SCO's lawsuit claiming ownership of UNIX back on | Hacker News Reader

SCO's lawsuit claiming ownership of UNIX back on

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28 pointsTallGuyShort12 comments

The Groklaw article has a lot more depth.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090824142203182

2 very interesting points from that article:

"[court]: 'we AFFIRM the district court’s judgment with regards to the royalties due Novell under the 2003 Sun-SCO Agreement'"

So SCO owes Novell $2.54 million.

"SCO management is no longer in control of any decisions .. it's up the the Chapter 11 trustee"

That should bring a bit of reason to SCO's side of this mess.

1, The chapter11 administrators are lawyers.

2, Their only hope for any income is lawsuits.

They can bill for pursuing another lawsuit (see 1)

They risk being sued if they don't pursue any source of income (see 2)

-> expect this to go on for ever.

Who do the lawyers bill though, SCO? SCO is bankrupt, and clearly Novell is a much higher priority creditor than they would be. So they only get paid if they win. If they can't win, they're just throwing money down the toilet. No matter how unethical SCO's trustees might be, they're not morons.

Likewise, the incentive for other stakeholders to sue the trustees for not pursuing income needs to be balanced against the fact that they're suing an entity that's, y'know, bankrupt and unable to pay any judgement.

Bankrupt doesn't mean there is no money left. The receivers generally get first call on any remaining assets (otherwise who would be a receiver?).

The trustees are likely to be a large commercial law+accounting firm - they are a common target for lawsuits, since it's the only way for other lower ranked creditors to get any money back

Then there is the wholly unfounded suggestion that they might receive some lucrative business from another operating system vendor (through a couple of middlemen) to keep this whole circus going.

They risk being sued personally if they breach fiduciary duty. It isn't that the corporation risks being sued if its administrators breach fiduciary duty.

Someone ought to get some wooden stakes and silver bullets.

It's really been enough.

Looks like Darl McBride has been sleeping in his car for a few months.

I thought he looked like an organized crime thug in court on a murder charge.

http://catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/unix-nature.html

I have been following this lawsuit for a number of years and can't understand where in the hell is SCO finding the money to fund this lawsuit and what end result they are trying to achieve.........

cough Microsoft cough

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