SCO loses, Novell wins finally

[Jerry Feldman]

On 06/12/2010 02:32 PM, Jeffry Smith wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 12, 2010 at 6:51 PM, mark <prgrmr at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> Agreed; however, IBM could realistically take control of the company as
>> compensation for what it is owed.  The value to be had, I think, is in SCO's
>> remaining customer base, which IBM could then convert over to it's own
>> product portfolio.
>>
>>     
> AFTER they win the court case.  They want it legally declared they
> never infringed.  As compensation after the smoking hole is formed,
> they may buy up what remains to build a monument to Linux.
>   
I would think that the SCO Group has no value to IBM at all. While there
are people like Yarrow and McBride out there who might want to keep SCO
in their own hands, the only business that I can see that could profit
from acquiring SCO is Novell. Most of the SCO IP is tied to their Unix
products. Since McBride is effectively out of the picture, it is Yarrow
who is the money man behind SCO. The reason I see Novell as the only
business that could profit from the SCO assets is its worldwide customer
base that they could service or convert to SuSE Linux. Any other company
would still have to pay royalties to Novell. I don't know if any of the
patent trolls would pay serious money to the existing SCO patents (if
any currently exist).

I think the next step is for SCO to (1) move to dismiss the SCO vs. IBM
case, (2) move to convert from chapter 11 to chapter 7. But there have
been a lot of surprises in this mess, and one is why did Judge Cahn move
forward with the SCO vs. Novell after both Judge Kimball ruled in favor
of Novell, and much of the existing evidence was in Novell's favor.
AFAIK, there was very little cost to SCO in pursuing this case since the
attorneys were prepaid. I think the next chapter in the SCO mess is
going to be what Ralph Yarrow does. Will he simply cut bait and allow
chapter 7, or will he pump in more money.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/private/gnhlug-discuss/attachments/20100613/8e883ad1/attachment.bin