SCO, the company best known for Linux litigation and its Unix operating systems, reported results for its fiscal third quarter ended July 31, 2005, on Wednesday. The news wasn’t good.
SCO Continues To Lose Money
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I guess there are many people out there who tend to read the bad news for SCO as good news…
I couldn’t help but smile by reading that.
I can’t help but feel for the poor guys who will eventually lose their job, because some genius decided to go after Linux.
One of those poor guys was me.
Sorry to hear about that. Were you with SCO back when it was “Old SCO” (Pre-Caldera)? OpenServer was a good OS back in the days before anyone had even heard about Linux.
Sure, the SCO management back then acted in a very defensive manner wrt the emergence of Linux. But they knew they were outmatched and got out of the game entirely, in order to persue their Tarantella ambitions.
Back then, even Caldera was only disliked and not actually hated. (Ransom Love, where are you now?)
It really is unfortunate that innocent people are the ones who are mainly hurt by The SCO Group’s actions, while Darl and the gang walk off more or less untouched, and only the richer for it.
I can’t help but feel for the poor guys who will eventually lose their job, because some genius decided to go after Linux.
I feel sorry for the folks who after getting over the shock that the company they work for is being run by a bunch of unethical morons, decide to do the right thing and leave.
The rest — any that worked for them over the last year — can go blow. They had ample time to figure this one out, and if they didn’t, they either lack morals as well or are too dumb to teach.
That’s rather harsh. There’s always a line you have to draw between idealism and pragmatism. Likewise, it’s impossible to judge the motives of the people who are still there:
I’d feel sorry for the people who couldn’t get a new job because of ageism in the industry and had to stay on a sinking ship to keep their family income stable. Or middle managers who have been trying to advise their superiors on a better course of action, whilst protecting the jobs of the people beneath them.
I could go on – just because people still work there doesn’t mean they’re deeply immoral and certainly doesn’t mean they deserve everything they get.
>>I can’t help but feel for the poor guys who will eventually lose their job, because some genius decided to go after Linux.<<
“Going after Linux” has been *extremely* helpful to the company. When McBride became CEO, scox had a market cap under $6MM, now scox’s market cap is around $80MM.
Scox, a company formed to sell linux, would have been dead two years ago, if scox didn’t accept msft, and sunw, money to go after linux.
Gotta love it….. 😛
lemme just say,
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Die,die, die, SCO! And go to hell!
This was mod’d up?
And there was much rejoicing…
HAH HAH lets all smile.
Free Beer has killed another couple of operating systems.
Lets add them to the glorous list of dead unixes killed by Linux.
They may publish their unix under GPL or BSD license or CDDL if they like… This is what Sun did when their Solaris started to loose market over Linux. And now Solaris does great (well, it’s under _heavy_ and _rapid_ development since they opened their sources).
Yeah, but Solaris had good technology and was a powerful OS, SCO OpenServer and the like are just garbage… “WOW, I have to reboot the entire system just to change the IP of one of the nics?”
They may publish their unix under GPL or BSD license or CDDL if they like… This is what Sun did when their Solaris started to loose market over Linux. And now Solaris does great (well, it’s under _heavy_ and _rapid_ development since they opened their sources).
How could they? Novell is claiming ownership over the copyrights. And when you read the entire Asset Purchase Agreement and all ammendments, they do tend to side with Novell.
For instance, why would SCO buy the copyrights but only keep 5% of the licensing revenue for SVR4?
Also, it is very unlikely that the clause SCO says transfered the copyrights to SCO will qualify as a section 204(a) copyright transfer under American Law. They contain an action SCO must take to receive the copyrights, and SCO has failed to take that action.
Also, the whole contract may be void because SCO didn’t live up to their end of it by with-holding royalties from Novell.
HAH HAH lets all smile.
Free Beer has killed another couple of operating systems.
Lets add them to the glorous list of dead unixes killed by Linux.
Yeah, I know. Now if only Caldera had continued trying to sell Linux (instead of sueing Linux users and IBM) they may have actually made some money like Red Hat is doing. I tend to have to think that the reason the company is dieing however, is that they sue their own customers and threaten to sue everyone else, without providing evidence. Not exactly a good way to run a company.
>>
HAH HAH lets all smile.
Free Beer has killed another couple of operating systems.
Lets add them to the glorous list of dead unixes killed by Linux.
<<
Oh please. Scox is nothing but penny-stock scam. The only difference is that msft, and sunw, funded scox’s bogus lawsuit. Msft, and sunw, did that to FUD OSS software.
Scox was never a real technology company.
Also, totally JMHO, if Linux didn’t kill UNIX, Windows would have. UNIX is a great system and all, but UNIX developers were not able to pull together, they all wanted to pull UNIX in their own direction. This, IMO, is *the* reason that msft got a toe-hold in the server market.
And so SCO has retained the services of Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, Minister of Information in Saddam Hussein’s government.
Why is a company named Santa Cruz Operations based in Utah? Also, maybe after the company is a worthless shell it would make for a good aquisition for Sun Microsystems (if they are still around).
Why is a company named Santa Cruz Operations based in Utah?
There isn’t. Caldera changed their name to “The SCO Group,” not Santa Cruz Operations. Caldera changed their name after launching the lawsuits hoping to capitalize on the confusion between the names SCO and The SCO Group.
SCO: even their name is a lie.
The actual name of the company is: “The SCO Group” the S.C.O. doesn’t stand for anything. As another poster pointed out, it was done solely to confuse the public.
“SCO” also tried to aquire the “Unix Systems Laboratories” or USL name. But OpenGroup would not allow it.
OpenGroup owns the UNIX trademark, although “SCO” has lied about it for years. SCO claims outright to be the owner of the UNIX operating system. Just another lie out of this Lindon penny-stock-scam company.
SCO is worthless to sun. Sun has competeting products that SCO has. besides, Sun open sourced UNIX.
Buying SCO would be a waste of money. Since we have OpenSolaris now OpenServers and UnixWare is completely pointless. And Guess what, that’s there core business!
Santa Cruz Operation changed its name to Tarantella. Caldera changed its name to The SCO Group. They are not the same company.
Also, SCO will go bankrupt, not get bought out. Any company aquiring SCO would assume their liabilities also. Considering Novell, IBM and Red Hat are all sueing SCO for much more than the company is actually worth, what would be the point? Then, factor in IBM’s patent infringement lawsuits in which they are attempting to prevent SCO from shipping OpenServer and Unixware, and there is absolutely no reason anyone would want to aquire SCO.
It is sad, because sco had a pretty good product, technically. They just have a very bad CEO. There product now has a huge legal liability. I wouldn’t buy there stuff due to the huge amount of ill will they’ve created. They’re headed straight for the ground, just a matter of time. I wouldn’t bother purchasing an extended support contract from them.
Remember the old mantra Daryl ‘Don’t %#17 where you eat’.
A waste of what was once a good company. SCO have been dying slowly for years due to mismanagement of what they have got. The attacks on Linux are just diversion tactics to avoid facing the reality: they’re rapidly becoming history. They need to adapt, like Sun, or go under.
but to sco to adapt is to go to some sort of open arena, then their whole argument against Linux falls flat. Will they really want to do that?
Stay tuned!
Burn, baby! Burn! 🙂
Now we know that the linux litigation as just to get more money out of people’s pockets hehehehe
Burn, baby! Burn! 🙂
TheSCO inferno !
Such shenanigans would most certainly not be rewarded.
Essentially, SCO is in free-fall mode now. In just under a year, they burned through half of their assets. They still have over a year to go for the IBM litigation.
Between now and then, however, they have the Novell litigation. If SCO wins, they get very little. If Novell wins or wins their requeste to sequester SCO’s assets, SCO is gone.
And all that doesn’t matter, SCO hedged its bets on being a normal successful company on OpenServer 6, and their sales went down after launching it, not up, which tells me most people are choosing Linux, Windows or Solaris over OpenServer (probably a smart thing, you are guaranteed longer maintenance with the other ones, who is going to maintain OpenServer once SCO goes bankrupt?).
SCO doesn’t stand a chance anymore. OpenServer 6 was a waste of money for them, as it isn’t doing well. About the only thing it was good for was a last minute stock pump, and the stock only went up $1.50 for a few days.
I almost wish I could do something more to aid their demise…
That’s all they deserve!
Don’t believe me? Go look for yourself (ticker SCOX);
finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SCOX&t=1y
I don’t know why they haven’t tanked in the stock market…but they haven’t. It makes no sense at all. The stock should not be stable…yet it is. I’d place a put on them if I were wiser.
SCOx is a thinly traded stock. It is mostly traded by insiders. Which means that the insiders have a great deal of control over the actual number, which last I looked was about 3.5.
That’s about 1/6th of where is was a few years ago, so that tells you something about how much the actual owners care about the public perception of SCOx’s value. They can’t just let it tank. They’ve got to prop it up a bit. But not too much, as it is on the back burner now and propping it up too much would simply cost too much money. And the insiders know that SCOx is not really worth much real money.
When this saga ends, it is entirely likely a great many of us will miss a lot of work due to the extensive hangover we are likely to experience. One cannot simply binge on schadenfreude for years on end without there being consequences.
Perhaps a benefit concert or record along the lines of Band Aid or We Are the World. Stallman, Torvalds, and all of the open source Illuminati could join in in an effort to raise money to fill the gap caused by lost wages and possibly unemployment as a result of this impending, debilitating schadenfreude hangover.
We’re going to need it. A very wise man once said, “Do your schadenfreude and do it up good – but don’t let schadenfreude do *you*.”
A time of excess and immoderation this is, yes indeed.
Why can’t SCO just burn and die soon so we won’t waste any more bandwidth talking about it.
Same goes to MySQL for doing business with SCO. I’m recommending everyone I know to use PostgreSQL and drop MySQL.
You guys are so low. There are people working at SCO, you know! People that will lose their jobs, which will make their lives a million times harder! Get a life! How would you feel if you lost your job, while people on the sideline were cheering about it?
You should be ashamed of yourselves. You make me sick.
Whoa Thom, ease up.
You are absolutely right to point out that this will affect real people
with families to support and so forth. Cheering about it is charmless,
graceless and ugly.
However….
The last American company I worked for: cleared half their desks with the staff given no notice whatever.
What ever dis-favours this mess has done to SCO staff; they can hardly pretend they didn’t know what was happening. If they have chosen to sit it out; that constitutes a decision. They are not victims to the same extent as happens elsewhere.
It would also be fair to say that ex-SCO staff will not carry the implication of dishonesty or incompetence; except perhaps at board level. Would you be less interested in a good applicant because they had worked for SCO?
If I follow your flawed reasoning, lets keep manufacturing chemical and biological weapons because otherwise some people will loose their jobs. That’s a ridiculous argument
If I follow your flawed reasoning, lets keep manufacturing chemical and biological weapons because otherwise some people will loose their jobs. That’s a ridiculous argument
If you find ‘sueing Linux’ just as wrong and important as manufacturing WMD, like the US has been doing and is doin gfor ages, then you have a serious problem, my friend.
Actually, he didn’t say “Let’s keep the company going”, he just wants people to show some tact. I’ll be pretty glad when SCO goes away but it’s still unfair that those people will lose their jobs. Likewise if we suddenly achieve world peace, it’ll be a good thing – but if people lose their jobs, they’ll deserve some sympathy and help finding jobs in other areas.
This is one of those rare times where most posts are inflammatory silliness. If it read Microsoft, Apple, or any other company with instances of a nebulous ethical history and “Hahaha! Die! Die! Take that!” there would be a large swath of -5s. SCO’s lawsuit and everything around it was ridiculous, dishonest, and sleazy, but this discussion on the whole is little better than saying that the GPL is inferior to the BSD license, or vice-versa.
This is one of those rare times where most posts are inflammatory silliness. If it read Microsoft, Apple, or any other company with instances of a nebulous ethical history and “Hahaha! Die! Die! Take that!” there would be a large swath of -5s. SCO’s lawsuit and everything around it was ridiculous, dishonest, and sleazy, but this discussion on the whole is little better than saying that the GPL is inferior to the BSD license, or vice-versa.
I was considering modding everyone down but then there would be an endless stream of posts about how some SCO/MSFT shill was modding down these posts, so I decided against it. It is getting out of hand though. SCO is scum, and I agree with this completely….but get over it. Post something insightful other than “Die Die Die”. I was able to make posts against SCO without looking like a moron, not sure why everyone else can’t.
If you look at their fundamentals I am surprised that the current investors have not pulled out yet. From a financial point of view that company is basically finished.
If you look at their fundamentals I am surprised that the current investors have not pulled out yet. From a financial point of view that company is basically finished.
It sort of defies logic, until you realize the stock is held mainly by insiders. You also have to be careful if you are someone like Baystar, dumping the stock will send it tumbling down. Baystar has been slowly unloading the stock, every day, steadily. They can’t do it all at once.
This tears me up inside… it really does.
‘SCO CFO Bert Young noted, in a response to an investor question, that “without the legal fees, SCO would have been profitable.”‘
LOL. According to them, their legal fees are the thing that is keeping them from profitting. Guess they don’t seem like such a good idea now.
SCO is right, code was stolen form UNIX and integrated in Linux and some derivate products. I hope they will won the case against IBM/Redhat, as they deserve.
UNIX is far superior vs GNU/Linux in all aspects.
Linux is nice, but hey it’s doesn’t know nothing about quality testing. GNU/Linux =/= UNIX
SCO is right, code was stolen form UNIX and integrated in Linux and some derivate products. I hope they will won the case against IBM/Redhat, as they deserve.
UNIX is far superior vs GNU/Linux in all aspects.
Linux is nice, but hey it’s doesn’t know nothing about quality testing. GNU/Linux =/= UNIX
Hot damn, you should be a lawyer, I heard SCO is looking for some who know how to find evidence. Their current lawyers seem to be lacking in that department 😛
I find it funny that some people still believe them. If it really was copied from Unix to Linux, then why can’t they find it. They have the code to both Unix and Linux, bloody well find the evidence already or go away.