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Technology Stocks : SCO Group (SCOX) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (126)	4/20/2004 8:45:14 AM
From: Glenn Petersen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 239

The End of SCO? April 19, 2004 By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols This could be the beginning of the end of SCO vs. Linux. Heck, it could be the end of SCO. I always thought SCO's position could crumble quickly. While I believed that they might have a contract case against IBM with regard to how Project Monterrey was handled, I've never thought they've had an intellectual property leg to stand on when it came to Unix code being illegally placed in Linux. I mean, the whole point of Linux from the get-go was to create a Unix-like operating system that wasn't based on Unix. It took Linux almost 10 years of development to be as good as a top Unix; you'd think Linus and the rest of the open-source development community could have done it a wee bit faster if they had really been programming by copying machine. Be that as it may, I always thought that a quick end to SCO's assaults against Linux could come when the U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City would grant IBM a summary judgment against SCO's intellectual property claims. IBM may have only asked for such a judgment recently, but I always knew that Big Blue was going to make this move. Now, my esteemed colleague and fellow columnist Rob Enderle thinks SCO could win if the trial goes in front of a jury. Me? I've never thought the case will make it to a jury. All you would need to do is look at the list of things SCO has to overcome to make their case and you'd have to wonder why the Lindon, Utah, company was even trying. First, they have to show that they, not Novell, owned Unix. Then, they have to prove that code had been taken from Unix for Linux. Next, the boys from Utah have to prove that IBM, not SCO's own programmers, had made the aforementioned transfer. And, last, but never least, they have to convince a court that even though they had been releasing Linux well into 2003 under the GPL, that somehow they hadn't meant to release the Unix code in Linux under the GPL. My little mind boggled, but SCO's leaders have been sure they could win all these points. But, now that may all be as irrelevant as last year's Christmas tree. BayStar Capital is pulling its $20 million of funding right out from underneath SCO. They're doing it because, when you get right down to it, they're accusing SCO of having lied to them about the state of their business. SCO is denying this and is refusing to redeem the stock shares. Blake Stowell, SCO's director of corporate communications, told me that this came as a complete surprise to SCO. Indeed, when Stowell and I spoke on Friday, SCO CEO Darl McBride was still flying back to SCO's headquarters from a business trip after hearing of the news. "We're still in an information-gathering mode ourselves, and we're trying to find out where we stand," Stowell said. Oh, the irony! SCO has spent months refusing to show anyone even samples of the "stolen" source code without nondisclosure agreements, and now they're the ones who are in a position of not knowing exactly what it is that they're being accused of doing. As Linus Torvalds told me, "Yeah, my heart really goes out to them." The Royal Bank of Canada, which ponied up the other $30 million in what was SCO's $50 million litigation war chest, hasn't asked for its money back yet. But at least one expert, albeit one with an open-source bias—OSDN IT stock analyst Melanie Hollands—opined in NewsForge that "it is possible that the (whole) PIPE deal is about to fall apart," adding, "I certainly think that Royal Bank of Canada may have cause to ask for a cash redemption Monday or soon." If that happens, if SCO does have to pay back the cash these two companies loaned it, it's game over. SCO can withstand the slings and arrows of outraged open-source advocates. However, no company can withstand its creditors pulling its credit. eWEEK.com Linux & Open Source Center Editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has been using and writing about operating systems since the late '80s and thinks he may just have learned something about them along the way.