SCO Group files for bankruptcy protection

CNet ^ | 9/14/07 | Stephen Shankland

[3niner]

SCO ceased being a real business several years ago. Since then, they have been nothing more than a platform for nuisance litigation. They need to just go away.

[3niner]

Did they ever produce a real product?............

Yes, back in the '80s, though they were never really very good at it. Most of "their" technology was really from other companies.

They bought some technology from Microsoft and NCR. They obtained a lot of other technology for free from other companies (like Altos Computer Systems, where I used to work).

I had some friends who used to work there (when it was in Santa Cruz). They all left in the early '90s.

[festus]

Yes they used to, 10-15 years ago. Linux pretty much replaced the markets need for their product.

[Boundless]

>> SCO CEO Darl McBride adamantly stated on the
>> company’s fourth quarter conference call that
>> the company is not going bankrupt.

> I guess some serious crow is in order.

More than crow.
They also told the court that, under oath, to prevent
Novell from getting a constructive trust to secure what’s
left of the money SCO’s been spending on FUD suits
(money which the court has since declared is NOT SCOs;
look up “conversion” in the context of civil suits).

Keep making popcorn. This is way far from over.
Shareholder lawsuits are a given.
SEC action is not unlikely.
Criminal referrals are warranted.

[jammer]

I remember and you’re right.

[AFreeBird]

Any of you guys remember those days, or are you all newbies in the techie world ?

First logged into a Compuserve DEC system back in 1979. 300 baud, driven by a "Videotex" cartridge plugged into a Radio Shack 16K Color Computer. Ran an RBBS system on a 64K (originally) IBM PC with two 360K (Double Sided, Double Density) 5.25" floppy drives. I added an external 10MB harddrive to it, and a Hayes 1200 baud Smartmodem for RBBS operations. You don't want to know what I paid for that upgrade. Hell, you don't want to know what I paid for the IBM PC to begin with.

Last corporate techie job: AT&T (Before Lucent) Bell Labs.

Techie enough for you?

[Norman Conquest]

Plus, their lead lawyer in all this has been David Boies, the incompetent foul-up who botched Al Gore’s endless failed cases in Florida in 2000.

If you want a single reason why Gore never managed to manufacture the votes he needed to steal Florida, don’t blame the 7-2 Supreme Court decision that his cherry-picking recanvassing was illegal.

Blame Boies. When the selective recanvass was thrown out (7-2!) by the court, they also ruled (5-4) that it was too late to start a proper recount, basing that on the cutoff date that Boies had set in court on Gore’s behalf.

Loser. Moron. Evilspawn. Why do big-time plaintiifs keep hiring this incompetent screwup?

[cinives]

Yep, that’ll do.

I first worked on a PDP-10, then a PDP-11, then a Burroughs mainframe, then IBM mainframes until the mid 80s.

In 1979 I had a Trash-80 which I replaced in 1982 with an IBM PC with 2 floppy drives - it cost me $4000. The 10 MB hard drive I added a year later for $1200, and I had a Hayes 1200 baud modem. In 1984 I bought an IBM AT for $5000 with a 20 MB HD and installed Xenix on it, then later SCO unix. Some time later I got into the programming and installation of HP-UX running ship bridge and engine room engineering simulation environments.

Which Bell Labs were you with ? My business partner was a test engineer at the labs in Reading PA for 17 years.

[AFreeBird]

Wow, you paid a grand more for your PC? Guess I got a deal huh? ;-) The 10MB external HDD sounds about right, don't recall the $$$ on the HS1200. I do recall having some little start up company by the name of "US Robotics", leaving the SYSOP of my board (me) a message for a deal for a 2400bd modem. I took em up on it. Still got that modem in a box around here somewhere. Along with a quite a few of their later models.

[antiRepublicrat]

Talk about a last minute sleazy move! They were probably about to be ordered to pay millions of dollars lawfully owed to Novell, but they file this just before Novell can be listed as their #1 debtor.

[AFreeBird]

Ummmm...

but they file this just before Novell can be listed as their #1 debtor creditor.

[antiRepublicrat]

After running into stiff competition from the endlessly proliferating versions of open-source Unix ("Linux"), SCO decided to singlehandedly sue all of its competitors out of existence.

There's a little more to the story. After having its UNIX on PCs, SCO bought the old-time UNIX business from Novell. Years later, SCO decides to sell the business to a Linux company called Caldera. SCO renames itself to Tarantella, and Caldera gets a new CEO who renames the company to The SCO Group in order to confuse everybody (as is shown here).

Said CEO then shifts the company's business model from software to suing everybody with ZERO EVIDENCE to back up any claims. But most investors don't know this so the stock price shoots up, said CEO gets rich, and Microsoft helps arrange a huge investment for SCO to help finance the lawsuits against companies that produce or use Linux.

[antiRepublicrat]

To all:

This "SCO" is not the Santa Cruz Operation famous for PC-based UNIX in the past!

This "SCO" is really "The SCO Group, Inc.," formerly called "Caldera" when it was a mediocre Linux company. They bought the UNIX business from the Santa Cruz Operation a few years back. That company is now called Tarantella, and is a subsidiary of Sun.

[antiRepublicrat]

More than crow. They also told the court that, under oath, to prevent Novell from getting a constructive trust to secure what’s left of the money SCO’s been spending on FUD suits

Ouch, I forgot about that. Judge Kimball must be really pissed off right now, having been taken for a ride by SCO. Kimball's last order denying the trust should at least have had something preventing SCO from filing bankruptcy.

Hey, maybe this means some jail time for Darl! There isn't enough money left in SCO for justice, so I'd be happy with that.

[antiRepublicrat]

Sorry, thinking “debt holder,” mixed it up.

[mad_as_he$$]

Unfortunately I have to admit to remembering those days.

[zeugma]

The bird was booted from the coop.

How the heck did I miss that Zot??? 

[WL-law]

This account has been banned or suspended.

So you're saying that our "victory" over Golden Eagle roughly paralleled Novell/IBM's victory over SCO/Microsoft?

NICE !!!

[papasmurf]

Hey SCO...

Ubuntu to you!