[Cialug] SCO's not dead yet

Tue Oct 9 09:47:28 CDT 2007

One more scenario: MS buys SCO. They've probably already invested more
in the company than it's worth today.

-dc

Bryan Baker wrote:
> Lot's of good stuff there Josh.
> 
> A couple additional data points that I believe make the scenario unlikely:
> 
> 1. the UNIX™ trademark is owned by The Open Group - has been since AT&T
> got out iirc.
> 2. The last rulings in Novell look pretty conclusive that SCOX itself
> owns little.
> 3. The bankruptcy is pretty clearly to stop the Novell trial from
> gutting their coffers.
> 
> 
> On Oct 8, 2007, at 4:22 PM, Josh More wrote:
>> A few thoughts from someone who spent far too many years working on SCO
>> systems.
>>
>> Yes, SCO is a rock solid unix, but bear in mind that architecting for
>> stability and architecting for extensibility are very different
>> operations.  Installing non-SCO software on SCO in a way that is
>> supportable is very difficult.
>>
>> SCO and Novell both believe that they owned the rights to the term
>> "Unix".  Given how people have been saying for years that Linux is
>> compatible with Unix, but does not contain Unix, I do not believe that
>> it would in anyone's best interest to purchase SCO for the (disputed)
>> Unix name.  If SCO does go away, I do see it as possible that Novell may
>> take a lesser payment if they get can get undisputed control over the
>> Unix source, just to stabilize things for the future.
>>
>> In many ways, they are in the same market position as Novell was before
>> they acquired SUSE.  They used to make a lot of money by selling
>> licenses, but those clients have been moving to Linux over the years.
>> Their ability to sell high-priced Unix over Linux has eroded as FUD has
>> stopped working.  They never really pursued embedded systems and their
>> network stack was so horrible that they never had a serious play on the
>> Internet.  Their current stock price may well reflect their true value
>> as a company.
>>
>> So, what value would a SCO purchase have?  I do not believe that anyone
>> would purchase them to support an internal system, as they have been
>> touting SCO's reliability for years.  Honestly, it *is* a rock solid and
>> stable system.  In fact, it's one that can run for years without updates
>> or maintenance.  (Hmm, wonder where all that projected maintenance
>> revenue went.)  If someone wanted to purchase SCO to make it easier to
>> move to Linux, it would be much cheaper to just stop updates and move to
>> Linux.  You could put a deep-inspection firewall in front of each SCO
>> server or move the servers to virtual environments and keep the legacy
>> systems running indefinitely.  A SCO purchase would not make sense for
>> that.
>>
>> Similarly, a SCO purchase would not make sense for someone wanting to
>> take over SCO's intellectual property.  The property with intrinsic
>> value is in dispute (IBM and Novell) and the rest of it is, at best, a
>> third tier player.  In fact, I only see two value propositions:
>>
>> 1) IBM might be interested in buying SCO simply to make the lawsuit go
>> away.  I see this as unlikely, as I believe that IBM is very likely to
>> win the suit, and having legal precedence on this issue would be good
>> for the industry.  That said, IBM might wind up acquiring all of SCO's
>> assets by default if they win and SCO cannot pay.
>>
>> 2) Someone (Novell, RedHat, Ubuntu) might be interested in buying SCO
>> if they can get SCO's contracts with their existing customers.  Any one
>> of the above companies would love to get *their* Linux into McDonalds
>> and some of the other big clients.  Novell would likely have an easier
>> time of it, as their stable/secure Linux market story makes a conversion
>> from SCO pretty easy.  However, it would be a *huge* boost for Ubuntu's
>> planned server move and if they get a decent conversion rate they would
>> turn into a big server player practically over night.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -Josh More, RHCE, CISSP, NCLP, GIAC
>>  morej at alliancetechnologies.net
>>  515-245-7701
>>
>>
>>
>>>>> Theron Conrey <theron.conrey at dice.com> 10/08/07 3:24 PM >>>
>> Right, So I'd look at it as a way (considering the final cost of
>> course) to keep alive and utilize your existing (and expensive) IT
>> infrastructure and help increase the odds of a future migration path as
>> opposed to an all out gut-and-replace down the line.  Buying what was
>> left (again cost) even at millions of dollars, may save well over that
>> amount in the long run.  Turning that code over, (cost sharing?) to a
>> large Linux stakeholder, and getting some agreement to provide an
>> upgrade path, would benefit the company financially, and allow for a
>> smoother migration, especially if people could write to the existing
>> code base.
>>
>> But, coming down out of la-la land, I realize it would be hard to sell
>> it.  But heh, McD dresses up tubers better than anyone else so anything
>> is possible.
>>
>> -Theron
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: cialug-bounces at cialug.org [mailto:cialug-bounces at cialug.org] On
>> Behalf Of Dave J. Hala Jr.
>> Sent: Monday, October 08, 2007 2:46 PM
>> To: Central Iowa Linux Users Group
>> Subject: RE: [Cialug] SCO's not dead yet
>>
>> That depends. Could you buy SCO for less than what a migration would
>> cost? If I was an old school corporate guy, its unlikely that I'd be
>> thinking about buying SCO and open sourcing their stuff so that I
>> (McDonalds) would benefit.
>>
>> If they opened up SCO's stuff would the open source community improve
>> it? Would it benefit McDonalds? How long would it take?
>>
>> If you did buy them, as a failing company, you'd probably consider it a
>> stop-gap measure to buy you some time before you did the migration
>> anyway.
>>
>> I just can't believe that McDonalds corporate would take that kind of
>> chance, but who knows?  I just can't see quarter pounders made from
>> penguin meat as a profitable undertaking.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, 2007-10-08 at 14:35 -0500, Theron Conrey wrote:
>>> I'd argue that point.  I'm pretty sure that a company as big as McD
>> would benefit from just buying the remaining bits of software that SCO
>> actually owns that runs their environment rather then migrating.
>> There's a reason that Sun purchased star office (and then began open
>> sourcing) rather than deploy windows office .  However, a fantastic
>> kicking would be delivered if McD (or another company) bought what was
>> left and open sourced whatever code they could find that was worth
>> anything.
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: cialug-bounces at cialug.org [mailto:cialug-bounces at cialug.org] On
>> Behalf Of Dave J. Hala Jr.
>>> Sent: Monday, October 08, 2007 2:01 PM
>>> To: Central Iowa Linux Users Group
>>> Subject: RE: [Cialug] SCO's not dead yet
>>>
>>> Why would you buy them? It would be cheaper for McDonalds to switch
>> to Windows then buy SCO. Why continue the fight? They've obviously been
>> beaten -there's no "revenue" to be gained.
>>>
>>> :)  Dave
>>>
>>> On Mon, 2007-10-08 at 18:46 +0000, Nathan C. Smith wrote:
>>>> I would be concerned about a SCO-friendly company with deep
>> pockets
>>>> buying them and continuing the fight.  You have to wonder how many
>>>> people are left at the company and what the SCO-faithful still
>> look
>>>> like.  Article Says McDonald's is a client.  Why don't they buy
>> them?
>>>>
>>>> -Nate
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Jonathan C. Bailey [mailto:jbailey at co.marshall.ia.us]
>>>> Sent: Monday, October 08, 2007 1:30 PM
>>>> To: Central Iowa Linux Users Group
>>>> Subject: Re: [Cialug] SCO's not dead yet
>>>>
>>>> I just read that and thought of Monty Python...
>>>>
>>>> "Bring out yer dead!"
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -Jon
>>>>
>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>> From: "David Champion" <dchampion at visionary.com>
>>>> To: "Central Iowa Linux Users Group" <cialug at cialug.org>
>>>> Sent: Monday, October 8, 2007 1:21:59 PM (GMT-0600)
>> America/Chicago
>>>> Subject: [Cialug] SCO's not dead yet
>>>>
>>>> Just FYI, SCO isn't dead yet...
>>>>
>>>>
>> http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBa
>>>> si
>>>> c&arti
>>>> cleId=304668&source=NLT_OS&nlid=41
>>>>
>>>> Darl: "It's like the Linux faithful are lined up for the bad news.
>>>> They've got their confetti ready to throw, and everybody's all
>> excited."
>>>>
>>>> Anyone know where I can get some good confetti?
>>>>
>>>> -dc
>>>>
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> 
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> Bryan "ka-klick" Baker
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