Wednesday, December 19, 2007
12/20 SNR
Ok, I've fallen a little behind on my SCO-watching duties again. The last few weeks haven't been hugely eventful, but a few things have transpired in the last few days. And for the sake of completeness, I ought to at least mention a couple of earlier items I ought to have written about when they happened, and just sort of didn't.
[It came to my attention that I originally dated this thing 11/20 instead of 12/20. I really did get rusty at this stuff. Sheesh.]
[It came to my attention that I originally dated this thing 11/20 instead of 12/20. I really did get rusty at this stuff. Sheesh.]
- SCO wants permission to renew their leases in Utah & New Jersey. And in Utah, they want to keep renting from Canopy, no less. Sure is funny how they managed to ask at basically the last possible moment, like they always do. It may seem unfair, and it may seem like they're railroading the BK court, but I think they'll get this one. Since they're in Chapter 11, the court's not likely to force them out of business over the cost of a lease, while they're allegedly still trying to reorganize and get back on their feet, or tentacles, or whatever. Besides, at the rate they're burning Novell's money on lawyers and cushy bonuses and such, they'll have to switch over to Chapter 7 before too much longer. Speaking of which...
- They also want permission to hand out bigger bonuses than the BK court approved earlier. Seems it's becoming more and more difficult to keep employees from jumping ship, and the previously-approved caps are no longer sufficient to buy (or at least rent) the loyalty of key personnel. Which may be the absolute, unvarnished truth, come to think of it. On the other hand, I don't see how cranking up the burn rate helps SCO avoid cratering. They just want to pay current employees more to do their existing jobs. Current employees doing their existing jobs is what got SCO where it is today.
- The ever-relentless Panglozz has tracked down the CP80 Foundation's recent nonprofit IRS filings, and they look a bit on the peculiar side to say the least. I'm no tax attorney or anything, but the numbers just don't seem to pencil out. Trying to explain the situation is beyond me -- go check it out for yourself if you're curious.
- Sandeep Gupta is out as head of SCO Operations. He only just got the big promotion a couple of months ago, post-BK. I wonder what that was all about? I wonder if we'll ever find out? In any case, Jeff Hunsaker is the new Sandeep Gupta, except that he comes from a sales background rather than a technical one. Oh well, it's not like SCO needs technical folks anymore. Hunsaker, you might recall, oversaw a series of SCO's market triumphs, starting with Caldera Linux, then moving on to SCO's Unix OSes, and finally to Me Inc. So he's got to be the sort of guy who doesn't let bad news get him down. That ought to come in handy in his new job.
- More important than any of this is last Thursday's joint statement by SCO & Novell, in which they offered Kimball several proposed trial dates. So SCO v. Novell could go to trial as early as January 11th, less than a month from now. And less than two months before the 5th anniversary of SCO suing IBM, for those of us who keep track of such things. One interesting bit is that SCO proposed a date in April that'd conflict with the still-scheduled arbitration in Switzerland. Novell didn't go along, hinting that they might try to get the BK court's stay lifted on that matter too. That ought to be fun.
While the Novell trial is eagerly awaited by all, there are really only two items there's any suspense about. First, the exact dollar value SCO owes to Novell. Second, exactly how soon afterward we'll see the inevitable MOG article proclaiming SCO the winner. - A recent Blankenhorn piece: "SCO bankruptcy was celebrated online in 2007", in which he compares SCO to notorious cartoon villain Boris Badenov, of Boris & Natasha fame. He concludes with: "In what may be the final humiliation for SCO, Groklaw’s recent posts have generally moved on to discussing Microsoft and OOXML." And yes, that's got to be a bit humiliating. Around the time SCO filed BK, Darl said something about how happy Linus Torvalds and Sam Palmisano would be about SCO's difficulties. In reality I suspect neither guy has spent much time thinking about SCO at all, in the last couple of years. Now PJ's starting to move on too. At least they've still got me to kick them around, for whatever that's worth. I mean, this blog has "SCO" in the title, it's not like I can just switch gears and start ranting full time about M$ Exchange or Vista or whatever. I probably ought to have thought of that before I began this thing. Oh, well. I've said before that the "SCO" in the title really means "Stuff i Care abOut". Meanwhile, SNR could be "Signal to Noise Ratio", "SuperNova Remnant", or (my #1 choice) "Snr: Not Recursive". I'm not sure I've convinced anyone yet, but I can keep on hoping, I guess.
- Oh, and I, uh, got it all wrong about the December 5th hearing, as you might've noticed. Looks like the Cattleback deal's going through after all, and the mysterious buyer is an entity called "BlackMaple". I hope we're not witnessing the birth of a nasty new patent troll. In any case, SCO gets another ~$500k to pay back Novell with. Unless they spend it all on lawyers and such first.
By brx0 @ 10:19 PM 
