SCO Sells Its UNIX Product Line To London Firm 95
An anonymous reader writes "SCO just forged a deal to sell its UNIX product line to Gulf Capital Partners LLC of London. Under the terms of the deal, SCO would continue to exist as a separate company helmed by Darl McBride, with its primary remaining assets being related to its mobile platform offerings. However, it's noted that this deal must be approved by the court, and should not be considered 'done' yet. It could fall through as others have in the past."
A wise man once said... (Score:3, Insightful)
...there is a sucker born every minute!
A tale of two courts (Score:5, Insightful)
A while back a Judge ruled SCO does not own the UNIX(tm) copyrights.
((That would be SysV copyrights that were gutted by the BSD settlement, but that is a whole other story.))
SCO's argument in that case was that they could not run the UNIX business without the copyrights. And thus when they bought the business they must have bought the copyrights.
Now SCO is in BK court and in the processes of selling the business. The problem is they are also in the appeals court where their argument that the only way to sell the business is with the copyrights is being evaluated. So SCO is
a) selling the business without the copyrights in the BK court.
b) arguing that to buy the business you must get the copyrights in the appeals court.
It is supposed to be bad practice to argue different things in different courts at the same time.
But that does not stop SCO.
Why not ask Obama for Money? (Score:1, Insightful)
Perhaps they should ask the Obama Government for a hand out, hmm, I mean a bail out package.
Gulf Capital Partners (Score:4, Insightful)
They're an investment banking firm. I see two possibilities: either SCO managed to convince them that if they only had enough funds, they could turn their flavor of UNIX into a hugely profitable product, or Gulf Capital Partners is already one of SCO's few customers and they want to make sure they don't lose support when the company shuts its doors.
The latter would surprise me.
Maybe somebody should ask them what the hell they're thinking?
Why did you headline this as a done deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
> However, it's noted that this deal must be approved by the court, and should not be
> considered 'done' yet.
Then why did you headline it as if it were?
Re:Why did you headline this as a done deal? (Score:2, Insightful)
> However, it's noted that this deal must be approved by the court, and should not be
> considered 'done' yet.
Then why did you headline it as if it were?
Because he's a Slastard "editur"
why doesn't the board fire the managers? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's amazing how they keep going, and going and going. And how a management team can fly the plane into the side of a mountain and keep their jobs.
All joking aside, what inspired this? (Score:3, Insightful)
I have trouble believing Microsoft are pulling the strings here - I'd have thought they'd have realised by now that this was a complete waste of time.
Unless, of course, their aim isn't to destabilise Linux completely but just give their salesmen a bargaining chip in large negotiations - in which case there may be a return on investment.
Assuming Microsoft aren't pulling the strings, what on Earth would possess any company to even consider this? Even the tiniest bit of due diligence - so tiny that you don't even read the IT press to get the IT world's view on it - would show that SCO have been doing this for five years without so much as an iota of success and quite a lot of defeat.
Bridge for sale (Score:2, Insightful)
Care to be specific? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is the huge stain splashed on the open source community by PJ and her gang of thugs at Groklaw. Bullying and intimidation of the IT press and individuals was all you ever got from Groklaw... well, that, and a lot of amateur legal advice.
Please give a specific, verifiable example?