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The Media on SCO Bankruptcy

Sunday, September 16 2007 @ 12:06 AM EDT

I thought it would be fun to include some of the media reaction to the news of the SCO bankruptcy filing. Some of the headlines are inspired. The winner has to be "SCO files Chapter 11 bankruptcy - Seeks court protection from its own lawsuits". My personal favorite is, "SCO files for Chapter 11, threatens business as usual." There is also a funny graphic in the collection. One of your comments is immortalized in the mainstream media as well.

We get to hear from some of the SCO rah rah fan club that was. Laura Didio however appears not to wish to be interviewed, according to Sam Varghese. Enderle presents his opinion, despite claiming the other day not to have been paying attention to SCO for years. And I think MOG, the only true believer still left, makes an appearance. At least it sounds like her writing style. She's incognito, though, posing as ".NETDJ News Desk".

*************************************

Chapter 11 blamed on IBM suit, Tom Harvey, Salt Lake Tribune: The SCO Group's stock finished down 26 cents, closing at 38 cents a share on Friday on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange. It had traded as high as $3.11 in the past year.... Bob Enderle, principal analyst and founder of the Enderle Group of San Jose, Calif., said The SCO Group's gamble was that it didn't have the financial strength to survive losing. "To do this, SCO needed to focus 100 percent of their effort . . . and SCO simply refused to do that," he said in a telephone interview. ...
The company's lawsuit garnered worldwide headlines in 2003 because it was seen as a Microsoft-backed attempt to derail Linux. It angered the open-source community because of its potential to reach into the pockets of users for licensing payments.
"It damaged us and it damaged my [consulting] business at the time. It created the impression there were intellectual property claims against Linux," said Bruce Perens of Berkeley, Calif., one of the founders of the open source movement.
Enderle said that paradoxically SCO's failure so far to win its lawsuits and now its bankruptcy will strengthen the open-source movement by making it harder to sue over the code in Linux that came from many sources. "This has actually defined an awful lot," he said.
Perens also said the lawsuit has helped to define the relationship between open source codes and intellectual property rights.
"I think what this means is don't tread on me," he said. "Rather than a group of people who don't understand intellectual property, we understand it thoroughly."
SCO, SCO, SCO your boat, gently down the bankruptcy stream, Sam Varghese, ITWire: The SCO Group has declared that it will be filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Yes, this is the same group that was so confidently asserting that it would appeal against a recent judgement that rules Novell was the owner of the Unix IP which SCO claimed to own....
That future is not looking overly bright now, methinks. And it is fair to assume that none of the cheerleaders of the SCO Group will be coming forward to push their tortured opinions in the media.
IBM's reaction is characteristic of its low-key approach; the company has said nothing....It looks like I won't be getting an interview with Laura DiDio even though I wrote and asked for one. She seems to have gone underground.
SCO Declares Bankruptcy, Robert McMillan, ABC News: The company's critics said that the bankruptcy filing was expected. "I have to say we weren't surprised," said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, in a statement e-mailed to IDG News. " Their legal strategy was ill-conceived and misguided. Companies like Red Hat, IBM and many others have proven that it's far smarter to build a business around Linux than it is to attack it in the courts."
SCO Bankrupt? End of Saga Can't Be Far Off, Charles Babcock, InformationWeek: The thing that bothers some of us is that a competent technology company resorted to claims in court rather than sticking to the hard work of technology generation. Anyone may assert claims of invention and ownership, but to resort to sweeping claims against such a broad set of customers suggested that all SCO's boldness had been invested in a legal strategy. And that in turn suggested a loss of nerve in its technology strategy.
Is Chapter 11 the last chapter? It's probably only the beginning of the last chapter, but a sign that the end to this sorry saga cannot be far off.
SCO, a Software Maker, Is Seeking Bankruptcy, Bloomberg News, on NY Times: The SCO Group, the software maker that sued International Business Machines for copyright infringement, filed for bankruptcy yesterday, 10 days after conceding that much of the case should be dropped....
The trial of SCO’s suit against Novell had been set to begin Monday but was postponed because of the bankruptcy filing. The case was substantially gutted last month when a judge ruled that Novell owned the copyrights for the Unix system.
Battered SCO Files for Bankruptcy to Stay Afloat, David Kravets, WIred: In an interview two weeks ago with Wired News, CEO Darl McBride said the company would leave no legal stone unturned in its quest to continue litigating to win the Unix copyright. A company spokeswoman declined to comment Friday on whether SCO would follow through.
In that interview, McBride said that the company was healthy and on the right track with new mobile device products and upgraded server products....
In 1995, SCO (then known as Santa Cruz Operation) bought the Unix operating system from Novell for $149 million, but who owned the copyrights wasn't clear, and years of litigation ensued.
SCO files for Chapter 11, Nate Anderson, ars technica: Is there any future for the fallen UNIX vendor? SCO CEO Darl McBride hopes to reinvent the company and focus on mobile UNIX. SCO offers a mobile systems management solution called HipCheck and a mobile server applications platform. With the relevance of proprietary UNIX technologies rapidly deflating, it's unlikely that mobile UNIX will restore SCO to its former glory. SCO also offers a subscription-based social mobile communications service that allows users to transmit electronic "shouts" to other users. SCO can certainly shout, but somehow, I don't think anybody will listen.
SCO files Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Grace Deleong, Daily Herald: Another Linux Foundation executive, Don Kohn, says SCO may face the possibility of being forced into an involuntary Chapter 7 bankruptcy petition to liquidate its assets depending on how aggressive its creditors and Novell are in their debt recovery attempts.
Novell declined to comment on its next move.
"We'll be evaluating our options for pursuing our interests in this matter," said Kevan Barney, spokesman for Novell.
By filing bankruptcy, SCO may buy some time to negotiate with creditors and obtain debtor-in-possession financing for its debts.
SCO files for US bankruptcy protection, Gavin Clarke, The Register: SCO had dismissed as FUD claims by Novell earlier this year that it lacked the cash to pay and was staggering towards bankruptcy.
In subsequent interviews, intended to show SCO was coming out fighting, embattled chief executive Darl McBride insisted SCO would not only appeal the judge's decision but SCO didn't owe a red cent.
"The deals with Sun and Microsoft were about the latest and greatest of UnixWare technology, which is ours," McBride said.
It's a bitter, but predictable, end to a case that saw McBride gamble big and in which SCO poured money into the pockets of its attorneys, Boies, Schiller & Flexner.
SCO files Chapter 11 bankruptcy - Seeks court protection from its own lawsuits, Egan Orion, The Inquirer: ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON, both SCO Group and its subsidiary SCO Operations, Inc. filed voluntary petitions for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in US Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.
Trading in SCOX was halted on the NASDAQ exchange ahead of the news but resumed before closing. SCO stock lost 43% on the news, ending the day at 37 cents per share....
Judge Kimball's August 10 rulings in effect almost totally demolished SCO's cases against both Novell and IBM.
Novell, because ownership of the UNIX SVRX copyrights was SCO's major issue, and Novell won several rulings that in effect turned the lawsuit around into Novell v. SCO.
[PJ: This is a very concise and clear summary of the SCO saga.]
Chapter 11, in Which SCO Finally Gets What It Deserves, John Paczkowski, All Things Digital: When a company begins characterizing its assets as merely “those remaining,” as the SCO Group did earlier this year, bankruptcy is an inevitability. So it comes as little surprise to learn that the company’s hard-fought, but ultimately ludicrous, four-year legal campaign against Linux has ended in a Chapter 11 filing. Seems using litigation as a profit center to compensate for market losses isn’t such a grand idea after all. [PJ: Funny graphic .]
Stick a fork in SCO. They're done., Steven J. Vaughan Nichols, Desktop Linux: The story of SCO and its Linux lawsuits is an IP (intellectual property) epic. It's also a horror story. It showed how even with the flimsiest of evidence, one small company could attack a multi-billion dollar software industry for years....
Oh sure, Chapter 11 means that SCO will still hang on for at least half-a-year longer. So what? In a Chapter 11, you re-organize to continue your business. When your big-win business plan was to make billions by lawsuits and you can no longer pursue them while you're in Chapter 11, exactly what do you have left to re-organize?...If, and that one heck of an if, SCO abandons its losing Linux litigation efforts and its enemies allow it to survive, then and only then will SCO ever emerge alive out of bankruptcy. What I really expect to happen is for SCO to go out of business sometime in the next year.
SCO files Chapter 11, threatens business as usual, Paul McNamara, Network World:Grave dancing has commenced over at Groklaw, which has long been a go-to destination for the legal nitty-gritty on this case. From the first comment posted:
How sad:-) ... Sad for the poor folk who used to make a decent living from a reasonable outfit until the gamblers jumped in anyway.
SCO Heads to Court, Sys-con, .NET Developer's Journal News Desk (but I believe it's Maureen O'Gara, judging by the style): It's supposed to be a highly overturnable decision in which Kimball usurped for himself decisions only a jury can make under the law.
Apparently it's a familiar pattern. Kimball has a string overturned summary judgments to his name. Maybe he should get clerks with higher grades in law school if he's gonna let them write his decisions. They made some real big bloopers in the SCO case.

Some things never change.

: )

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Corrections Here

Authored by: feldegast on Sunday, September 16 2007 @ 12:12 AM EDT

So they can be fixed

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