Bonum Certa Men Certa

SCO, Microsoft, Novell, and Other News from Utah

Licence plate from Utah



Summary: A bundle of SCO news with some interpretation

SEVERAL days ago, SCO was temporarily rescued by a entity with connections to Microsoft [1, 2]. SCO may be rescued from immediate liquidation, but it remains to be seen if the plans are followed through. Either way, SCO might not die quite so quickly after all [1, 2]. Here is a quick summary of SCO news that we haven't covered yet.



The Register gets around to writing about SCO's rescue. The article comes from one of the publication's better reporters, who concludes with:

An appointed bankruptcy trustee recently asked permission to dissolve SCO under Chapter 7, saying the company has "no reasonable chance of rehabilitation." That is, unless it somehow miraculously came up with the cash to pay off its debts. And oh how we scoffed at the very idea.

It seems SCO's uncanny survival will now be decided at the new hearing set for July 16, or the backup date July 27.


Ken Jennings from LinuxToday calls this whole thing the "Price of FUD", correctly remarking that:

Wasn't SCO's earlier asking price around 5million? Now I see it's down to 2.4 million. Wake me when it's 25 cents, so I can put in my bid.


Remember $100 million? A lot has changed since then.

Stephen Norris has come to SCO's rescue before. Last year, IT Business Edge blogger Lora Bentley reported that a group led by Stephen Norris Capital Partners gave SCO a $100 million infusion to rescue it from Chapter 11.




Groklaw pokes fun at this attempts from SCO to keep its head above water.

Here's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols on ComputerWorld on SCO rising from the dead. We'll see. I'd describe it more like keeping the patient on life support, while hoping for a cure. The plan hasn't been approved yet, y'all.

[...]

So is Unix heading to Iraq? Google is your friend. Nothing SCO does surprises me any more, though, not even yesterday's events. In fact, privately I predicted to several Groklaw folks that this is more or less the kind of thing I thought they'd try. SCO never gives up. The judge seemed surprised, calling it a Perry Mason moment. But that's because he doesn't know SCO like we do.


Over in Germany, Heise has more than a single report about the subject, which it summarises thusly:

In yet another bizarre twist in the interminable legal dispute over source code allegedly illegally copied from UNIX System V into Linux, the SCO Group, which claims ownership of the disputed code, has secured a last-gasp reprieve from the threat of liquidation. Immediately before the crucial liquidation hearing in the bankruptcy court, SCO CEO Darl McBride signed an agreement with a company by the name of Gulf Capital Partners, backed by well-known investor Stephen Norris. Caught out by the surprise development, all parties have agreed to postpone the liquidation hearing until the 16th or the 27th of July.


Groklaw shows that SCO Germany has lost its CEO. SCO is actually a very small company at this stage, so overseas branches almost seem like a misfit, a legacy. SCO even gets fined in Germany for slander.

There is an unconfirmed claim that SCO will pass its assets to another company to operate under a different name. The sale of UNIX assets is neither a done deal yet nor is it an escape from Chapter 7, but it sure seems like a good route for procrastination, no matter the eventual outcome. SCO has nothing to lose when it's all just paperwork.

Only moments before a hearing at which SCO would have faced conversion to Chapter 7 bankruptcy, the company signed a deal to sell off its UNIX assets. This last-minute act of desperation could potentially allow SCO to delay its demise.


Groklaw is not even sure who the proposed buyer is. It's all very opaque, as it has always been [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6].

There are some media reports on the SCO cliff hanger bankruptcy hearing on Monday. The more information that comes in, the less clear I am on exactly who the actual proposed buyer is. I'll show you why.


According to this new report, Microsoft makes another little move into Utah.

If you're in the market for a software development job, you might want to head to Utah County. Microsoft Corp. is hiring. The software giant, based in Redmond, Wash., announced Wednesday that the company will occupy space at Thanksgiving Park in Lehi beginning in August and will eventually hire about 100 information technology professionals.


Microsoft relocated to Utah some months ago (despite layoffs in other areas) while Novell offshores Utah staff. A Novell-centric agenda was suspected at the time of this move from Microsoft, but it is probably much of a stretch and too far fetched. On the other hand, regarding the report above, Pamela Jones writes: "If SCO's deal doesn't happen, maybe the 62 employees left at SCO could find work with Microsoft."

We previously saw how Microsoft rewards people who attack ODF and/or GNU/Linux by offering them jobs [1, 2]. It is a sophisticated form of bribery where action precedes the payment.

In other SCO-related news, some articles about the Psystar case note its similarity to the SCO case. See for example:

i. Apple accuses Psystar of hiding behind bankruptcy



The Cupertino, California firm goes so far as to draw parallels between Psystar and the fate of infamous software house SCO Group. Known for using lawsuits against Linux-dependent companies over UNIX rights disputes as part of its business model in later years, it's linked to Psystar through its approach to bankruptcy: when it lost its lawsuit against Novell and was ordered to pay money on UNIX licensing, SCO purportedly used bankruptcy and the resulting stay as a defensive measure to fend off the requests for money. Novell eventually had the stay lifted -- a precedent which Apple is keen to take advantage of in its own case.


ii. Psystar owes Apple $75,000 while Apple moves to lift stay (Updated)



Apple compared the tactics to those of the SCO Group in its attempts to avoid paying Novell money owed based on UNIX licensing, painting Psystar president Rudy Pedraza as the Darl McBride of Mac cloners. Apple noted that the automatic stay was lifted in that similar situation.



iii. Apple seeks go-ahead for action against Psystar



Interestingly, Apple cites proceedings between Novell and SCO as a precedent. Novell obtained a summary judgement that it was entitled to copyright royalties from SCO, but before the case was tried SCO filed for bankruptcy.


Any more information about SCO would be welcome.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Security Isn't the Goal of Today's Software and Hardware Products
Any newly-added layer represents more attack surface
Godot 4.2 is Approaching, But After What Happened to Unity All Game Developers Should be Careful
We hope Unity will burn in a massive fire and, as for Godot, we hope it'll get rid of Microsoft
 
10 Reasons to Permanently Export or Liberate Your Site From WordPress, Drupal, and Other Bloatware
There are certainly more more advantages, but 10 should suffice for now
About 200,000 Objects in Techrights Web Site
This hopefully helps demonstrate just how colossal the migration actually is
Good Teachers Would Tell Kids to Quit Social Control Media Rather Than Participate in It (Teaching Means Education, Not Misinformation)
Insist that classrooms offer education to children rather than offer children to corporations
Twitter: From Walled Gardens to Paywalls and/or Amplifiers of Fascism
There's moreover a push to promote politicians who are as scummy as Twitter's owner
The World Wide Web is Being Confiscated From Us (Like Syndication Was Withdrawn About a Decade Ago) and We Need to Fight Back
We're worse off when fewer people promote RSS feeds and instead outsource to social control media (censorship, surveillance, manipulation)
Next Up: Restoring IRC Log Pipelines, Bulletins/Full Text RSS, Wiki (Archived, Static), and Pipelines for Daily Links
There are still many tasks left ahead of us, but we've progressed a lot
An Era of Rotting Technology, Migration Crises, and Cliffhanging
We've covered examples from IBM, resembling the Microsoft world
First Iteration of Techrights as 100% Static Pages Web Site
We want to champion another decade or two of positive impact and opinionated analysis
Links 25/09/2023: Patent News and Coding
some remaining links for today
Steam Deck is Mostly Good in the Sense That It Weakens Microsoft's Dominance (Windows)
The Steam Deck is mostly a DRM appliance
SUSE is Just Another Black Cat Working for Proprietary Giants/Monopolies
SUSE's relationship with firms such as these generally means that SUSE works for authority, not for community, and when it comes to cryptography it just follows guidelines from the US government
IBM is Selling Complexity, Not GNU/Linux
It's not about the clients, it's about money
Birthday of Techrights in 6 Weeks (Tux Machines and Techrights Reach Combined Age of 40 in 2025)
We've already begun the migration to static
Linux Foundation: We Came, We Saw, We Plundered
Linux Foundation staff uses neither Linux nor Open Source. They're essentially using, exploiting, piggybacking goodwill gestures (altruism of volunteers) while paying themselves 6-figure salaries.
Linux Too Big to Be Properly Maintained When There's an Incentive to Sell More and More Things (Complexity and Narrow Support Window)
They want your money, not your peace of mind. That's a problem.
Modern Web Means Proprietary Trash
Mozilla is financially beholden to Google and thus we cannot expect any pushback or for Firefox to "reclaims the Web" a second time around
GNU/Linux Has Conquered the World, But Users' Freedom Has Not (Impediments Remain in Hardware)
Installing one's system of choice on a device is very hard, sometimes impossible
Another Copyright Lawsuit Against Microsoft (or its Proxy) for Misuse of Large Works by Chatbot
Some people mocked us for saying this day would come; chatbots are a huge disappointment and they're on very shaky legal ground
Privacy is Not a Crime, Reporting Hidden Facts Is Not a Crime Either
the powerful companies/governments/societies get to know everything about everybody, but if anyone out there discovers or shares dark secrets about those powerful companies/governments/societies, that's a "crime"
United Workforce Always Better for the Workers
In the case of technology, it is possible that a lack of collective action is because of relatively high salaries and less physically-demanding jobs
Purge of Software Freedom and Its Voices
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
GNOME and GTK Taking Freedom Away From Users
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
GNOME is Worse Today (in 2023) Than When I Did GTK Development 20+ Years Ago
To me it seems like GNOME is moving backward, not forward, mostly removing features and functionality rather than adding any
HowTos Are Moving to Tux Machines
HowTos (or howtos) are very important in their own right, but they can easily distract from the news and howtos are usually quite timeless or time-insensitive
Proprietary Panda: Don't Be Misled by the Innocent Looks of Ubuntu (and Microsoft Canonical)
Given the number of disgruntled employees who leave Canonical and given Ubuntu's trend of just copying whatever IBM does in Fedora, is there still a good reason to choose Ubuntu?
Debian GNU/Linux is a Fine Operating System, But What if People Die Making It for Somebody's Corporate/Personal Gain?
Will companies that exploited unpaid volunteers ever be held accountable for loss of life, caused by burnout, excessive work, or poverty?
Links 24/09/2023: 5 Days' Worth of News (Catchup)
Links for the day
Leftover Links 24/09/2023: Russia, COVID, and More
Links for the day
Forty Years of GNU and the Free Software Movement
by FSF
Gemini and Web in Tandem
We're already learning, over IRC, that out new site is fully compatible with simple command line- and ncurses-based Web browsers. Failing that, there's Gemini.
Red Hat Pretends to Have "Community Commitment to Open Source" While Scuttling the Fedora Community (Among Others)
RHEL is becoming more proprietary over time and community seems to boil down to unpaid volunteers (at least that's how IBM see the "community")
IBM Neglecting Users of GNU/Linux on Laptops and Desktops
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Personal Identification on the 'Modern' Net
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Not Your Daily Driver: Don't Build With Rust or Adopt Rust-based Software If You Value Long-Term Reliance
Rust is a whole bunch of hype.
The Future of the Web is Not the Web
The supposedly "modern" stuff ought to occupy some other protocol, maybe "app://"
YouTube Has Just Become Even More Sinister
The way Google has been treating the Web (and Web browsers) sheds a clue about future plans and prospects
Initial Announcement of GNU (for Gnu's Not Unix) on September 27, 1983
History matters
Upgrade and Migration Status
Git is working, IPFS is working, IRC is working, Gemini is working
Yesterday in the 'Sister Site', Tux Machines (10 More Stories)
Scope-wise, many stories fit neatly into both sites, but posting the same twice makes no sense logistically
The New Techrights Will be Much Faster
A prompt response to FUD is important. It's time-sensitive.