SCO News Roundup

• So the bottom fell out of SCO's stock today. Down nearly 72%, closing at a pitiful 44 cents. Lowest close ever. In fact the high for the day was lower than the stock's previous all-time low -- which was back in June 2002, around the time Darl started. And the low was just 35 cents. 35 cents won't even buy you a freakin' postage stamp.
  
  For stock, um, "analysis" from a somewhat unusual corner, here's Slashdot's take on the action.
  
  
• Sunday night, a terrified SCO issued a press release about the ruling, which later appeared in an official 8K filing. It's quite a marvel of the spin-doctoring arts. They list a bunch of irrelevant copyrights they do own -- or at least ones for which the ownership hasn't been disputed yet. Among those is something called "Gemini 64", which is their code name for the never-released, never-completed operating system they worked on in the infamous Project Monterey, 11 years ago -- and they only claim to own "substantial portions" of it. Yeah, that sounds like a super-valuable chunk of IP there, guys. They go on to say they're "exploring their options" and just might file an appeal, without committing themselves to doing so. It's quite entertaining really.
  
  
• An InfoWorld piece about SCO's take on the ruling here.
  
  
• And there's GL coverage of course, exploring the Pythonesque aspects of SCO's statement.
  
  I expect the poor clueless PHBs at SCO are wondering who this Monty Python guy is, and why the "long-haired smellies" keep going on about him all the time.
  
  
• The local newspaper in Lindon has a new article on the stock tankage, which looks to be a front page story in Tuesday's print edition. This choice tidbit leaped out at me:
  

  
  Meanwhile, the overall sentiment at the Lindon company was described by one employee as one of "absolute shock," as its executive management and newly appointed public relations company, New York-based Coltrin & Associates, evaluated the situation Monday.
  

  
  
  
• And iTWire asks "Darl McBride, where are you?". And Blakey, and Didio too. (Yes, I know Blakey quit months ago. And someone else already mentioned that in the article's comments.)
  
  
• CNNMoney's coverage argues that the ruling removed a cloud over the open-source movement. Well, technically the ruling says the cloud never existed in the first place, but as long as they're saying there's no cloud now, hey, that's fine.
  
  
• Seattle's local newspaper has a blog devoted solely to all things Microsoft, and today's post explores the M$ angle of Friday's ruling, mostly devoted to email comments from PJ. The Beast of Redmond declined to comment for the story.
  
  
• Lyons has a rather neutral piece on Forbes. He naturally doesn't breathe a word about his earlier role touting SCO's idiotic claims. If you didn't know history, or have access to a search engine, you might think he was against them from day 1.
  
  
• Not all the fudsters are running for cover, though. Remember Paul McDougall? Last we heard from him, he was chiming in as part of SCO's failed anti-PJ jihad. They even used one of his articles as an exhibit, if I'm not mistaken. So in his latest bloviation, he wants to convince us that Friday's ruling is a disaster for Linux, and we're all doomed, because the Novell ruling doesn't resolve certain issues in the IBM case. That's essentially the same point "Paul Murphy" tried to make earlier, although McDougall is a bit more articulate and vicious about it. Sort of a bush-league Lyons, if you can imagine such a thing. PJ goes off on an extended rant about the McDougall piece here, and I can't blame her.
  
  With Lyons, at least you knew he had an ideological bone to pick. A silly and misguided ideological bone, but at least you knew where he was coming from. McDougall, I don't know what his angle is. Maybe he's just an especially zealous M$ fanboy -- although they usually just sit there smugly repeating that all Microsoft products are the best, and refusing to listen to reason. They tend not to get so malicious and personal about it. So your guess is as good as, or better than, mine.
  
  
• The schadenfreude-o-rama has spread to some of the more obscure forums. Check out this great post on the SiliconInvestor board responding to Scott Lemon (ex-CTO of SCO, an inconvenient fact he keeps trying to downplay). Meanwhile, the TheLion board has long been a playground for clueless bottom-feeding daytraders and shills, but today Baomike turned the lights on (so to speak) and they all ran back under the fridge, at least for the day. Might be interesting to see how that plays out. I'm not advocating bullying the poor dears, of course. But engaging in a vigorous debate about SCO's fundamentals, is another matter entirely. Ok, so they're just daytrading schmoes, but there are so few actual true believers left, and I got terminally bored with Biff about three years ago.
  
  
• Actually I'm glad I checked the minor boards, because TheLion has an interesting widget it calls an All-In-One Message Forum, which aggregates posts from IV and Y!, certain blog posts (although not SNR apparently), and the occasional minor-board post as well. And the UI is less offensive than Yahoo's native one, certainly. Interesting...
  
  
• There's even a new post on the moribund InvestorsHub board, although it's just a retread of the not overly clueful coverage at TheStreet.com.
  
  
• ComputerWorld has a roundup of posts about Friday's ruling from around blogospace. Naturally they fail to mention this humble blog. Feh. Bastards.
  
  
• Oh, and the very latest on c.u.s.m: The SCO+Darl Pants Game.
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

By brx0 @ 8:01 AM