Chapter 11 Trustee Appointed For SCO 89
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The judge overseeing the SCO Chapter 11 bankruptcy case has issued an order appointing a chapter 11 trustee to oversee SCO's operations. However, the judge's reasoning is far from clear. While the judge believes that SCO has 'abandoned rehabilitation' to bet its future on litigation, he doesn't think it appropriate to convert their case to Chapter 7 liquidation. So SCO's management hasn't been fired yet, but they're no longer fully in charge either. It's not clear why the bankruptcy judge opted for this solution, when even the US Trustee was pushing to fire SCO's management and convert the case to Chapter 7. In short, SCO is still only mostly dead, rather than all dead, and in desperate search of a miracle worker."
Free UnixWare and OpenServer! (Score:3, Insightful)
Please, whoever ends up acquiring SCO and their IP, set UnixWare and OpenServer free! Release the source code to both under a very liberal open source license. I hope Novell or whoever else has rights to the code could agree to that.
Re:Free UnixWare and OpenServer! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Free UnixWare and OpenServer! (Score:5, Informative)
That's not likely to happen unless someone with deep pockets is willing to buy the source code and re-release it under an open source license. The job of the bankruptcy trustee isn't to punish SCO -- under a Chapter 7 his job is to maximize the value of SCO's assets so the creditors get as much of their money back as possible. Under a Chapter 11 his job is to see that they return to business as a viable entity while seeking the best possible deal for the creditors -- but seeing as how SCO has no viable business plan I'd say it's only a matter of time before it becomes a Chapter 7.
Re:Free UnixWare and OpenServer! (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately, I can't see WHEN it will become so. They should have been converted to a 7 filing and the Judge didn't do that much. While appointing an 11 Trustee is a step in the right direction, it's little more than a baby step really.
I can't see WHY the Judge is erring so far on the side of caution here- there won't be any appealing a 7 conversion at this point as SCO's clearly not restructuring to be profitable again. They're still hoping for the **BIG** litigation score- which will never happen as they didn't have a case in that regard to begin with.
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They're still hoping for the **BIG** litigation score- which will never happen as they didn't have a case in that regard to begin with.
Interestingly enough, that lawsuit could be seen as an "asset" of sorts. When you file bankruptcy you have to list any causes of action or ongoing lawsuits that you are a party to. The theory is that if the cases have merit the US Trustee can take them from you, litigate them to the logical conclusion and use the proceeds to repay your creditors.
That the US Trustee hasn't already seized their ongoing cases is pretty telling of how much "merit" they have. Of course most of here already knew that. I am s
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That the US Trustee hasn't already seized their ongoing cases is pretty telling
The US Trustee's Office was present in the bankruptcy proceedings but has not up till now been acting as a trustee in charge of SCO's business. Now that the judge has ordered a trustee appointed to oversee the bankruptcy, that trustee will indeed be in charge of the litigation and can determine if it is worth pursuing or not.
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I can't see WHY the Judge is erring so far on the side of caution here- there won't be any appealing a 7 conversion at this point as SCO's clearly not restructuring to be profitable again. They're still hoping for the **BIG** litigation score- which will never happen as they didn't have a case in that regard to begin with.
Possibly this: Either way the company will run into the ground and the judge knows that. If the judge ordered Chap. 7 Darl would spend the rest of his life telling everyone how he was cheated out of his litigation fortune and chance to save the company, and it would all be the judge's fault. By letting them carry on, the case will be lost or more likely SCO will run out of money (surely a matter of weeks now). Same result, but this way he can't complain that the court didn't let SCO give it their best shot.
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If the judge ordered Chap. 7 Darl would spend the rest of his life telling everyone how he was cheated out of his litigation fortune and chance to save the company
Except that he wouldn't be cheated out of his litigation fortune. If the litigation results in a settlement larger than the debts that SCO owes to it's creditors than the Chapter 7 wouldn't be carried to conclusion and SCO could remain in business as a viable enterprise. If the settlement is smaller than those debts than SCO wasn't going to stay in business anyway.
The US Trustee would have no interest in shutting down the litigation because whatever money SCO gains from it would be used to pay back their
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Except that the lawyers are going to be on the clock every second the lawsuit is in progress.
That has to be taken into account as well.
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Really? The judge is supposed to care if Darl goes and cries to his friends how he was cheated?
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You wouldn't need very deep pockets, and IBM could certainly afford it without blinking, but I don't think they will for the very simple reason that those particular copyrights are of little importance: at worst they can be used to threaten a few of SCO's ex-customers, but that's about all.
Of somewhat greater importance are the core System V copyrights, but according to the Utah ruling these are owned by Novell. All that needs to happen at this point is for the Utah ruling to stand.
(Of course, even with th
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That's not likely to happen unless someone with deep pockets is willing to buy the source code and re-release it under an open source license.
SCO Does Not Own Unixware [wikipedia.org]. Keep reading that link to find out what they do own; parts of Unixware derived from SCO UNIX. Even if you bought SCO, the best you could do with that code is sell binary Unixware. You don't have the license to redistribute Novell's source code.
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My kingdom for a mod point. Sigh.
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Re:Free UnixWare and OpenServer! (Score:5, Informative)
They can't.
Please see Ransom Love's comment [eweek.com]:
Indeed, at first we wanted to open-source all of Unix's code, but we quickly found that even though we owned it, it was, and still is, full of other companies copyrights.
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No, they had rights to the code under various licenses. That allowed them to sell/resell it. It did not give them the right to relicense it under $FLOSS_LICENSE.
Re:Free UnixWare and OpenServer! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Couldn't you file a public notice that if any of the copyright holders are interested in maintaining their copyright, they should contact so-and-so by such-and-such a date.
After that date, open the code.
After all, you couldn't abandon your private property on a public highway and then just leave it there forever.
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No, Copyright doesn't change hands so easily as that. If it did, what's to stop, say, Microsoft from doing that with regards to the Linux code? In a VERY obscure newspaper (it's public, even if only 500 people read it). And then claiming the entire Linux codebase as their own, since its Copyright has obviously been abandoned.
Or if you
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Some topics just aren't discussed in polite company.
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Slashdot is "polite company"? You must have your threshold set to "6"!
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Why in the fuck would you want UnixWare when you already have open source Solaris?
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To Blathe! (Score:4, Funny)
"Did you say to blathe? Well as everyone knows, to blathe means to bluff."
SCO bluffed, and got caught. Miracle Max only works for True Love, not To Blathe
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Humiliations galore. Now THAT's a noble cause.
Suing people is *not* a valid business model... (Score:5, Insightful)
...unless you're a lawyer. Look at the RIAA, SCO, et al. Their 'businesses' are all suffering while the lawyers laugh all the way to the bank.
It's a damn shame that the trial lawyer lobby is so strong.
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In short, SCO is still only mostly dead, rather than all dead
Evil never dies...
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> Evil never dies...
Because nobody goes after the lawyers!
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Miracle Worker? (Score:2)
Re:Miracle Worker? (Score:4, Interesting)
There were stories that the CEO of Enron, Ken Lay called the Whitehouse after things collapsed. His call was not taken. Just a few years before he was Uncle Kenny at the BBQs in Crawford, TX. Probably be about the same here.
Re:Miracle Worker? (Score:5, Funny)
There were stories that the CEO of Enron, Ken Lay called the Whitehouse after things collapsed. His call was not taken.
"Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system. 'IS THIS THING ON? *tap, tap, tap* HEY THIS IS GEORGE LEAVE A MESSAGE!' is not available. At the tone please record your message. When you are finished recording you can hang up or press '1' for more options. To leave a callback number, press '5'."
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
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Aw... don't feel bad SCO... (Score:1)
You've been "mostly dead" all day...
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You've been "mostly dead" all day...
Time to go through his pockets for loose change I think.
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Like a very bad sci-fi or Rocky movie, this thing just won't die.
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Sadly (Score:2)
They are... too big to fail... And thus the undead will always walk among you, feasting upon your virgin flesh, forever hungry.. MUHaHaHa
Maybe to keep 'em from sneaking stuff out the door (Score:5, Interesting)
However, the judge's reasoning is far from clear.
Maybe this is the judge's way of putting a watchdog on 'em to make sure they don't run out the door with or (further) destroy the value of some of the remaining assets before things get settled?
(Not only am I NAL but I'm especially NA bankruptcy L.)
Wikipedia is your friend. (Score:4, Informative)
Looks like that might be it.
According to the Wikipedia article on chapter 11 [wikipedia.org], chapter 11 lets the company run either under a court-appointed trustee or the "debtor in posession", i.e. the original management acting as a trustee and operating under the same rules, behind the shield of the bankruptcy process. And:
Looks like the judge is saying that, while it isn't clear yet whether SCO will be able to emerge from chapter 11 as a viable business or will have to be liquidated under chapter 7, the current management is either grossly mismanaging the company or at least making it appear that they aren't doing as well for the interests of the creditors and stockholders as a trustee would.
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Re:Maybe to keep 'em from sneaking stuff out the d (Score:5, Informative)
SCO petitioned at the last minute for an administrator, with less power than a real trustee, to handle only selected parts of a full Chapter 11 proceeding. That's what they liked best. From Groklaw, no one seems to know if such an arrangement was even a legal option.
A chapter 7 with appointed trustee is what they would like least. That presumes there's no chance of the company ever reorganizing, and the goal is instead to pay off as many of the creditors as possible.
The judge gave them something in the middle - a standard chapter 11 ,which means he is holding out the chance that some purchase offer might be legitimate and SCO just might rise again.
If I'm ever facing 20 years in maximum security, I plan to claim house arrest with an ankle bracelet is quite reasonable and customary for whatever I did, and see if the judge will split the difference and give me 5 in minimum security. Who knows, it could work.
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I'm willing to give them a legit purchase offer. $100 for the whole thing. $200 if I can punch Darl in the face at closing.
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You focus on the purchase price.
I got you covered for the extra $100
Even if you can't purchase SCO the $100 is still yours for the punch.
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However, the judge's reasoning is far from clear.
My impression is that on the one hand he has SCO telling that they could win billions and billions of dollars from their lawsuits if the judge will just give them a chance, and on the other hand he has IBM, Novell and the US Trustee telling him "let's stick a fork in this turkey and call it done." And he knows neither side is impartial.
He probably thinks that, unless he wants to research the merits of SCO's case against IBM, Novell and the rest of the world,
incentivized (Score:2, Insightful)
incentivized? WTF? What language do you normally speak? Martian?
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To the mod who called this "flamebait":
Have you ever watched a group of children, who are working hard to learn communication skills? For want of a real word, they will make up a word, spur of the moment, and agree to it's meaning amongst themselves.
Incentivized is just such a word. A group of people were having a discussion, and none of them had sufficient knowledge of the English language to express themselves. One of the ignorant and juvenile individuals tried incentivized, and the rest of those ignor
Judges rarely convert to chapter 7 (Score:5, Informative)
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Are criminal proceedings against SCO's officers still a possibility? The SCO corporation may have more assets to work with than are currently in view if it can be shown that its officers have either improperly converted business assets to personal holdings, or contracts with lawyers were illegal and should be voided.
If there is any possibility like that still out there, the best thing for the stockholders and creditors would be to delay conversion to Chapter 7.
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What is relatively rare is the appointment of a Trustee in a CH11 case which is invariably done over the objections of the debtor. It's an
Day of the dead (Score:2)
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Judge: All right, you litigious screwheads, listen up. This, is my BOOM STICK!
My Read (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the first point about bankruptcy court is that the debtors are given time to reorganize and to become viable and the creditors are given an opportunity to get some of the money they are owed paid back.
The Judge is saying the guys who were running SCO were not taking bankruptcy seriously. The Judge called them out for bleeding cash, wasting time, requesting and missing multiple extensions on the deadline for them to produce a reorganizing plan, and coming up with the half-baked sales agreements all predicated on, after the particular assets are sold, creditors paid off, and attorneys funded, if, the big vaporous if, there's litigation proceeds, then SCO's owners and managers do very well. When he referenced "Waiting for Godot" and SCO's management "waiting for the dough" and betting the company on litigation, I think he chose the Chapter 11 Trustee plan so that when the appeals in Novell are decided (it is suggested that that will be by Aug. 31) someone with a clear eye can look at that decision and decide if there's truly money for the estate in pursuit of the litigation or whether it's time to turn out the lights. In the decision he repeats SCO's assertion that customers will miss them and I think he does that not as an endorsement of SCO's position but to signal that there is a profitable going concern in the server products and somebody will be glad to be in that business, i.e., there will be a serious buyer.
Between the lines, I think he does not like what SCO's management has done by following the litigation business model and I further think he sees that the only way for the smaller creditors to get their money back is to put less sue-happy people in charge. I'm sure the judge was not pleased with the way some bills got paid by subsidiaries and how Darl McBride paid for one suitor/rainmaker out of his own pocket. SCO was racing the clock and the clock ran out.
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not only zombie-like, but completely inauthentic (Score:4, Funny)
As a resident of Santa Cruz, I would expect any authentic "Santa Cruz Operation" to involve growing plants.
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SCO is not the Santa Cruz Operation.
The Santa Cruz Operation (aka oldSCO or Santa Cruz) sold their OS business to Caldera in 2001. Caldera then changed its name to "The SCO Group" (aka newSCO or the SCOundrels) allegedly to take advantage of the goodwill, but later events (the lawsuit) seem to indicate it was to sow confusion as to their identity.
Santa Cruz renamed itself to Tarantella after the sale. Tarantella was sold to Sun for $25M in July 2005.
It could be beneficial (Score:4, Interesting)
The trustee has to investigate SCO's business. The trustee can decide that SCO's whole 'thing' is a fraud and has no chance of success. The trustee can settle all the cases out of court and on the terms that Novell and IBM dictate. That would put a quick end to the whole thing and Darl and company couldn't appeal the decision.
If SCO's assets were sold in chapter 7, there is a chance that the litigation would go on for years.
So, chapter 11 with a trustee might be better than chapter 7.
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The trustee can settle all the cases out of court and on the terms that Novell and IBM dictate.
My understanding is that Novell already has a decision, no need to settle. Novell will get theirs first, then the creditors (and whatever IBM's Nazgul manage to squeeze, of course).
SCO???? (Score:3, Funny)
This is the tale that never ends. (Score:1)
It goes on and on my friends. Darl started it seven years ago, how it stops noone will ever know because ... (Repeat)
Zombie Nazis vs Zombie SCO (Score:2)
Some Germans may be relieved another boogie man is taking the roll of "safe to ridicule and attack". I expect to see Darl and company show up as targets in many FPS games in the future. Even in the world of PC, blowing out the brainz of SCO executives and lawyers will be acceptable if not glorified.
Advert: Amazing enemies SCO throws at you next as they bring their dark fantasies to life.
"thousands of lines of stolen code in Linux..." *budda budda boom*
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vs.
Meh, pretty paltry for a villain.
Doesn't shout, I don't think he's ever cackled... does he even own a cat?
SCO is like a bad movie monster... (Score:2, Funny)
That is not dead which can eternal lie... (Score:2)
And in strange aeons, even death may die.
Vampires Running the Bloodbank (Score:1, Flamebait)
" It's not clear why the bankruptcy judge opted for this solution..."
A great many of the gyrations of the case since the crack legal team that defended them came on board, as well as many to come, will make much more sense if you remember one salient point: the deal with the lawyers was that if SCO won, they'd get a cut of the winnings, but if SCO lost, they'd get a cut of the corpse.
What judge is going to order that his fellow court officers' income for a job well done get cut out of their deal? As long as
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A great many of the gyrations of the case since the crack legal team that defended them came on board
I thought it was SCO's executives that were on crack?
Get writing (Score:2)
Die! Die! Why won't you die! (Score:2)
"Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. There is an idea: The idea that open-source is free for the taking for any company that wishes to steal it and has deep enough pockets for litigating."
It's gavel-proof.
The only solution here.. (Score:2)