SCO Bankruptcy Hearing: SCO's Exclusivity Period is Over

Groklaw ^ | March 30 2009 | PJ

[antiRepublicrat]

I can't believe there's yet more major news, all in one day. But there is, from the bankruptcy front. SCO's period of exclusivity is over, as you can see from the minutes of today's hearing [PDF]. Look at number 1 on the list under the heading "Proceedings" and you will see the word: "DENIED". This was regarding the SCO motion [PDF] to extend the period of exclusivity, it's 4th, the motion that Al Petrofsky objected to pro se, as you can see on the Notice of matters on the agenda for today.

So now IBM and Novell and the US Trustee's office and any creditors -- they can one and all come up with plans, not just SCO, and may the best one win, so to speak.

IBM was represented, as was Novell, and the US Trustee was in attendance today too, as you can see from the attachment [PDF], listing everyone there. There was a status conference on SCO's latest plan, but we'll have to wait for the transcript of the hearing for those details. But I can guess. Not exactly airborne, is my best guess, given the rest of the day's news.

[antiRepublicrat]

I can't believe SCO filed for bankruptcy a year and a half ago and still hasn't presented the court with a viable reorganization plan.

Would this be possible in any but SCO's bizarro-litigation world?

I know we've said it before, but the end must be near now. All of the creditors, including IBM and Novell, can now come up with a plan, which can include Chapter 7 (dissolve the company, sell off the assets to pay creditors).

[Arguendo]

I can't believe SCO filed for bankruptcy a year and a half ago and still hasn't presented the court with a viable reorganization plan.

That kind of thing is actually pretty common in bankruptcy cases.

[BuckeyeTexan]

I can’t wait for SCO to be taken apart piece by piece.

[MarkL]

I can’t wait for SCO to be taken apart piece by piece.

I guess I'm a bit saddened by the whole thing. I remember when SCO, then the "Santa Cruz Operation" was actually a terrific software company, and I worked extensively with the Xenix and eventually Unix products. I remember when the two brothers, whose names escape me, ran the company.

It was a rock solid OS that really first took advantage of the Intel 286 and 386 platforms.

I realize that it's been many years since SCO has been anything but a company run by lawyers for nothing more than legal action, but still... Heck, I've still got some of my old SCO UNIX manuals on my bookshelf!

Mark

[AFreeBird]

I remember those days as well.

[BuckeyeTexan]

I have those same manuals. :)

But, I have never liked SCO! My problem with that OS has always been it’s failure to standardize. I wrote proprietary software in ‘C’ with some supporting shell scripts for AIX, NCR UNIX HP-UX, SCO XENIX/UNIX and eventually Linux. The software had to be portable across platforms. (Before java was born.) Easy to do in C, not quite so simple in the scripts. We standardized our scripts on /bin/ksh because it had more functionality & features that we needed in the application. Ever try to write a script for multiple platforms and be able to tell on which platform the script was executing at runtime? Arrrgggghh!

Anyway, long story short ... SCO was always the uncooperative, unruly, step-child, especially where /bin/ksh was concerned. At one point, we gave up functionality requirements and moved everything back to /bin/sh.

So, for all those sleepless nights and 3:00 A.M. calls from the Support team, SCO can die a painful death in bankruptcy court. Their product was crap as far as I am concerned.

Sorry. I know you were reminiscing a little about Xenix. They did write good documentation, which is helpful when you need to RTFM as much as we had to for SCO. ;-)

[MarkL]

SCO did have a huge bunch of people screaming at them because of the issues you related, but I believe that it was more an issue of the code base they were on. IIRC, SCO based their Xenix and (oringinally, their Unix) on v6 and v7, rather than System III or System V. Even when they did release their SYS V versions, it still had a lot of old v7 code in it, and there were tons of kludges to try to make it compatible with both the old versions of SCO and the newer "real" SYS V versions of UNIX.

But you're right, there were a lot of inconsistencies, and they often had files in the "wrong" directories. But if you were in an exclusively SCO environment, it wasn't an issue.

Mark

[BuckeyeTexan]

files in the "wrong" directories

Yup, files can be in the "wrong" directory. It's funny how we can see things that way. Even if it works, it's still "wrong." I have this aversion to anything but K&R style braces. To me, anything else is just "wrong," not necessarily "bad form," just "wrong."

But, I'm a grumpy, old "proper" fart, or so the newbie hacks tell me anyway.

Lazy, amateurs. Back in my day ... we didn't have screens and keyboards ... we did it the hard way. (See, I am grumpy.)

Ever seen this one? I laugh until I cry every time I watch it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xEzGIuY7kw