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The Almighty Buck Software Government The Courts Linux News

SCO On the Rocks 255

Posted by Zonk from the shaken,-not-stirred dept.
Netromancer wrote in to alert us to a Businessweek Online article discussing the downward spiral in SCO's fortunes and luck. From the article: "The mouse that roared is barely squeaking these days. A string of recent setbacks raises grave questions about SCO's finances, its court case, and its management."
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SCO On the Rocks More

SCO On the Rocks

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  • Whoa (Score:5, Funny)

    by LFS.Morpheus ( 596173 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @01:59PM (#11853400) Homepage
    Didn't see that coming. Who would have thought that basing a company on litigation, scare tactics, and spreading FUD wouldn't work?

    • well.. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      > Who would have thought that basing a company on litigation,
      > scare tactics, and spreading FUD wouldn't work?

      Microsoft?

    • Re:Whoa (Score:3, Insightful)

      by KiloByte ( 825081 )
      Well, well... that's a popular business strategy, and often, it works.

      • Why is it still in court? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by JPriest ( 547211 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @03:06PM (#11853908) Homepage
        But considering the length of time this has dragged on, the 900 million lines of code provided to them, and the fact that there has not been a single shred of evidence to date, why is this even still in court? How much money do you suppose this has cost IBM and tax payers so far?

        Doesn't the court have some basic responsibility to IBM to end this case now that SCO has come up short?

        • To get a ruling (Score:2, Interesting)

          by teknomage1 ( 854522 )
          Without a ruling, there is no precedent to stop companies in the future trying this same sort of crap. It has to go to trial and a verdict has to be issued to stop this from happening again and wasting more of the court's time. Besides we might not be lucky enough to find another company stupid enough to sue IBM.

          • Re:To get a ruling (Score:2, Interesting)

            by carl0ski ( 838038 )
            Microsoft has pubicly threatened to sue Linux users and advocates if they infringe on their patents. IBM is one of the largest Linux users and advocates. Hell SCo was sueing them on patent infringement related to linux. If Microsoft Windows Longhorn fails to sell well on release, in 2006, whoops meant 2009, 2010. 2022. I forsee they will issue actions against IBM, Will the largest Linux advocates& providers Novell, Redhat, Google, Intel, Sun provide support to IBM? or keep out of it

        • Re:Why is it still in court? (Score:5, Informative)

          by k98sven ( 324383 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @06:09PM (#11854991) Journal
          But considering the length of time this has dragged on, the 900 million lines of code provided to them, and the fact that there has not been a single shred of evidence to date, why is this even still in court? How much money do you suppose this has cost IBM and tax payers so far?

          Why is this still in court? Well, in part because the US legal system works at this speed. The average copyright case from filing to verdict is 2 years. And this is a larger-than average case.

          It looks like this one will be resolved in 3-3.5 years.

          SCO has a big pile of claims. IBM has a big pile of counterclaims. It's not just a question of the copyrights. SCO has contract claims too, IBM has licensing, trademark-infringement and patent counterclaims. And then there's the fact there's is a lot of code involved, with a lot of history behind it.

          Add to that the fact that SCO has indeed been dragging their feet, and consistently been requesting more discovery.

          Doesn't the court have some basic responsibility to IBM to end this case now that SCO has come up short?

          That would be true if SCO had come up short. But in reality, the court hasn't determined that SCO has come up short. Yet. IBM filed for summary judgement and it was not granted. The case is still in discovery, and the court obviously felt it was more important to give SCO a long leash to produce anything it can during discovery, than it was to give IBM a quick trial.

          Now, normally you would think SCO would put everything they had on the table in order to defeat the motion for summary judgement. They probably did, too, but the court decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and told IBM they could re-file their motion after the discovery phase is over. (When the court is certain it has all evidence in front of it)
      • It often works when you're not trying to go after giants like IBM... Could SCO possibly have displayed more unwarranted hubris?

    • Re:Whoa (Score:3, Insightful)

      by hhlost ( 757118 )
      Who would have thought that basing a company on litigation, scare tactics, and spreading FUD wouldn't work?

      I agree. They can't be so stupid not to understand that the courts would eventually figure out what they're doing and put an end to this. In my experience, judges are very down-to-earth people and really frown upon people/organizations who are trying to take advantage of the system. Of course, it seems that SCO & friends knew that it would take a ton of time and money to demonstrate to the non-t

      • Re:Whoa (Score:2, Interesting)

        by morleron ( 574428 )
        This is a bit off-topic, but your point about the exec who's saving over $1 million a year with Linux is important. Word of mouth, in the IT world as most other places, is the best advertising there is. That's something that MS hasn't figured out about its "Get The Facts" campaign. It isn't working because the people who make decisions about strategic Linux installations/conversions don't generally pay much attention to glitzy ads and websites. Instead, they have lunch with Joe down the street whose com

      • Re:Whoa (Score:3, Insightful)

        by jbolden ( 176878 )
        One thing that's nice about this is that we get the unfairness in reverse. People think that Linux has been much more legally tested than it has been as a result of this case.

        • Re:Whoa (Score:2, Interesting)

          by hhlost ( 757118 )
          That's a good point. It would be very interesting to see a break-down of what has been tested by this case, and any others. On the other hand, I don't think SCO is a bunch of idiots, as some people tend to believe. I think that if there was anything at all that they could have built a legitimate case on, they would have found it. Also, I'm sure that MS has taken apart Linux and looked at it carefully under a microscope. And SCO's case is the best thing that they could find to encourage/support? Seems like a

          • Re:Whoa (Score:5, Insightful)

            by jbolden ( 176878 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @03:58PM (#11854186) Homepage
            Nothing has been tested in court, that's what the judge means by "not a single disputed fact". However a great deal has been semi-tested in that SCO couldn't find anything:

            1) The origins of Linux pan out
            2) The multi-processor stuff that Alan Cox put in Linux came from where he says it did
            3) Unix is solely a trademark
            4) There isn't any SCO code in Linux.

            Still to be tested will be SCO's theory of law
            5) Free copyright licenses that encourage cooperation but not commerce have full force of law.

    • Damn !

      (tears up business plan)

      Now I need to find another idea.

    • Re:Whoa (Score:5, Interesting)

      by TokyoBoy ( 217214 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @02:46PM (#11853760) Homepage
      I used to work as an engineer on the Caldera server and desktop teams. I was part of the many layoffs which reduced the engineering forces there to nothing. It was sas seeing friends go and everyone knew it was only a matter of time before it was their turn.

      However, also being a founding trustee memeber of the Salt Lake Linux Users Group [sllug.org] and a Linux and OpenSource advocate for years, I am very grateful that I was able to leave before the name change to SCO and the "direction change" - I would have had to quit anyway.

      I still have a couple friends there. The amazing thing is that I ran into one of them (Walt Hammond) yesterday (Fri. March 4, 2005) at lunch. I was amazed at his comments. The feeling inside the company is very positive! I couldn't beleive it. It seems that (from my stand point) that the co-workers are completely blind to what is really happening. Not only with reguard to what is happening but also related to the morality (or lack thereof IMO) of their actions. He was completely positive saying that (parapharasing) "things looks so good for us right now but if you read the press, you'd think we were a sinking ship" and (again, paraphrasing) "the press says we've had major set backs but if you look, we've been winning".

      I don't know if it's the blind leading the blind or if he really believes what he told me. Of course, being at the director level or above, I'd think you'd have to tote the company line or you wouldn't be around very long at SCO. So, who knows what he really believes.
      • He was completely positive saying that (parapharasing) "things looks so good for us right now but if you read the press, you'd think we were a sinking ship"

        Tell your friend not to drink the kool-aid.

      • Next time I'm in SLC, can you get ahold of whatever he's smoking 'cos I want some. It must be good shit.

      • Re:Whoa (Score:5, Funny)

        by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @06:30PM (#11855139) Homepage
        From the article:

        McBride says that while his staff is small in numbers, it's high on engineering expertise.

        Apparently his staff is high on something.

    • SCO on the rocks, ain't no big surprise.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Perhaps (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 05, 2005 @01:59PM (#11853402)
    Perhaps SCO can sue itself to raise cash

    • Re:Perhaps (Score:3, Informative)

      by AndroidCat ( 229562 )
      Darl sued his last employer, so why not?

      • Re:Perhaps (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 05, 2005 @02:22PM (#11853569)
        Darl has a history of litigation. He's sued THREE of his employers, has taken legal action against one of his kid's schools, sued 2 financial advisors and one of his wives is involved in 2 lawsuits against neighbours.

        It's a bit like the social situation where generations of families become dependent on welfare, and as it's all they know it's all they continue doing. With Darl, it's litigation.
        • Litigation? Welfare? Isn't that the same thing in this case?
    • If SCO was going to sue SCO I would buy a Unix Lincense from SCO. I need to keep this lawsuit thing going. My life would be boring without the on going story of SCO sueing people. What does this mean for BBspot? Are they now going to go out of business without anythign to write about. Save SCO or my world is going to end!!!
    • This new business plan can go with their new name modeled after "GNU's Not Unix":

      SCO = "SCO's Court Order"
    • Perhaps SCO can sue itself to raise cash

      That may seem like a good idea to them, given their poor judgement which Linus said best, "They must be smoking crack." (or something to that effect).

      Gives new meaning to "SCO on the rocks"

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @02:00PM (#11853409)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Another Dot Com Failure (Score:5, Funny)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @02:06PM (#11853446) Homepage Journal
    So litigation isn't a reliable business model either. We're doomed!
  • Going down [yahoo.com]
    Still waiting for reaching the level from before the bubble though. (but as you watch the quotes history, the Linux lawsuit was a start of the downward spiral...)

  • uh huh.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TheHawke ( 237817 ) <rchapin.stx@rr@com> on Saturday March 05, 2005 @02:07PM (#11853459)
    The question is not as of when will the guillotine fall, it's how high will it be before it does.
    Considering SCO's screwups and legal wranglings, i'd say that the height will be stratospheric and more than a few heads will be in the stocks when it falls.

    • Re:uh huh.. (Score:3, Informative)

      by KiloByte ( 825081 )
      Wrong. If a company dies, it's the stockholders who lose, not the management. The managers simply need to find a new job -- and note that even during the company's agony they still get paid in full. Their pay is also orders of magnitude bigger than those of a common employee.

      • Re:uh huh.. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by superpulpsicle ( 533373 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @02:50PM (#11853797)
        Yeah management jobs are always a win-win situation in the U.S.

        1.) They can do a good job and get paid x number of dollars.

        2.) They do a bad job and get axed. But rewarded with a massive severance package.

        It's unfair in every way to the share holders.

        • Forgot one (Score:3, Interesting)

          by dbIII ( 701233 )
          3.) Pay huge amounts of the companys money to your own brother in the name of legal fees. It looks like IBM and linux was never the real target, it looks like a set up to lose, milk SCO dry and leave with the money and a reputation of trying to take on big blue from a tiny little company with less staff than the average high school.
    • The real question is: what happens to the Unix source when they die. In the long run, I think that's really the only question that matters.

      • The real question is: what happens to the Unix source when they die. In the long run, I think that's really the only question that matters.

        Not likely to happen, but I think it would be a hoot if IBM bought UNIX at the SCO bankruptcy auction for peanuts.

      • Re:uh huh.. (Score:3, Informative)

        by twiddlingbits ( 707452 )
        SCOX does not own the UNIX source code base as they want you to think. Novell owns most of it, IBM and others who have contributed to the various versions own the code they wrote. All SCOX may own is anything special that did for SCOs UNIX offering.

  • The sad thing is (Score:5, Interesting)

    by argoff ( 142580 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @02:10PM (#11853482)
    ... isn't all the peoples lives who have been interrupted because of the lawsuit, but all the people who bought the propaganda that SCO was enterprise "material" back in the 90's while blowing off Linux.

  • Has anyone managed to short SCO stock? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by defile ( 1059 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @02:12PM (#11853494) Homepage Journal

    I've been trying since they were nearly $20/share but my broker said something about it not being available. Did Wall Street see them as being full of shit, too?

    • IIRC, something along the lines of 30% of the shares are shorted. That's a huge amount compared to what happens normally.

      Unfortunately, I don't think Wall Street sees them as full of shit, otherwise the price of the stock would be much, much lower.

    • Re:Has anyone managed to short SCO stock? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 05, 2005 @03:10PM (#11853934)
      In order for you to sell a stock short, your broker has to find someone who owns it and is willing to lend it to you. After all, whoever buys it from you is expecting to take delivery of the stock, and you don't have it to deliver.

      Nowadays, most stock is held in so-called "street name": the owner doesn't actually hold certificates but rather leaves it in his broker's name. Stock held this way is available for borrowing. For example, every brokerage firm has *some* customer who is long, say, MSFT but has left it in street name; if you want to short MSFT, the firm can borrow the stock from that customer. (That right to borrow your stock is explicitly written into the terms and conditions of brokerage accounts.)

      Stocks in a death spiral, such as SCOX / SCOXE, are often hard to locate for borrowing and subsequent short selling. Under such circumstances, the prices of put options (the right but not the obligation to sell the stock at a specified price until a specified date) can and do go through the roof.

      Incidentally, the money to be made shorting SCOX / SCOXE has already been made. There's not much more room left for the stock to go down.

      • Incidentally, the money to be made shorting SCOX / SCOXE has already been made. There's not much more room left for the stock to go down.

        Thank you for the helpful explanation. I suspected it was something like this for larger transactions, but wondered if market makers could provide some kind of virtual liquidity for wannabe big-shot daytraders (I wasn't planning to risk more than some change on it.)

    • I did. I made a fair amount of money doing it, too.

      It was a bit nervewracking as for a few months after I shorted it, it went up in price. But I held steady and about doubled my money.

  • Hope they will last... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tindur ( 658483 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @02:15PM (#11853513)
    ...til the judge hammers. I wouldn't like to see somebody else buying the case and starting it all over again.
    • It's not impossible that IBM might sue whatever is left of SCO and pick up all their assets since that's all they have to give. I'm not sure why they'd want to, though.
      • I think one could run a pretty good business with "SCO Linux" and a business plan to provide support for SCO refugees moving to Linux.

        Having IBM burn you the CD-ROM that makes up SCO's true Intellectual Property would help (I think).

  • Everyone knew it would happen.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ElScorcho ( 115780 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @02:16PM (#11853524)
    ..especially the management at SCO. You think they're upset about this? It was obvious from the very beginning that they didn't have the long term benefit of the company in mind when they started all this garbage. The people in charge of SCO, like so many other dead corps of the past, don't care what happens to the company. If you think they haven't gotten fabulously rich while all this has been going on you're deluding yourself.

    At this point they're probably running company affairs from their yachts, and when it implodes, so what? Won't hurt them at all, and in a year or two they'll be hired on by some other group of corporate leeches and they'll drain another company dry.

    It's just a shame that in this case it impacts more than just the poor slobs working at the company in question (of course, if they're STILL there after all this they deserve it) but something that millions all over the globe care about. But, hey, it was good for business- after all no publicity is bad publicity, right?

    • Re:Everyone knew it would happen.. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by defile ( 1059 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @02:22PM (#11853570) Homepage Journal

      At this point they're probably running company affairs from their yachts, and when it implodes, so what? Won't hurt them at all, and in a year or two they'll be hired on by some other group of corporate leeches and they'll drain another company dry.

      If I were dumb enough to hold SCO stock until the bitter end, I would be pretty embarassed, and litigious.

      Don't the execs face severe legal punishment for this?

      • Corporations were formed squarely to be immune officers from litigation. I do not know if this is still true but it was an early loophole in the 19th century.

        Typically only companies and not their executives are responsible for their civil actions. Unless McBride clearly broke the law legaiily with a huge paper trail pointing to him it will be very difficult if not impossible to convict him.

        • Corporations were formed squarely to be immune officers from litigation. I do not know if this is still true but it was an early loophole in the 19th century.

          Judgements against a corporation can only seize assets that are owned by the corporation.

          An owner of this corporation is not usually personally liable for the corporation's debts.

          This does not immunize any individuals representing or owning the corporation from any crime, civil or criminal. They may claim that they did it in carrying out the w

  • I was waiting for things to get ugly (heading under a buck) before picking up my SCOX stock certificates. Four dollars + additional fees is too much. It cost me more to have paper stock certificates issued than it did to buy the stock when pets.com went tits up, but framed up they rocked as a white elephant gifts. Them screwing around with the SEC get the symbol changed to SCOXE before I though they would. Grrr. Once again, I squarely shoot my foot trying to predict the stock market.
    • NASDAQ added the "E". It means they will be delisted in 30 days for failure to comply with the NASDAQ listing requirements. In SCO's case they did not file an 8-K document as required by the SEC so NASDAQ opts to delist them. They can and have scheduled an appeal hearing. See www.groklaw.net for more !
  • Who do you suppose will buy whatever IP assets they have remaining? Oh, to be sure, there's serious questions about what those might be... but they did buy some kind of rights from Novell. Will they go to someone even slimier, or someone who will place them in some open domain?

    Maybe it's time to set up a fund to bid on them?

    • Re:When SCO goes under... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      They don't have any IP assets. Novell sold them a cat in a bag years ago and has been laughing about it ever since.

  • SCO on IRC (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 05, 2005 @02:27PM (#11853597)
    Topic in #os: hey guyz, stop pickin on irix.
    <SCO> w00t! i bought unix! im gonna b so rich!
    <novell> /msg atnt haha. idiot.
    <novell> whoops. was that out loud?
    <atnt> rotfl
    <ibm> lol
    <SCO> why r u laffin at me?
    <novell> dude, unix is so 10 years ago. linux is in now.
    <SCO> wtf?
    <SCO> hey guyz, i bought caldera, I have linux now.
    <red_hat> haha, your linux sucks.
    <novell> lol
    <atnt> lol
    <ibm> lol
    <SCO> no wayz, i will sell more linux than u!
    <ibm> your linux sucks, you should look at SuSE
    <SuSE> Ja. Wir bilden gutes Linux f&#252;r IBM.
    <SCO> can we do linux with you?
    <SuSE> Ich bin nicht sicher...
    <ibm> *cough*
    <SuSE> Gut lassen Sie uns vereinigen.
    * SuSE is now SuSE[UL]
    * SCO is now caldera[UL]
    <turbolinux> can we play?
    <conectiva> we're bored... we'll go too.
    <ibm> sure!
    * turbolinux is now turbolinux[UL]
    * conectiva is now conectiva[UL]
    <ibm> redhat: you should join!
    <SuSE[UL]> Ja! Wir sind vereinigtes Linux. Widerstand ist vergeblich.
    <red_hat> haha. no.
    <red_hat> lamers.
    <ibm> what about you debian?
    <debian> we'll discuss it and let you know in 5 years.
    <caldera[UL]> no one wants my linux!
    <turbolinux[UL]> i got owned.
    <caldera[UL]> u all tricked me. linux is lame.
    * caldera[UL] is now known as SCO
    <SCO> i'm going back to unix.
    <SGI> yeah! want to do unix with me?
    <SCO> haha. no. lamer.
    <novell> lol
    <ibm> snap!
    <SGI> :~(
    <SCO> hey, u shut up. im gonna sue u ibm.
    <ibm> wtf?
    <SCO> yea, you stole all the good stuff from unix.
    <red_hat> lol
    <SuSE[UL]> heraus laut lachen
    <ibm> lol
    <SCO> shutup. i'm gonna email all your friends and tell them you suck.
    <ibm> go ahead. baby.
    <SCO> andandand... i revoke your unix! how do you like that?
    <ibm> oh no, you didn't. AIX is forever.
    <novell> actually, we still own unix, you can't do that.
    <SCO> wtf? we bought it from u.
    <novell> whoops. our bad.
    <SCO> i own u. haha
    <SCO> ibm: give me all your AIX now!
    <ibm> whatever. lamer.
    * ibm sets mode +b SCO!*@*
    * SCO has been kicked from #os (own this.)

  • IBM guerilla marketing reloads (Score:5, Funny)

    by rifftide ( 679288 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @02:45PM (#11853748)
    Word is that IBM will attempt to push the envelope with yet another guerrilla Linux PR campaign starting next month, replacing its current campaign, code-named "SCO", which appears to be running out of steam.

    The SCO campaign, featuring a struggling UNIX vendor that was taken over by greedy executives claiming IP ownership of the entire GNU/Linux code base, was a stunning success. Major news sites such as those run by the Open Source Technology Group eagerly signed up to perpetrate the tongue-in-cheek hoax, which one editor called "the longest running April Fool's joke in the technology business".

    Prior to SCO, IBM's PR experts tried hiring teams of college students to spray-paint logos and slogans on the sidewalks of San Francisco and Chicago. That campaign was acknowledged to be a flop.

  • I preferred them between a rock and hard place (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anthony Boyd ( 242971 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @02:46PM (#11853758) Homepage
    What once looked like a mortal threat to Linux appears to be fading. As a result, the suit has become a nonfactor in corporate buying decisions.

    Yeah, but... but... I want them to flame out in a huge court loss. I want SCO's finances and future prospects to be devastated. I want a clear and definitive signal that Linux is safe and SCO was stupid to butt heads with Open Source.

    This whole "fading" thing sounds like it just leaves too many doors open for other stupid companies to do bad things, because there is no jarring precedent burned into people's minds.

    Thanks to heavy cost-cutting, SCO's core Unix-server-software business is generating an operating profit now and will continue to do so in 2005, he says.

    Translation: "We pretty much fired everyone except for the accountant. After all, who needs developers on staff when the OSS guys work for free? Right?"

    • Yeah, but... but... I want them to flame out in a huge court loss. I want SCO's finances and future prospects to be devastated. I want a clear and definitive signal that Linux is safe and SCO was stupid to butt heads with Open Source.

      This has nothing to do with open-source. SCO was stupid to butt heads with IBM in the first place, and going up against Novell at the same time is a dangerous gambit. SCO doesn't have much of a case in either area, and a loss against Novell would (as I understand the situatio

  • FUD in the article (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 05, 2005 @03:14PM (#11853951)
    While short on business, SCO held some potentially powerful copyrights.
    The author treats SCO's ownership claims as gospel, but that has not been established in court. Novell has contested SCO's copyright ownership, a matter which is still in court. IBM has counter-sued SCO for copyright infringement and patent infringement. BSDi settled a suit against former Unix(r) owner USL which established that BSDi owned the major part of the unix(generic) copyrights, while USL held copyright on but a tiny historical remnant of the code base. SCO has a long way to go before they can be said to "hold" valid copyrights to any code that's still in use.

    • I wrote a letter to the article's author (Score:5, Interesting)

      by shadow255 ( 710534 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @04:51PM (#11854551)
      I'd mod you up, but I thought it might be better to share the letter I just wrote to the author/editor instead. I took exception to the entire paragraph you quoted.

      To: spencer_ante@businessweek.com

      Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2005 12:32:48 -0800
      Subject: Article "A Linux Nemesis on the Rocks"

      I read with interest your article concerning the legal battle waged by the SCO Group against IBM. While your opening paragraph paints with somewhat of a broader brush than is perhaps warranted for the present-day operating systems software landscape, it is further in that I question your grasp of the facts.

      You write, "While short on business, SCO held some potentially powerful copyrights." I think it is either dishonest of you to state this, or you are genuinely unaware that there is substantial doubt over whether the SCO Group actually hold the copyrights they claim to hold. It appears that you are trying to present a balanced report drawing from various sources, so I would encourage you to consider as well the legal actions of SCO with Novell concerning those copyrights.

      In the same paragraph you go on to say, "Partly funded by a hefty Microsoft license payment, SCO leveled a multibillion-dollar suit against IBM, charging that Big Blue had fed SCO-copyrighted software into Linux." You probably should have included Sun Microsystems when mentioning hefty license payments to the SCO Group. It is also putting a lot of water under the bridge to simplify the lawsuit against IBM the way you do here. The SCO Group have been trying very hard in court to claim that it is a case about contracts rather than copyrights, while making statements to the press to the contrary. In combination with the earlier "held some potentially powerful copyrights" line, this is simply misleading for readers unfamiliar with the case.

      "This triggered fear and loathing in the fast-growing Linux community." I feel it is a mischaracterization of the Linux community to make this statement. While there have been some outspoken individuals who support Linux and have made strong statements in opposition to the claims of the SCO Group, the community as a whole neither fears nor hates the SCO Group per se. It would be more accurate to say that this triggered a vigorous response in the Linux community, with many advocates questioning the basis for the claims of the SCO Group.

      "A court win for SCO, Linux fans feared, could bring its growth to a grinding halt." Again, while there have been some who have speculated this, I think it is inappropriate to put it in the context you have chosen. There are, for instance, many Linux advocates who have stated that they want the SCO Group to specify their infringement claims so that the offending code can be removed to end the infringement. The notion that a win for SCO spells the end of Linux is not one that originates within the Linux community, and should certainly not be stated as though it is an accepted fact.

      "And so, SCO became one of the most vilified companies in the technology industry." The SCO Group certainly will not win any popularity contests with advocates of open source software, and there have been a lot of criticisms leveled against them, but stating that they are vilified conveys the notion that it is somehow not justified. I find this sentence to be gratuitous and irrelevant to the article in general. It does not do anything to inform your readers, but rather inspires them to consider the SCO Group somewhat of a victim and the open source community somewhat of a bully. I expect better from a column labeled as "News Analysis".

      It's really rather unfortunate that you started the article with such a poor footing, because the rest of the piece is very good. If not for the overdramatization in the opening and the paragraph I've referenced above, I would recommend your article to friends and associates wanting to know more about the SCO v. IBM lawsuit.

  • Nothing to fall back on, either (Score:4, Insightful)

    by theonetruekeebler ( 60888 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @03:15PM (#11853968) Homepage Journal
    Here we see what happens to companies with nasty and unsustainable business models:

    Instead of building a good product, they tried to steal an existing one. Instead of getting ahead in the market with innovation, they sued their competitors and many potential allies. Instead of building a loyal client base, they sued their own customers.

    They sued their own customers! And they sued their ex-customers. Who would do business with a company like that? Their customers are fleeing in droves. Their vendors and resellers are dropping them for what they are. Nobody trusts them. And since nobody has to do business with them, nobody will.

    And at the risk of saying what's already been said: Good riddance.

  • 'On the Rocks'? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Ed Avis ( 5917 ) <ed@membled.com> on Saturday March 05, 2005 @03:59PM (#11854203) Homepage
    The main thing that worries me about this article's headline is that it may boost SCO's score on the operating system sucks-rules-o-meter [zgp.org]. Ah, I see it's not included in the list. A narrow escape.

  • Hard won advice from /.'s MichaelCrawford (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MichaelCrawford ( 610140 ) on Saturday March 05, 2005 @04:06PM (#11854247) Homepage Journal
    None of the following things guarantee your security, or even your success:

    • Shipping a successful product
    • Raising venture capital
    • A successful IPO
    Learn why in The Valley is a Harsh Mistress [goingware.com] at GoingWare's Bag of Programming Tricks [goingware.com].

    -- Mike

  • This is sad... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Back in the day, SCO stories usually attract tons of posting. Today, it could barly break 100 postings...

    Darl & Co. is loosing touch!

  • My parents used to play this in the car. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Sing to tune of Neil Diamond's "Love On The Rocks", even though I'm ashamed to post this.

    SCO on the rocks
    Ain't no surprise
    Pour me a bribe
    And I'll tell you some lies
    Got nothin' to lose
    So you just sue big blue all the time

    Gave UNIX my heart
    Gave UNIX my soul
    UNIX left me alone here
    With nothing to hold
    UNIX is gone
    Now all I want is a file

    First, they say they'll crush you
    How they'll really smash you
    Suddenly they find they're out there
    Delisted from the NASDAQ
    When they say they have you
    They don't really have you
    N
  • It's an indictment of the judicial system when a company like SCO can file a meritless lawsuit like this and then drag it out for years without a SINGLE SHRED OF EVIDENCE to back up their claims. It's a travesty, really.
  • Or this lawsuit has gone to the americans!

    (Internal City of Heroes humor, if you don't get it.)

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