SCO News Roundup

• PJ's got today's ruling here.
  
  
• And as you'd expect, Zen's got all of the day's docs. Note, in particular, Novell #472. Yes, Novell. Within hours of today's ruling, Novell's already informed Kimball about it. With all of the noise SCO's been making about how eager they were to proceed with the Novell case (ok, mostly it was MOG saying that), you'd think they'd have informed Kimball immediately. It must've just slipped their little minds, I guess.
  
  
• Slashdot has the news too. At the moment there aren't any comments referencing Soviet Russia, Natalie Portman, Beowulf Clusters, or even "Fr1sT P0st". I know because I looked, for once. So if you hurry, you could be the first.
  
  
• The GL story's on Digg here. I've never really taken the time to figure out Digg, but feel free to drop by over there and vote, or comment, or do some "social networking", or do whatever it is they do. If you're so inclined.
  
  
• Coverage at TechSpot as well.
  
  
• Meanwhile, the latest plague on our industry: Nigerian patent trolls. Seriously. Well, "seriously" if you think they're genuinely Nigerian and not, say, Redmondian.
  
  
• A thread on c.u.s.m about converting PCX files to JPG. Yes, PCX files. Remember those, from back in the pre-Win3.1 days? This is what passes for cutting-edge technology in the SCO world. And yes, solving this problem requires ImageMagick, which is GPL'd Free Software.
  
  

As expected, Judge Gross has unstayed SCO v. Novell, so we're finally going to see a trial after all. That is, unless SCO has another weird delay scheme up their sleeve, and it wouldn't be a total surprise if they do. At least they can't weasel out of it by declaring bankruptcy this time.

On the other hand, maybe SCO's looking forward to a trial. At least that's what MOG's been telling us for a while now, and you can totally trust MOG... to be MOG. As the spin goes, as soon as SCO loses in front of Kimball they can head to the court of appeals, where total SCO victory is a guaranteed slam dunk (to use a cheesy Darlesque sports metaphor). When MOG says stuff like that it often reflects what SCO management is thinking, as if she heard it directly from the horse's mouth. Or from some orifice of the horse, at least. So don't be surprised to see some SCO PR fluff about how stoked they are to finally get their day in court, as if this was their super-genius plan all along. And I fully expect it to work out just as well as all their other super-genius plans have so far.

So they declared BK to avoid the Novell trial, and now the Novell trial's going ahead anyway. That's got to chafe a bit, no matter how brave of a face SCO tries to put on it.

I realize this is just another intermediate milestone on the road to "SCO Delenda Est", but I'm in the mood for a steak, and this seems like a reasonable excuse to go get one. Mmmmm.... Steak.....

• Some coverage of the York non-deal:
  
  • SJVN speculates at length about why the thing fell through, and is far more even-handed about it than I would've been.
    
    
  • A quick bit about it at LinuxJournal.
    
    
  • At InformationWeek, our old chum Paul McDougall has a short piece about yesterday's news.
    
    
  • Only a brief blurb at Lamlaw so far.
    
  
  
  
• Oh, and there's a new Darl interview, believe it or not. It's about what you'd expect. There are six questions total, and Darl answers three of them with cheesy sports metaphors. Then there's the boilerplate optimistic blather about exciting new mobile products. I really like the part where he says SCO will become the mobile flavor of Unix. I don't suppose he realizes that (unlike, say, the iPhone) Me Inc. doesn't actually put Unix on phone hardware. The only Unix connection at all is an OSR6 box on the back end, and that's only because SCO's trying for a bit of vendor lock-in. And good luck with that.
  
  Darl also once again compares SCO with the Apple of a decade ago. Note that Darl said all this while trying to sell SCO's assets to York and morph the company into a pure-play litigation troll. Apple never tried to do that, it's worth pointing out. Sorry, Darl, but there's more to being Steve than not wearing a tie.
  
  
• Speaking of mobile *Nix stuff, Nokia's got a new Linux widget on the market. Just in time for the holidays. Hint, hint. The N810 improves on the N800 I've gone on and on about here, sporting GPS and a 'real' keyboard. This also means they've dropped the price on the N800, and either one is stocking-stuffer-sized.
  
  Oh, and the forever-upcoming Linux-based PalmOS runs on the N810. FWIW.
  
  

• A good SJVN article on the York proposal, sadly overtaken by events. Ok, not "sadly" exactly. Creative effort, expended well in a good cause, but for naught. These things happen, I guess.
  
  
• Also overtaken by events, a Deseret News piece about the Dec. 5th hearing.
  
  
• From GL yesterday, the bit about SCO trying to sell Unix to IBM. The law firm's terse logs merely say IBM wasn't interested. I'd be curious to know precisely what language IBM used to convey this sentiment, but no matter. The fact that SCO even tried this is just freakin' breathtaking. What's that word I'm looking for... it's kind of like "clueless", but a few orders of magnitude more so...
  
  
• CIO Magazine: "Eight Signs of Evil in High-Tech Companies".
  
  
• From the "ugliness all around" department, here's MOG on the Hans Reiser case.
  
  
• Over in blogospace, something called Microweb.biz offers us "SCO accuses first Linux-user". The site describes itself as "Delivering the old and new news and information on the top stories with a strong European focus". Which is obviously true. The story refers to very old news, as far as I can tell. And the European focus is obvious as well, if by that they mean the non-English-speaking part of the continent. And I quote:
  

  
  The businesses ruzin already since halfway last year about rights on the source code of Unix System V. Cause for the dispute is SCO claim that Linux divide of the source code of its Unix-software contain.
  

  
  
  Seriously, these guys make "Paul Murphy" look good in comparison.
  
  
• Elsewhere, a post titled "Go, SCO, go!" is not what you think. Seems that SCO's released a daylight savings patch for its OSes, which it's generously distributing absolutely free!!! Naturally if your SCO OS is no longer supported your only option is to upgrade your OS. Or do the DST update yourself, using the tips I linked to back in March.
  
  
• After months of blessed inactivity, Lyons did a couple of new posts over at Floating Point semi-recently. I just noticed them because I haven't been checking all that religiously. In one, he provides helpful links to all his stories about SCO, arranged chronologically. I'm not sure what occasioned this, but I imagine it's part of his attempt to put his SCO-shilling firmly in the past. Which is something I'm still not convinced of, btw. Even now, he often babbles on about Linux in peace-n-love hippie terms. I'm sorry, but anyone still who talks that way in 2007 is obviously a clueless marketroid who just doesn't get it and never will.
  
  
• From c.u.s.m., a recent thread on running OSR5.0.7 under VMWare on a Ubuntu box. Oddly, nobody bothers to mention the guy "needs" a $699 SCOSource license to do this. Go figure.
  
  
• Meanwhile over on comp.unix.sco.programmer (Yes, there really is such a thing, at least in a vestigial sense), here are a pair of recent threads about difficulties with OpenServer's License Manager. Whenever an OS comes with a "License Manager" misfeature, inevitably it errs on the side of DOS'ing you if it can't be absolutely positively certain you're paid up in full. If you're stuck with such an OS, your OS has a global single point of failure designed into it. So you'd better hope your "License Manager" is supernaturally reliable. If not, well, I'm sure your OS vendor would be delighted to explain your predicament to your pointy-haired bosses and accept the blame themselves. Or not.
  
  
• And on comp.sys.sys5.r3, here's a poor soul who needs boot media for some ancient NCR Tower boxes. If you can help the guy out -- without violating the terms of your SysV license, obviously -- go give a brother a hand, ok?
  
  

It's official: SCO's mega-emergency double-panic fire sale is officially off. Just before the big deadline SCO would've had to disclose exactly what they were proposing to sell, someone -- we don't know which side yet -- pulled the plug. Just when we thought SCO would have to finally make a definite statement about what it claims it owns, after all these years, poof. It appears to me that they're unwilling to do any basic disclosure even with tens of millions of dollars on the line. If the buyer wants to look in the box and verify there really is a pony inside, SCO's just going to leave the money on the table and walk away. The obvious conclusion, one that most people drew years ago, is that there's no pony in the box.

So the immediate question in my mind is how to explain the big 28% drop in the stock yesterday. It's reasonable to wonder if somebody knew about today's news in advance and acted on it yesterday. Of course it's also true that a 28% drop in the stock translates to a whopping 7 cents, so I really don't know if that qualifies as "big" or not. I don't usually follow penny stocks like this, so a 7 cent change might just be random-ish Brownian motion. But having watched SCO for lo, these many years, I wouldn't count on it.

Updated: GL's got the story here now.

Grokwar. The boards are thick with it. Everyone's talking about it. Even PJ's chimed in, somewhat obliquely. For reasons I can't fathom, the hot issue of the day is not SCO's bankrupcy case, or the latest M$ shenanigans. No, it's all about comment moderation at Groklaw, and the dogged pursuit of random personality conflicts. My usual response is to try to calm things down and distract everyone with photos of cute kittens and so forth. That doesn't seem to be working this time around. So, as sole proprietor of this little corner of the anti-SCO multiverse, I figure I ought to say a few words about the current ugliness.

I don't see any value in Grokwar. There's nothing to be gained by it. There really isn't. For the sake of argument, let's assume you're a partisan in the Grokwars, and your side finally achieves total victory, so that either a.) GL is utterly destroyed, or b.) the anti-GL crowd is utterly destroyed. What would you have you won, really? SCO would still be out there stirring up trouble, M$ would still be out there doing the same, and those who oppose them would be weak and exhausted from the endless, bitter infighting. For whom is this a desirable outcome? Who would be the real winner, in the end? Unsubtle hint: It wouldn't be you.

I'm troubled by this impulse toward fratricide (or soricide, as the case may be), this inclination to see dark conspiracies and enemies under every rock. Don't take your eyes off the ball, folks. The enemy is SCO. Anyone who's against SCO is not the enemy. It's really that simple. If someone votes differently than you, or moderates your comments in a way you don't like, or doesn't rec you, or disses your colors, or says toMAYto when you say toMAHto, just roll with it. Let it be water off a duck's back. It's not so hard.

So in case I haven't made it abundantly clear yet, this is not an anti-GL site (and I link to GL quite regularly). It's also not a pro-GL site (and I've been known to link to Al P.'s SCOFacts somewhat regularly as well). Not to invoke Godwin's law here, but if SCO's jackbooted thugs came for them, either Al or PJ (or both, if they could stand each other) would be welcome to hide in my attic for the duration, and I wouldn't rat them out. This blog exists because it seems worthwhile, most of the time, and because it's kind of fun, some of the time. My policy here (and everywhere) -- and my advice -- is to spend as little time as possible pursuing interpersonal conflicts, especially esoteric ones. Only fight over issues, not personalities, and only fight over issues when they matter. Otherwise, just freakin' shrug it off and forget about it, already. It's easy. Trust me.

• Turns out the 'big' hearing back on the 6th wasn't quite as big as I'd hoped. The court won't hear the fire-sale motion until the 16th, and Novell's motion to restart the Utah proceedings is still under advisement, so we've still got those to look forward to.
  
  I suppose SCO could regard the outcome of that hearing as a win, in the sense that a temporary stay of execution is a win. I never had high expectations about the SuSE arbitration matter, and it does seem sort of reasonable to me that it would be stayed along with all the other proceedings. Which doesn't preclude SuSE/Novell from asking the judge to unstay it, of course, and I hope they at least try for that.
  
  
• Right on the heels of the proposed fire sale, we learned that SCO sold one of its two patents for about $570k. This deal is what SCO's "Cattleback Holdings" subsidiary was all about. The good Mr. Blankenhorn bashes the deal here, and it's an entertaining bit of invective, definitely worth reading.
  
  Blankenhorn does bobble the facts a bit at one point, where he asserts SCO's been suing over patents. Patents are about the only thing they haven't been suing over yet, and looking at the patent they sold it's a bit surprising they haven't. It's one of those vague and extremely broad patents so beloved by patent trolls, which is what I suspect the buyer wants it for. Maybe SCO was just too dumb to do it themselves. I mean, patent trolling is at least as odious a business as the stuff SCO's been up to, and I'm not trying to encourage that sort of thing. It's just that patent trolling often succeeds, a trait not shared by SCO's "method and concept" trolling. They could've quietly extracted mid-sized payoffs from a few key industry players and retired to the golf course, without ever attracting substantial media attention. But noooo, instead they had to declare jihad against all Linux users, and look where it's gotten them.
  
  Nobody's filed an objection to the patent deal just yet, but I suspect it's only a matter of time. If you're operating in Chapter 11, you don't simply transfer assets to a paper subsidary and have said subsidiary sell them. If you're bankrupt, the law assumes you're bankrupt because you're no good at managing your assets, and you need adult supervision for a while. That means you aren't supposed to dispose of significant assets without asking "mother may I?" first, which is what SCO just did, in a sneaky sort of way. Stay tuned on this one.
  
  
• Oh, and the US Trustee's now joined the chorus of parties objecting to the fire sale. I still don't understand BK law enough to grasp exactly what this "ombudsman" business is all about, but I gather the US Trustee is entitled to supervise the proceedings to ensure the sale proceeds fairly, and SCO's proposal doesn't provide for that.
  
  My overall impression is that SCO declared bankruptcy without really understanding what it meant. I think Darl & Co. just saw it as a way to make the Novell suit "go away", and figured it'd be business as usual other than that. I suspect it's been one rude shock after another since then. Once they realized plan A was not to be, they came up with plan B, the fire sale, which looks to have been cobbled up in a great hurry. I can see why Darl likes the proposed deal, since he co uld divest himself of pesky things like "products" and "employees", and in return he'd get a big pile of cash so he could continue hunting the white whale. And it's a good deal for York too; they get software assets that just might be worth something, for what's basically pocket change by investment firm standards. If you aren't Darl, and you aren't York, the deal has very little to recommend it. I don't suppose they spent a lot of time figuring out how to sell the proposal to the BK court, which they're going to need to do. SCO isn't used to asking permission, doesn't really know how, and is either too dumb to hire somebody who knows the ropes, or too dumb to listen to them.
  
  
• Here's an earlier InformationWeek story about IBM & Novell objecting to the fire sale. It's a Paul McDougall piece, but it looks like even he can't dream up a positive spin for this.
  
  
• I think McDougall's problem is that he's just enough of a journalist (barely) that he tries to stick to facts, more or less, and merely spins them to fit his biases. Which is a rank amateur's error. Look at how the pros handle it -- take MOG for example. She isn't limited by such mundane concerns as "truth" and "accuracy". If a client, say SCO for example, is paying you tens (hundreds?) of thousands of dollars every year, the truth is precisely whatever the client says it is, no more, no less. Witness her bizarro-world account of the BK hearing on the 6th. She wasn't there, by all reports, and she doesn't claim to have been there, but she goes on and on in exquisite detail about what allegedly happened. It stands to reason she got the account from someone with SCO, and possibly improvised some details here and there. And still, absolute silence about the business arrangement between MOG and SCO. Why, full disclosure would be bad for business, of course.
  
  And a precarious business it is. Think about it: MOG's current gig involves misleading the public (and potential SCO investors/buyers) about what's going on in BK court. But she also gets paid at the discretion of said BK court. If you ask me, it wouldn't be at all unreasonable for Novell, or IBM, or the US Trustee to try to get the payments halted as an unnecessary expense. Even if it didn't work, it'd be highly entertaining to put various people on the stand and make them try to justify what SCO's spent on G2 over the years, and explain what they've gotten in return.
  
  
• A few more tidbits on the renewed litigation in Germany. A few years ago, in "round 1", SCO, or more precisely SCO's German subsidiary, promised to stop making false claims about Linux in Germany. Then just recently they went ahead and did it again, once again demonstrating the value of a SCO promise. My theory is that they figured BK nullified the previous agreement, so they were free to start lying again. SJVN covers it here, and PJ attempts to explain the vagaries of German law here. A viable alternate theory is that SCO Germany is in mid-meltdown right now, as evidenced by their unlikely new CEO, and the latest threats aren't part of a coherent strategy.
  
  
• The delisting hearing was held on the 8th, so far as we know, but so far there's been no word on the outcome. Which isn't surprising at all really, because Nasdaq likes to make up its mind behind closed doors. So this is just to remind everyone that BK court isn't the only game in town.
  
  
• A little product news to report. All you hardcore Shout Postcard fanatics out there will be pleased to know it runs on the new Palm Centro. Which is entirely unsurprising since Shout Postcard already ran on previous Palm gadgets, and the Centro's more or less the same thing, in a smaller case and at a lower price point. In related news, Vista runs on the new chips Intel just announced.
  
  In case you're wondering, the Centro is not the long-promised Linux-based Palm we've heard so much noise about. It'll be fun to see how SCO reacts, assuming Palm ever goes down that route like they keep promising.
  
  Ok, so the real bit of interest here is that the press release strongly downplays the SCO connection. Now "Me Inc." is the name of the company, it seems, and we only learn it's a SCO subsidiary down toward the very end. I suppose it's only natural that they're ashamed about being part of SCO, and since they are part of SCO it's only natural they'd try to be a little sneaky about hiding the fact.
  
  
• In more thrilling product news, there's a new maintenance pack out for OSR6. Coverage at InternetNews and CNNMoney. The second bit is just the press release itself, actually. Seems the new maintenance pack brings the latest exciting advances in Xenix emulation. Yeah, yeah, I know, back when OSR6 first came out SCO was bragging about how great Xenix emulation was, and how you could run all these old 16-bit games from the Xenix 286 days. So either the maintenance pack makes Xenix mode even more perfect, or perhaps it wasn't quite as fabulous as SCO led everyone to believe back then.
  
  In any case, the new update means that SCO's website now has a bunch of links with 'mp3' in the URL, which may be enough for them to fall afoul of the vast RIAA dragnet. Which would be a vastly entertaining spectacle.