"On the same day that CA blasted SCO, Open Source evangelist Eric Raymond revealed a leaked email from SCO's strategic consultant Mike Anderer to their management. The email details how, surprise surprise, Microsoft has arranged virtually all of SCO's financing, hiding behind intermediaries like Baystar Capital."

--Bruce Perens

Summary: SCO and unXis may be the same/overlapping entity; Darl McBride, Stephen Norris and Bryan Cave are all sued

THERE IS SOMETHING truly fascinating about SCO. Is it a technology company or is it a tool for legal abuse? Nobody knows for sure anymore, but Groklaw carries on digging deeper. What does it find? An abundance of monkey business. First of all, as many people know by now, SCO is to sell its assets to a supposedly "independent" entity -- a buyer substantiating a company to be known as unXis. We'll spare the explanation about Microsoft's connection to SCO's latest cash injection [1, 2, 3] because more hilarious is the following finding:

Guess who owns the domain unXis.de? If you check betterwhois, you find that Eric le Blan owns the domain unXis.com, but if you go to Germany's equivalent, denic.de, a familiar SCO name appears.

Hans Bayer, the former CEO for The SCO Group GmbH.

Is SCO selling assets to itself? is this the buyer Berger Singerman was showing? Are they bamboozling the judge and the world by faking a sale, which in turn enables them to raise funds to litigate against Linux and harass competitors?

This comes just shortly after IBM's subpoena of unXis

IBM may have run out of patience with all the mystery about SCO's proposed sale of assets to unXis. . So it has subpoenaed unXis...

If that seems as bad as it gets, then how about this? (accessible only to Groklaw members)

Well, my dreams are coming true. This is better than eagles. A new lawsuit with Darl McBride, Stephen Norris and Bryan Cave all named as defendants by Pelican Equity. The accusation? Theft of trade secrets.

No. Wait. Wait. Wait. It gets better. They are also accused of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. There is a God! [passes out from joy]

What a bundle of joy. So SCO is again in the midst of criminal investigations. Groklaw rests its case.

Groklaw also has the SCO-unXis exhibits as plain text. It seems like another beginning of the end. More text from the March bankruptcy hearing is now available.

There is a monster SCO filing in the bankruptcy, 531 pages, I'm told, a Notice of Cure Amounts in Connection with the Assumption and Assignment of Unexpired Leases and Executory Contracts [PDF] and then a 7-part exhibit. SCO proposes to transfer everything on this list to unXis "free and clear of all liens, claims, encumbrances and interests upon satisfaction of the cure amounts... except for Assumed Liabilities and Permitted Encumbrances".

More here:

More bills to go over with a fine-toothed comb, and SCO has filed an third amended Schedule F for SCO Operations. That's the list of unsecured creditors. Here's the previous version, if you'd like to compare, and I hope you do, and the original [PDF].

Here are the other two bills. Follow the money. Always follow the money, even in Novell's case. ⬆

"Microsoft hardly needs an SCO source license. Its license payment to SCO is simply a good-looking way to pass along a bribe..."

--Bruce Perens