SCO News Roundup

• No news on the delisting front today, so I assume that means SCO's filed an appeal. As we learned last time SCO was in hot water with the exchange, Nasdaq hearings and related filings are not made public, unfortunately. So the next deadline to look for is October 4th. They have to pay a $4000 fee for the appeal by then, and to do that with company money they'll need permission from the BK judge.
  
  
• Creditors have now been served official notice of the BK, which we learn thanks to Al P., SCO's #1 creditor (at least alphabetically). The company providing SCO's BK services has a good info page on the case, including the current docket (although Al's been I've added it to the "Law" section of the sidebar for future reference.
  
  The docket's up to a bewildering 65 documents so far, believe it or not. Among the latest batch, we learn there's a Meeting of Creditors scheduled for October 18th. That's in addition to the regularly scheduled Omnibus Hearings scheduled for October 5th, November 6th, December 5th, January 8th, and February 5th, and probably more where those came from. So if the pattern holds, the next hearing after that ought to be on March 4th or 5th, almost exactly five years to the day since SCO sued IBM. Which is a fun coincidence, although it means this crazy circus has gone on for five years too many.
  
  
• A new Parloff piece, "SCO's Legal Strategy". Not quite as overtly pro-SCO as some of his other work, but he still talks approvingly about what SCO ought to do to avoid giving back Novell's money. I know I've said this before, but Parloff sure picked an odd time to jump on the SCO bandwagon.
  
  
• Fresh off his exclusive Darl interview just before the BK filing, Paul McDougall offers up a steaming pile of GPLv3 FUD. Seems a new study is claiming GPLv3 hasn't received universal acceptance and use in the few months it's been out. Yeah, I'm shocked too. Shocked, I tell you. Sure is funny how the trade media never tells you who's paying for all these studies. Either they don't ask, or they know but don't tell, I'm not sure which.
  
  
• CRN: "Five Ways Linux Is Better Than Vista". Only five? I expect that was an easy article to write. Stay tuned for "Twenty-Eight Ways A Poke In The Eye With A Sharp Stick Is Better Than Vista"
  
  
• On the retrotech front, you might enjoy this month's traffic on The Unix Heritage Society mailing list. There's a thread about where to find an old copy of SunOS 4.1.1, including some extended handwringing about whether the kernel source is legally distributable or not. Answer: No, it's mostly BSD but it's got a smidgen of AT&T's SysV code in it, and SCO -- or someone -- might sue you. Even though it's an OS from 1990 and the fastest box it runs on has a 33MHz 68030 cpu. The legal situation in our industry would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
  
  On a cheerier note, someone's managed to resurrect an old tape containing Mini-Unix, from way back in 1979. It's not, y'know, useful or anything at this point, but it's nice to see a piece of history being preserved.
  
  There are also threads about Unix System III and Cfront, AT&T's crufty old C++ front end from the distant mists of time before real C++ compilers were invented. Coincidentally, SCO claims both of them as part of its precious intellectual property. I'm pretty sure Cfront was the basis for Darl claiming to own the C++ language lock stock and barrel. And when Caldera released all those ancient Unix versions under a BSD-style license, back in the Ransom Love era, they specifically excluded System III and later OSes. So clearly someone still thinks it contains super-seekrit methods & concepts, even though it came out back in 1982 and only runs on PDP-11s and VAXen. Like I just said, it'd be funny if it wasn't so sad.
  
  
• A highly astute reader alerted me to a piece on NetworkWorld: "Who will be the next Geek King?". It seems we need a new Geek King soon, because King BillG the First is abdicating come next July to pursue other interests (which I suppose will make him the Geek Duke of Windsor or something). The list of nominees is odd and unimpressive, except for Linus, and they spelled his name wrong. Seriously. Maybe they figured the Linux crowd wouldn't find it that way, so one of the other guys could walk away with the crown. Did I mention that one of the nominees is our old friend DayJet Eddie, formerly of SCO's board? It's true. Somehow they managed to spell "Iacobucci" right, but botched "Torvalds", which is spelled just like it sounds, more or less. Go figure.
  
  FWIW, Stephen Colbert is nominated as well. While Mr. Colbert is many things, I'm afraid a Geek King is not one of them. No rightful king is afraid of a mere bear, after all.
  
  So I was going to vote for Linus, but then I decided it was a stupid contest and voted for Esker Melchior instead. Everyone knows Esker's the One True King.
  

• SCO's officially joined Nasdaq's list of delinquent companies now. Which means delisting may be in the cards soon -- once all the frivolous appeals and delaying tactics have been exhausted. So it may be a while yet.
  
  
• PJ explores bankruptcy law here, trying to puzzle out what happens next. The answer so far: Nobody knows.
  
  
• You know the old saying, "Victory has a thousand fathers, and defeat is an orphan"? Enderle's now aping Lyons in running away from SCO, sort of. Forgive me if I don't take their mea culpas at face value. Everybody knew SCO was a scam years ago. The only thing that's changed recently is that it's become a very unsuccessful scam. Do you really suppose they'd be singing the same tune if all the same evidence had come out, but SCOSource licenses were flying off the shelves anyway? I sincerely doubt that.
  
  Enderle's bit goes on and on about being threatened by Linux criminals. I personally doubt that ever happened. I mean, if someone threatened you, would you (a) post self-pitying rants about it on the net, or (b) call the police? There's no sign he ever did (b), so we've only got his word to go on, and it's pretty clear by now what his word is worth.
  
  
• As for Lyons, here's a highly unimpressed take on his Fake Steve gig and related Apple FUD.
  
  
• Gartner's George Weiss, yet another erstwhile SCO shill, now says Unix will be effectively dead by 2009, all because of Linux.
  
  
• ComputerWorld, a couple of days ago: SCO's Finances May Come Crashing Down"
  
  
• ESR chimes in about Lyons, Enderle, and MOG: "SCO and the Three Stooges"
  
  
• Glyn Moody on Enderle & friends: "SCO Long, and Thanks for All the Fish".
  
  
• A thread about SCO's finances on c.u.s.m. The main concern of most posters is what happens to SCO's OSes in the future. One hardcore SCO supporter complains that the title of the thread isn't a verbatim quote. Talk about grasping at straws.
  
  
• New activity in Ralphieland, turned up by the ever-relentless Panglozz:
  
  Xymbiot.com, a new ThinkAtomic tentacle supposedly in the "packaging & container" business, which sounds like a front for something if you ask me.
  
  Meanwhile VentureQuest -- the other new Canopy --invests in an apparently nonexistent bank
  
  
• HBO's going to do a movie about the 2000 election in Florida, with Ed Begley Jr. as David Boies. I didn't realize Ed Begley Jr.'s career was in the tank quite that badly.
  
  
• Speaking of Boies: On September 23rd, the day SCO got a delisting notice and announced Ryan Tibbitts's big raise, Boies was otherwise engaged. Seems that some nonprofit org invited him to join a panel discussion about Africa, in which various bigwigs wring their hands about the third world from the comfort of an ultra-luxe private club in Manhattan. Yeah, that'll fix everything. Classy!
  
  
• One of many articles about the soon-to-ship Eee PC. The Eee got a blurb in the September issue of Vogue (can't find a copy online though), which referred to Linux as "intuitive". I imagine relatively few SNR readers are also regular Vogue readers, but making it into the September issue is a big deal. It's the fall fashion issue, topping out at 800+ pages, and the Eee is on about page 619 if I remember right. So as a result, now my wife's pestering me to get her one, and I probably will soon, unless the thing is a complete lemon.
  
  

I know I've mentioned the other Caldera once or twice before. Here's their tasty, tasty IPA, now available in cans. In an amusing coincidence, the price tag shown here is exactly the price of one share of SCO at the high on August 9th, the day before Kimball's big copyright ruling. So if you bought one share back then, and sold today, you'd have 16 cents now. Whereas if you bought one can of Caldera IPA, drank it, and returned the can for the deposit, you'd have 5 cents now, and possibly a mild buzz, depending on how many, uh, "shares" you decide to "accumulate". It's true that both investment strategies have a bitter aftertaste, but only one of them involves beer. Mmmmm.... beeer......

Labels: beer, linux, open source, sco

Ok, I've fallen way behind here, and I hardly know where to begin. Either SCO chose the worst possible time to file Chapter 11, or my PHBs in RL chose the worst possible time to set a project deadline, take your pick. In any case, I guess I'll start out trying to recap the last few days as best I can. Enough weirdness and excitement has gone down since Friday that I'll surely forget something important. GL's probably got it covered, whatever it might be.

So yesterday we had the initial hearing in the SCO BK case. Yes, a whole new court case has ensued, this time in Delaware, and there's a whole new set of laws and terminology to brush up on. I've never had occasion to learn anything about Federal bankruptcy law, and generally speaking I think that's a positive thing, but I've ended up feeling I'm in a little over my head here. BK court is a whole new ballgame, and there aren't even BK court shows on TV to help you get a feel for how the rules work. Yesterday's hearing dealt with a few motions I understand are routine at the outset of a BK case: Getting permission to keep paying employees, utility bills, taxes, and such, for the most part. I gather those motions are routinely granted, and were in this case, with another hearing scheduled for early October. The judge obviously has a thing or two to learn about SCO.

On the bright side, Judge Gross is about to learn a great deal about the wonderful wacky world of SCO. Seems that on the 13th, the day before the BK filing, SCO's board of directors had a bout of extreme generosity towards the company's general counsel, Ryan Tibbetts. For whatever reason, they suddenly decided he needed a $50k raise and a $50k net bonus. Net, meaning $50k after taxes, so the actual amount of Novell's money SCO expends will be a bit higher than that. Paying bonuses to key people just before a BK so they won't walk is controversial but not that unusual, I understand. What's a little more unusual is not disclosing the big bonus until after the BK judge approved their motion to keep paying employees. Maybe it's just an oversight, a perfectly honest mistake anyone could've made under the circumstances. But it looks awfully suspicious, if you ask me.

So today's fun legal term is "avoidance", in which "avoid" does not mean quite what you think it means. In BK court, an avoidance claim is a creditor's attempt to compel someone associated with the debtor to give back money they shouldn't have received. El Corton explains it all much more cogently than I can, in a great post over on IV.

As others have speculated, this business with Mr. Tibbetts, Esq., and his juicy bonus check might help explain why SCO lost three of its seven accountants on Friday, with two quitting and another being fired. This is just me speculating here, but perhaps they knew it was a dodgy business and didn't want their fingerprints all over it. Which leaves SCO with those remaining four accountants, who apparently didn't see anything unusual or disturbing about the sudden bonus. The main problem I see here is the notion that someone would stick with SCO through 4+ years of legal trouble and general ridicule, and only now quit on principle. I suppose it makes sense if the principle in question is simply keeping oneself out of Club Fed. Until the BK filing, I never really believed anyone might end up in jail because of SCO's escapades. I hoped they might, sure, but I didn't think there was a real chance it might happen. Now I'm not so sure about that. I still think it's an outside chance, but it's a nonzero chance now. Or if not jail, certain individuals may end up considerably poorer as a result of their work for SCO.

The soap opera around Mr. Tibbitts is only one of today's fun stories. The other big deal is a new nastygram from Nasdaq, this time about the BK filing. Under standard Nasdaq practice, if you file Chapter 11, you are expelled from the garden forthwith (i.e. September 27th), and left to wander the barren wastes of the Pink Sheets, with much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. SCO, being SCO, naturally plans to appeal, and naturally they aren't saying on what grounds they're appealing. Perhaps they think they're smarter than all the Chapter 11 filers who came before them, and they can just stretch the appeals process out indefinitely, like they intend(ed) to do with IBM, Novell, and the others. But, you know, if Enron's execs turned out not to be the smartest guys in the room after all, what do you suppose the odds are for Darl, Ralphie, and friends? I mean, if they're such geniuses, what are they doing in Chapter 11 in the first place?

Oh, and there was a new 10-Q the other day as well, which finally -- finally -- contains the magic words "going concern", which they've studiously avoided up until now. Plenty of boilerplate about tough markets and competitive challenges, but "going concern" is a new one. Perhaps someone of the regulatory persuasion might take an interest in how SCO avoided said phrase right up until they'd already effectively stopped being a going concern.

Oh, let's see, what else is going on out there? Well, MOG is on the warpath again, for one. Here's a piece from a few days back about Kimball denying SCO's last do-over attempt, casting all sorts of wild aspersions at the judge. The judge who wouldn't let her intervene in the IBM case, it should be recalled. The only good part of the article is yet another awful photo of Darl, glowing red eyes and all. I'm serious. Look closer if you don't believe me. And today we got an angry MOG rant about "open source zealots". And she would know all about zealotry, wouldn't she? Actually that link doesn't work anymore. I'll change it if the story reappears at another URL.

The BK filing at least might help explain why MOG's been shilling for SCO all this time. She's a creditor, or rather her G2 operation is. What precisely SCO's been paying her for is undisclosed, as is the amount of money she's still owed. Even if the cash wasn't expressly for writing puff pieces about SCO, or involving herself in the IBM case, or stalking PJ, I still think it helps explain why she's stuck with them after all their other allies ran away. And now, after all she's done for SCO, they don't want to pay up. The ingrates.

Speaking of SCO allies fleeing, here's a mea culpa from Daniel Lyons, in which he actually comes out and says he was wrong about SCO all these years. Which I suppose is better than being paid by SCO all these years, a charge he vehemently denies. Now that he's hit the big time with his Fake Steve gig, there's really no point in his continuing with this SCO business, is there? You know how every big Hollywood actor has an embarrassing early movie or two, back before they were famous? They're embarrassed about these films now, because they can finally afford to be. What we're seeing with Lyons is a lot like that. He can't very well say he's proud of his work on the SCO story, any more than Arnold Schwarzenegger can say he's proud of his work in Hercules in New York. Doing so would raise serious questions about one's judgement.

Not all the news is bad for SCO these days. PCPro Magazine just came out with a very positive review of HipCheck 1.0.3. So it appears they have at least one theoretically valuable asset, if the review is to be believed. That won't be enough to keep SCO's creditors at bay, but it's possible, just maybe, that Me Inc. could see greater success once the BK court finds 'em a new home.


For a more comprehensive treatment of recent events, you can't go wrong with the recent BK-related stories on GL. Although reading them all will take a while, even if you skip the comments.

"The Bankruptcy Docket & All Filings - Hearing on Tuesday in Delaware"
"The Media on SCO Bankruptcy"
"In 'Foxes Petition to Guard the Henhouse' News ..."
"SCO Asks Court to Let it Hire Accounting Temps - Half of its finance dept. fired or quit"
"SCO's Bankruptcy Hearing Tomorrow Changed to 8:30 AM - Updated"
"Looks Like Novell Will Be There Tomorrow - The Fleet Has Arrived"
"Darl's Declaration in Support of 1st Day Pleading, as text; AutoZone, Red Hat courts informed"
"Red Hat Tells the Court All About SCO's Woes"
"SCO 10Q: Doubts It Can Remain a "Going Concern" If It Has to Pay Novell Significant $$"
"First Word From the Bankruptcy Court Hearing - Update 2Xs - Meeting Darl, New Filings"
"More Details On What Happened At the Hearing -- New Filings, New Report"
"SCO Receives Nasdaq Notice Letter, Gives Tibbitts Raise and Bonus 1 Day Before Filing for Bankruptcy"

And while we're at it, a piece on Lamlaw: "Bankruptcy Hearing on Tuesday - updated"

... and now you're up to date, for the moment. There's a bunch of media coverage out there too, as you might expect, but it'll have to wait for the time being.

One interesting bit is in the "First Word From the Bankruptcy Court" story. A GL reader who attended the hearing managed to talk to Darl in the hall, and Darl said something about being surprised at the impact the case has had on his family. Well, he shouldn't be all that surprised. His brother, his wife (via "EdgeClick"), and even a couple of his kids (via their band "Kid Theodore") are all SCO creditors. They're bound to feel a little aggravated about that.

Woohoo! SCO just filed for Chapter 11, finally, which is what the earlier halt to trading was all about. It's the moment (ok, one of the moments) we've been awaiting for years now. Soon we'll all have to sit down and figure out how this changes the legal landscape, but right now I'm happy to just sit back and watch the news stories roll in...

• The press release is here.
  
  
• GL has the wonderfully gory details here. As PJ notes, SCO owes over half a mil to Amici LLC. Amici's the shady document management firm owned by Boies's kids. I've discussed Amici on a few past occasions, and I've always wondered if they had their tentacles wrapped around SCO as well. And now we know for sure. It's all so.... beautiful. It's like Christmas in mid-September.
  
  
• Stephen Shankland has a good piece about the filing on his CNet blog. He notes that the Novell case is stayed by the Chapter 11 filing, so the trial won't start on Monday after all. So SCO's found a way to delay the case again after all -- but at what cost?
  
  
• ComputerWorld's got a good article up too, with enjoyably scathing comments from a couple of analysts.
  
  
• Slashdot's got the news here, wherein we learn that in Soviet Russia, Chapter 11 files you.
  
  
• Paul McDougall has an unusually subdued take on the news here. He ends by referring to his recent Darl interview, where Darl said SCO could easily raise whatever money it needed for an appeal. As if a Darl quote trumps a Chapter 11 filing.
  
  
• That Parloff guy has a just-the-facts post about the filing here. Perhaps he's wondering now if he really picked the best time to start shilling for SCO. He does express a hope that SCO will get the Novell stay lifted, so they can get moving on that appeal they promised us. Which proves beyond any doubt that Parloff hasn't been watching close enough, and isn't familiar with SCO's MO. If they were so eager to have the trial go forward, they could've waited just one more week before filing Chapter 11, and they didn't. That should tell you something.
  
  
• A news brief about the filing at the Salt Lake Tribune.
  
  
• A post at ZDNet, giving an overview of the story so far.
  
  
• Coverage at TheStreet.com.
  
  
• A discussion thread at the Provo Daily Herald.
  

• Breaking: Reports that trading has been halted in SCO's stock. More as soon as I know more.
  
  
• ComputerWorld on the fast-approaching SCO v. Novell trial, which starts Monday, and should be over by this time next week. Can you believe it?
  
  
• SCO has retained a new firm to administer its 401(k) plan. The "rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic" metaphor has been chronically abused over the years in connection to SCO, but I can't think of a better one right now. Someone on the boards mentioned that Enron did this just before cratering, presumably so employees would be locked out of their accounts until all their savings had vaporized.
  
  
• A CBR piece about Kimball denying SCO's fast-track appeal effort
  
  
• An odd article at CIO Insight: "Battle Over Linux: When a Win May Not be a Win". It puts a scary-face spin on a small set of things that are technically true, such as the fact that Kimball hasn't ruled on the infringement claims in the IBM case, and the nonzero possibility that SCO might have better luck on appeal. It then wanders off into a spiel about why software copyrights are bad. I happen to disagree with that: Without copyrights, I'm not convinced you can have an enforceable free/open software license. You'd have to go hog-wild with software patents, while for the unpatentable stuff the only way you could protect your "IP" would be as a trade secret, which couldn't be any more incompatible with F/OSS if it had been deliberately designed that way.
  
  
• On GL, SCO's doing a little supplemental whining for a do-over, in support of the previous begging they did a few days back. Yeah. Good luck with that.
  
  
• Also on GL: A couple of days ago PJ had a piece rounding up SCO news coverage since August 10th, with a great chronological table. It's quite an interesting read.
  
  One of the things I attempt to do here is observe and critique how the media covers the SCO saga. It's been a real goldmine over the years if you enjoy making fun of clueless journalists, which I do for some reason. Somebody's got to play "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" with those bozos, and for some reason I can't recall I decided to volunteer. Possibly there was beer involved. And now PJ's gone and done a better job of it than I've been doing all this time (if you ask me). Honestly, sometimes I wonder why I even bother with this SNR business.
  
  
• I've never understood the animosity some people feel towards PJ, usually over extremely small and silly matters. A comment of theirs gets deleted or lost on GL, and they seethe about it for years afterward. I don't get it. Take, for example, the very latest anti-PJ jihad, this time by Jem Matzan, proprietor of something called the "JEM Report". He's searching high and low for people who've had comments nuked on GL and want to whine about it. PJ got wind of this and wasn't happy, and neither was SJVN, and now Matzan's convinced there's a vast conspiracy out there to suppress this story. He explains himself further in a thread at his TJR forums, where he goes by the nym "Valour". He's insisting he has only the noblest and purest motives at heart, and just wants to get the Truth out there about this super-important Scandal of the Century. I'm not convinced it's a scandal. The fact that someone exercises their own discretion about comments on a site they administer isn't even newsworthy, much less scandalous.
  
  But then, the fact that I strongly disagree probably marks me (in his mind) as a co-conspirator in this nefarious global cabal he obsesses over. Ok. Cool. Count me in, then. I've always wanted to be part of an elite global conspiracy. Just don't call me a journalist, because them's fightin' words...
  
  

Not much legal action today, but the trial-in-the-media continues.

• Another day, another Darl interview. The guy's everywhere right now, shilling the same set of lame talking points we've heard I don't know how many times before. Blah, blah, noncompete, blah, blah, we were shocked by the ruling, blah, blah, Project Monterey. The guy could really use some new material. Although I do like the part where he suggests all the bad publicity he and SCO have gotten is the result of a vast conspiracy by SCO's enemies. If the SCO charade goes on much longer, and Darl keeps blabbing to the press, we may start hearing about Area 51 and black helicopters.
  
  Among its inaccuracies, the article is the second one to assert that SCO's already filed an appeal. One instance of that looks like carelessness. Two, and it starts to look like a pattern of deception.
  
  I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks the photo in that piece looks like a mugshot. Maybe it's just wishful thinking, I dunno -- but what I'm really wishing for is to see the latest batch of interviews show up as Novell or IBM exhibits, just like Darl's previous ones have. The guy just doesn't learn.
  
  
• The Inquirer, on the Wired interview: "SCO's Darl McBride remains defiant". It's worth a read, as it's one of those rare articles that dares to call a spade a spade. For example:
  

  
  He continues to conflate New SCO with Old SCO, which is by now a tiresome verbal sleight of hand, and he repeats the rationale that Santa Cruz Operation must have gotten all those UNIX copyrights from Novell, simply because it paid Novell $149 million. In other words, for all that money, SCO must have gotten a nice pony. Oh yawn.
  

  
  
  
• Well, ok, there were a couple of filings today, just nothing earth-shattering. Just Novell opposing SCO's whining for another do-over. Zen's got the goods here.
  
  
• A deeply peculiar FUD piece on the Fortune/CNNMoney "Legal Pad" blog, ranting on at great length -- mind-numbing, Bifflike length -- about how Kimball's copyright ruling is a terrible injustice. Roger Parloff (the blogger) has written about SCO before, way back in May '04. The article is quite detailed coming from someone who hasn't been covering SCO regularly. Did he just come up with all of this stuff on his own, or did someone at SCO or BS&F lend a friendly helping hand?
  
  And, btw, why exactly is it "Linux-mob justice" when individuals are merely speaking their minds about issues they're concerned about. Labeling it "mob justice" implies such behavior ought to be illegal. Maybe I'm making too much of that, but it troubles me when media types are unclear on the concept of free speech. It's not reserved just for mainstream Old Media reporter types, you know.
  
  I think I'm going to have to add the guy to the "Pro-SCO" column in the sidebar here.
  
  
• SJVN on Friday's no-jury ruling. SJVN also shows up in the comments to the Parloff article, disputing the guy's goofy claims.
  
  
• The one and only Dvorak chimes in about the Parloff piece. He's just phoning it in, though. A couple of quick sentences, followed by an extended quote from Parloff. Dvorak: Clueless doofus, or skanky page-view ho? Discuss.
  
  
• Ars Technica piece about Friday's rulings.
  
  
• There's also a piece about the rulings at Global Toad News. No, really, that's the site's actual name. I swear I'm not making this up.
  
  
• And the inevitable Slashdot story, in case you're curious about the "In Soviet Russia" angle on the latest news.
  
  
• A post on MSDN's Channel 9 rolls its eyes at SCO. About Darl's silly "get knocked down seven times, get up eight" comment, it responds "I think somebody has been watching too many Rocky movies!". You know you're completely out of friends when even the fanboys on MSDN make fun of you.
  
  
• Boies is quoted in a recent WSJ piece, "
  Lawyers Gear Up Grand New Fees", about lawyers' rates breaking the $1000/hour barrier. Boies gets all sanctimonious about it:
  

  
  "Frankly, it's a little hard to think about anyone who doesn't save lives being worth this much money," says David Boies, one of the nation's best-known trial lawyers, at the Armonk, N.Y., office of Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP.
  

  
  
  So expect to see them raise their rates in the near future.
  
  The article also quotes a guy from Andrews Kurth, another of SCO's law firms. Not one, but two top-dollar law firms, and what does SCO have to show for it?
  
  
• SCO's famous celebrity lawyer shows up briefly in a suburban NY-NJ paper. It just says his clients include the New York Yankees and American Express. What, not a word about SCO? Shocking!
  
  
• This isn't a political blog, but when one of the SCO saga's dramatis personae wanders into the political arena, I've got to at least pass the item along. And here's a good one. You've heard about that Norman Hsu guy, right? The fugitive fundraiser? Seems that he recently cohosted a fundraiser with Boies. And get this, the fundraiser was for a Kennedy.
  
  
• A recent article on Unix history at Roughly Drafted, with a focus on the SCO saga. A post on comp.os.linux.advocacy claims the piece is in reponse to FUD by Lyons.
  
  
• And from comp.unix.sco.misc, the sad tale of a guy whose Vista printer won't talk to his SCO box. Insert pithy remark about poetic justice here. And this after all SCO's done for Microsoft. Talk about ingratitude...
  
  
• And from comp.unix.sys5.r4, an amusing recent thread where a guy asks which OS is the best: SVR4 or BSD. Like it was still freakin' 1989 or something.
  
  

Good news, everyone. Another Friday, another tasty batch of decisions in the Novell case. Zen's got 'em here. It's actually just one document, Novell-453, which covers a bunch of recent pretrial motions.

The important bits:

1. No jury trial, the thing I was just wringing my hands about the other day. Seems that the few remaining parts of the Novell case render it a case in equity ("common law") [see user comment below], not in statutory law, which means SCO isn't entitled to a jury trial, if I understand correctly.
   
2. No immediate appeal. By declining to enter his prior PSJ rulings as Final Judgements (you gotta love that name) for now, Kimball prevented SCO from appealing while the current case is still ongoing. SCO's current goal, I gather, is to keep its claims in the IBM and AutoZone cases in a permanent state of quantum indeterminacy, neither won nor lost, neither waived nor affirmed. Kimball's having none of that, though. He hasn't collapsed their wave packet just yet, but at least he reserves the right to do so in the (hopefully near) future.
   
3. Contrary to SCO's wishes, Novell will be allowed to mention the IBM case, or GL, or this humble blog for that matter, if they think it'll help.
   
4. The one bright spot for SCO is that they're allowed to introduce (i.e. invent) new theories about what all that M$/Sun money was supposed to be for. So they have another chance to make some lame, non-credible excuses, which Kimball can then dismiss. I'm starting to think he's just toying with them now.
   

There were also a few motions yesterday, with each party objecting to the other's proposed jury instructions, and SCO objecting to Novell's proposed witness list. Nothing really earth-shattering there. It'll be interesting to see if SCO tries to revisit their witness list, now that there won't be a jury trial. Bringing in random people to say "Look, a Wookie!" isn't going to work as well when your only audience is a federal judge.

Now to the media coverage. Surprisingly, the Deseret News already has a piece about Friday's rulings.

ComputerWorld has an interview with Darl, titled "Q&A: McBride says SCO isn't dead yet, despite legal loss", in a case of exquisitely poor timing. It's classic Darl, loaded with corny sports metaphors (boxing, surfing, football, etc.) and a few "did he really say that?" moments. He says they have a shot at 20% of an $80B market, which would give SCO annual revenue about 3 orders of magnitude greater than the present-day value of the entire company. He also claims SCO's poised for an Apple-like comeback. If we're playing historical analogies, and comparing present-day SCO to the Apple of 1997, that would make Darl the new Gil Amelio -- who as you might've noticed is no longer CEO at Apple. SCO's tangled corporate history makes it hard to figure out who gets to be Steve, though. Ransom Love? Doug Michels, maybe?

Over at IT Jungle, Timothy Morgan also argues the Novell case is still very much alive. Again, not the best timing. If you're going to write an article saying SCO has even the remotest shred of hope going forward, it's best not to write the article on a Friday, because that's when Kimball usually rules.

Oh, and Affinity Technology (remember them?), Kevin McBride's other IP-troll client, is losing money by the boatload. Net loss of $476k, on revenues of just $8k, and total liabilities running around 10x of total assets. Their forward-looking statements go on and on about all sorts of pending appeals they feel really super-optimistic about. Sound familiar?

There's been a lot of activity in the SCO universe over the last few days. That ought to teach me not to check out over Labor Day weekend. Sigh.


• In the long-stalled IBM case, the parties told Kimball what they think his Novell ruling means for SCO v. IBM. IBM says SCO's case is dead, SCO begs to differ, film at 11. SCO's entire strategy at this point is to assume a successful second bite at the Novell apple, so they're not going to concede anything voluntarily, just in case. In other words, both parties agree SCO's got a house of cards going, with the Novell case at its base. IBM argues that since the base has collapsed, the whole house of cards falls down, because that's what houses of cards do. SCO disagrees, and would prefer to freeze the IBM cards in midair while attempting to insert replacement Novell cards beneath them.
  
  Okay. Yeah. Let us know how that works out for ya.
  
  There's a CBR story, and naturally GL's coverage includes all the filings and such.
  
  
  
• SCO's been making noises about an appeal. As we've discussed earlier, they can't file one until the rulings they want to appeal are Officially Final, but that isn't stopping them from waving it around for the PR/FUD value. A reporter at MarketWatch picked up the story, mistakenly reporting that SCO had already filed an appeal. The mistake is sort of understandable; companies usually don't put on a big song and dance about appealing without actually filing anything.
  
  The story does mention that Novell is Darl's former employer, an angle you don't see discussed very often. The clear implication is that there's some sort of personal vendetta going on. There's no way to know if that's true without peering into the twisty little passages of Darl's mind, of course, but I'm pleased the notion is occurring to people out there. SCO's dumping all of its resources into the irrational pursuit of a lost cause, and it's only natural to wonder why. In the beginning, outside observers could've reasonably concluded SCO was fighting for its legal rights as it perceived them, or at least that it was trying to maximize shareholder value by landing a big settlement or buyout deal, or something. Now, not so much. Unless the stars realign dramatically on SCO's behalf in the near future, they aren't getting a single red cent out of either Novell or IBM, and that's not even slowing them down. The case was filed out of greed, but continues (if you ask me) because of denial and the fragile male ego, and not much else.
  
  
• Also on the appeal front, Paul McDougall interviewed Darl the other day. McDougall lobs him a few sofball questions so he can shill the appeal angle. Basically the same stuff they've been offering since Kimball ruled: Optimism about the noncompete with Novell, a non sequitur about the Monterey source code, all kinds of excitement about SCO's products, etc. He does say SCO might sell the Me Inc. "business" to raise cash if they need to. I think I've said this before, but if it happens, look for it to be a less-than-arm's-length arrangement. Depending on how the cases are going, the buyer might pay a premium as a way to pump more cash into SCO, or the buyer might pick it up for a song, if they're trying to strip the assets out of the company prior to BK and/or final judgement in the courtroom.
  
  At the end, Darl tries to talk tough:
  

  
  If you get knocked down seven times, you get up eight. We took a knock down, but it's not in our DNA to stay down.
  

  
  
  Well, duh. If you're a fan of cheesy B monster movies like I am, you know the creature never stays down the first time. It might be short a couple of paper mache tentacles, but it always pops up again, just long enough for the heroine to scream a little more, and then our hero dispatches it with a little help from the modern miracle of DDT, or uranium, or some such.
  
  But good luck finding a judge who allows eight do-overs. Ain't gonna happen, no matter how gritty and determined you think you are.
  
  
• Going to the court of appeals isn't the only way to get a do-over. As with all other adverse rulings, they're begging Kimball to reconsider. Because that's worked out so well for them in the past, I guess.
  
  The arguments they present are basically the same ones they want to talk to the appeals court about. I suppose it looks a little better on appeal if you at least tried to get your arguments in front of the first judge at some point. That's what I think this is really all about; they can't seriously think Kimball will buy their latest spin, can they?
  
  There's a CBR story about this move too.
  
  
• The parties are even fighting over jury instructions now. SCO essentially proposes to ignore the recent PSJ unpleasantness, and would like the jury to consider whether they owe Novell any money or not, even though Kimball already ruled that they did.
  
  Of course, all of this hinges on whether there's a jury trial or not. I think at this point I'd prefer there wasn't one, if for no other reason than a jury trial is what SCO's been hoping for all this time. I think they're hoping they'll get a low-quality, ultra-gullible jury, full of people who'll rule in favor of whoever they like the most, or whoever puts on the best dog and pony show, regardless of what the law says or what the facts are. That's the only way SCO has a chance, after all. I don't think most juries are quite that bad, even in Utah, but there's a nonzero probability of ending up with one. So why risk it, if you don't absolutely have to?
  
  
• Couple of other GL articles, so we're up to date: A boatload of filings last Friday, plus more yesterday
  
  
• One theory about the current appeals nonsense is that it's the only way to keep the SCO saga going until Vista SP1 finally ships, currently set for Q1 next year. In the linked article there's an unintentionally revealing quote that illustrates the M$ worldview:
  

  
  "Frankly, the world wasn't 100 percent ready for Windows Vista," Corporate Vice President Mike Sievert said in an interview at Microsoft's recent partner conference in Denver.
  

  
  
  Oh, riiiight, it's all the world's fault.
  
  
• One of the best Vista slams I've seen, from PC Magazine oddly enough, in which the OS is likened to the wares of the Sirius Cybernetics corporation. "Share and Enjoy!"
  
  
• On the Linux gadget front, the latest word is that the Palm Foleo won't see the light of day after all. That's disappointing. A lot of critics bashed the thing, but I still say if Apple had brought out a device with the exact same specs the media would've danced in the streets.
  
  The Palm execs say they still believe in the concept and hope to someday introduce a Foleo-like gadget, but without giving even a vague timeline for when that might happen.