[Eug]

Serves them right

Service provider SCO Group ended a major phase in the history of both UNIX and Linux today by declaring chapter 11 bankruptcy, forcing the company to reorganize before it can resume normal business.

The company earned a hostile reaction from the Linux community over the past several years after the company sued IBM and Novell, accusing both of illegally writing SCO-owned UNIX source code into their versions of Linux and profiting from the efforts.

I just hope those executives responsible for the unix patent lawsuit debacle don't walk away with a big wad of cash.

[bradoesch]

Originally Posted by Eug 

forcing the company to reorganize before it can resume normal business.

Oh boy, looking forward to that!

[turtle777]

Maybe Woot is gonna sell them in their Bags of Crap.

-t

[Cold Warrior]

They should be denied bankruptcy and have all their assets and IP (if any remains) seized by creditors.

Good riddance.

[Dork.]

If you follow the slashdot/groklaw crowd, they claim that the SCO-Novell legal proceeding is supposed to go forward soon. The judge in that case has already ruled that SCO is guilty of "conversion", which is a fancy legal way of saying that SCO kept money that they were supposed to give to Novell -- i.e. theft. One of the issues at the trial would be exactly how much of Novell's money SCO stole. (I also think SCO might end up having to pay punitive damages as well.)

After that ruling, Novell made a motion to that same court that SCO should set aside some money in a trust to pay what SCO owes them, but SCO managed to get out of that by stating that their business was sound and they were not going to go bankrupt before the end of the trial. That judge is not going to be a happy camper once the trial starts up again.

And since the money that SCO "owes" to Novell was really Novell's money to begin with, Novell is technically not a creditor, SCO is holding assets that rightfully belong to them, so they get to be first in line when the carcass of SCO is divvied up.

I may be getting details wrong, but I think I have the main gist of what is going on there. If you're interested in more, go read Groklaw (the Slashdot folks are probably just repeating what is said there, anyway.)

[driven]

I've never understood what the management of SCO was thinking throughout this whole ordeal. It stunk too much like extortion to be any sort of legitimate business practice. Rack this one right up there with Rambus and NTP.

[Chuckit]

They were thinking, "Hey, extortion = $$!!!!""

[starman]

I remember watching daily updates on this turd on TechTV. I'm surprised it took so long to resolve.

[Dork.]

The only real issue in the Novell trial was how much of Novell's money SCO stole, and the bankrupcy proceeding postpones the trial. Clever.

Slashdot/Groklaw says that half of their accountants have been laid off or quit this week, and SCO had to petition the court for permission to hire temps.

[Dork.]

There's a new slashdot story about the bankruptcy filing. Here's a very good comment.

The guy who wrote the comment makes the case that SCO is actually solvent right now, unless you count the money they stole from Novell. But SCO doesn't want that counted, because it would make Novell SCO's largest creditor and effectively give them control over the company while in bankruptcy, which would include giving Novell access to SCO's internal files about all their cases and about their financing. There must be some juicy stuff in there!

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Maybe Woot is gonna sell them in their Bags of Crap.

I actually lawled.