SCO Group: Prolonging death or what?
What is behind the SCO Group's new lease on life?
'Net Insider
By
Scott Bradner
,
Network World
, 02/19/2008
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Earlier this year, it looked like The SCO Group was going down for the count. It had lost a key decision in its suit against Novell, declared bankruptcy and was quickly running out of money.
Then on Valentine's Day, along came a knight -- color yet to be determined -- to sweep the company away. Since it is very hard to see what this knight might have seen
in this distressed damsel (to carry the analogy far too far) we are exploring a territory normally left to conspiracy theorists.
Regular readers of this column know that I am no fan of The SCO Group and its business model built on trying to destroy open
source software. (See, for example, "Slime for sale".)
Patents and copyright are important rights, well founded in the U.S. Constitution, which espoused them to "promote the progress
of science and useful arts." This promotion only holds true if these rights are honestly applied. Rather than being honest,
The SCO Group tried to use bluster and gross distortion against IBM and the open source community in an amoral push for personal enrichment.
Indeed, if The SCO Group could have shown that millions of lines of protected Unix code (as they once claimed) had been surreptitiously
snuck into Linux, the Linux community might have been in a world of hurt. But The SCO Group, like Microsoft (see Microsoft: Invisible patents as a uniform), first refused to show anyone the stolen code and, in the end, was only able to point to a few hundred lines of what seems
to be mostly public header files. But despite being shown up as false braggarts, The SCO Group marched on until being given
a very large dose of reality by the courts and having the foundation of its case pulled out from under it. (See "SCO Group: Mini-Me trying to be Darth Vader ")
It looked like The SCO Group was finally in a painful (to the company) end game when it filed for bankruptcy protection back in September. Then, out of left field, came the announcement that Stephen Norris Capital Partners (SNCP) appears to
have found some reason to throw real money into this pit. The press release said "SNCP has developed a business plan for SCO that includes unveiling new product lines aimed at global customers. This
reorganization plan will also enable the company to see SCO's legal claims through to their full conclusion."
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Comments (4)
RE: SCO Group: Prolonging death or what?By Richard on February 20, 2008, 4:43 pmIs it too much to hope that *maybe*... just MAYBE the SNCP is doing this to ensure a legal decision is reached? If SCO dies without its day in court the question...
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@RichardBy Anonymous on February 21, 2008, 2:05 amWay too much to ask. SCO never wanted its day in court - witness the Chapter 11 filing. Why file the day before the trial starts if you really want to go to court?...
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No conspiracy necessaryBy Greg Byshenk on February 21, 2008, 9:13 amLooking at the issues, here, I don't see how any sort of "conspiracy" is required to explain the new investment. All that you need is an investor who is willing...
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SCO's resurrection ?By Anonymous on February 23, 2008, 10:20 amAn interesting article on GROKLAW documents that SNCP is (quite openly) fronting for an Arab source with deep pockets. GROKLAW quotes a statement from SNCP that...
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