Darl and the other vultures will probably get jobs elsewhere, because among C-level officers, it's not what you know, but who.

sad to see a good little company go to waste because of greed and stupidity.

if GWBush's business record is anything to go by, Darl will probably be elected president of something rather critical in the future (much to the detriment of the rest of us), because s*it floats.

...and it's playing your song, SCO

Lay charges against the Executive.

Send em' all to prison for 20 years, that will make a corporation think twice before trying anything like this again.

Just to buy the corpse of the company and then take ALL their IP and give it to the public domain. Then use a convenient WMD and obliterate anything that remains. I'll contribute a single penny ($0.01) to the cause, which will probably go a long way toards the goal.

Bye Bye...

> but does anybody know anybody who actually paid SCO money last year?

And. at least as important a question: WHY?

Or just dissolve and go away.

One less patent troll....one less FOSS obstacle.....one less bunch of wankers to deal with.....

Now if only someone could deal with Microsoft we'd all be set.

History will likely remember SCO as an acronym for "Sued Customers Offendingly."

We sadly still use a SCO Unix based system, but that will change come this August.

You sue Linux and you take on not one company, but the world. Let that be a lesson to Microsoft. Don't pick a fight with Linux or you will be SCoed.

Seriously, what happens to any UNIX IP they may own if they are bankrupt?

@David

"What happens to any UNIX IP they may own if they are bankrupt?"

It would be auctioned off to the highest bidder. I'd wager it'll be either a major high-tech company, a benefactor, or an IP troll company looking to capitalise on it...

Hight-tech (probably IT) companies, this may go well, although I'd imagine a few have a claim on it anyway (IBM, MS & Novell have all owned it at some point AFAIK)

Benefactor, not really that likely

IP Troll company, not good.

I have to admit, I'd laugh my ass off if MS bought it, that'd be entertaining at least (even if only reading comments here and at Slashdot).

The usual result, for any asset of a company undergoing liquidation type bankruptcy, is that the assets are dissolved by the court, with the proceeds being distributed to the debtors by the court. This may take the form of a private sale, or it may take the form of an auction. That should apply whether the asset is a physical asset (e.g., tables, chairs, computers, buildings, etc.), or whether it's a "soft" asset, such as intellectual property.

Of course, that only applies for a liquidation type bankruptcy, and there are several different forms of bankruptcy, such as liquidation, reorganization, etc., usually denoted by the "chapter number" of the bankruptcy filing. Of course, it's possible for the bankruptcy court to change the type of bankruptcy.

To further confuse matters, since SCO is (err, was?) an American company, the US federal bankruptcy laws apply. However, the federal bankruptcy laws are different for different states. And, it's not too unusual for a company with dealings in several different states to pick the one with conditions most favourable for it's filing.

Dave

P.S. IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer), but the company my significant other used to work for went through this, so I got to watch it all happen in slow motion.

@David

that's exactly what the Novell case was about ..

Novell never sold the copyrights and IP to SCO for the

part they sold to SCO .. Groklaw has plenty on the matter.

So .. SCO don't hold the copyrights . therefore a great deal of it

they cant sell cause it's not theirs .. See the rulings from the judge.

An extremely interresting case to say the least.

Ric

... other than to echo the prevailing sentiment: good riddance.

I feel for SCO's employees and its clients but it's a little more difficult to feel too sorry for its shareholders who were either unaware of the company's conduct (in which case they can't claim to have *earned* any dividends anyway) or were comfortable with it.

At first I thought SCO had lapsed into honesty--but they are only blaming the bad publicity, not admitting to their own incompetence in inviting the bad publicity.

I think I'm going to miss the entertainment value of the story, but it's time to bring down the final curtain.

I wanted an icon with "IP?", or something really confusing. What's the iconic picture for a liar? Dubya Bush? No, wait. Can't lie if you don't know (or care) about the truth. How about the Dick Cheney? I can't say Darl McBride of SCO, since I have no idea what he looks like. He never reached icon status.

@Captain DaFt

...from the pen of Linus Torvalds no less, the Smoking Crack Organization.

Oh, to see Darl's severed head on a pole....

And I would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those pesky kids!

Seriously, SCO was just a minor conflict-sideshow in the war between Microsoft and everything that isn't Microsoft (think Loas or Cambodia).

I think we need another icon.

@Paul: you got it bang on when you said "they treated the company as disposable right from the start."

Attacking it with lawyers is like trying to kill a swarm of mosquitoes with a machine gun.

And SCO going after IBM is like trying to kill an elephant with a fly swat.

Ha ha hah, ha ha ha ha, ha-ha ha ha ha!!

ha ha hah, ha ha ha ha, HA HA HA HA HO!

Serves you right for trying to kill linux.

Darl McBride is still drawing a massive director's salary from what's left of SCO and is spinning it out for every penny.

Then when the time comes he'll probably march into another highly paid top management post or three.

I seem to remember back in the 90's they had a reasonable range of high availability embedded OSs aimed at telecomms market (in partnership with Tandem). We made a few products for terrestrial and mobile markets on that platform and it worked pretty well, so I guess the likes of my old company and others will still be paying for licenses for kit that still does what it says on TFM...

It just proves what a load of tosh the stock market it.

SCO accused Linux of using their patents, there was uncertainty over ownership of the patents. They hyped up their claims, their share price tripled.

Novell announced they merely loaned the rights to Unix to SCO and this was judged to be the case. After this SCO plummeted rapidly.

People actually paid money to SCO as a form of protection against litigation. Almost like paying the Mafia.

Microsoft are using the same tactics now.

Having read some of Groklaw then as far as I can tell it can't abandon it's court case with Novell.

The judge has ruled that SCO collected revenue on behalf of Novell and took a cut.

SCO hasn't released all of this money to Novell yet and the pending court case is solely to determine the actual amount of money involved.

Legally it's actually Novell's money which is being held by SCO rather than being money SCO owes to Novell. This is an important distinction because it puts Novell at the top of the list to get their money, in front of the taxman, lawyers, other debtors etc.

They filed for bankruptcy just before the court ruled how much of Novell's money SCO has and got the hearing delayed. It can't go into liquidation before that hearing is concluded (starts at the end of April) and SCO gives Novell it's money back.

What's the iconic picture for a liar?

Has to be Tony Blair, doesn't it? Dick Cheney just isn't in the same league..

I hated Darl McBride and Chris Sontag when we were at Novell, long before any of you hated them. So you all owe me a fee for hating them. Got a meeting with my lawyer next week to determine just how much...

Oh, and Chris - I still have Dawn's unmentionables she left in my car one night.

Good day, CHRISTOPHER STALLINGS SONTAG.