decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more...
decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.


You won't find me on Facebook


Donate

Donate Paypal


No Legal Advice

The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.


What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments


Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
SCO's February MORs and SCO Partner News
Thursday, April 01 2010 @ 11:29 PM EDT

SCO's Monthly Operating Reports for February are now filed. And Hans Bayer, now indisputably VP for Worldwide Sales, sent a Spring 2010 letter to SCO Partners, telling them how happy SCO was to finally be getting its day in court and announcing "the release of OpenServer 5.0.7 for Hyper-V which now allows customers to run their applications in either the Hyper-V or VMware environment with full support from SCO."

I see on page 12 of SCO Operation's February MOR that SCO retained Wasatch Economics in January. Christine Botosan has a "consulting engagement" with them, since 2009. For all the good it did SCO at trial. They also hired Cursed Network, and here's what they do:

Cursed Network Corporation offers small business the capability and availability of an enterprise-level IT department with outsourcing affordability. Our extensive network of suppliers and specialists gives us the ability to recommend, acquire, and maintain nearly any computer solution imaginable.
So, who provides the "full support" Bayer wrote about, SCO or Cursed Network?

Say, don't forget April 7 is the next hearing, starting at 3 PM, in the bankruptcy in Delaware. I hope some of you can attend. It's the hearing about Darl McBride's offer to buy the mobility business.

Here are the MORs:

04/01/2010 - 1100 - Debtor-In-Possession Monthly Operating Report for Filing Period as of 2/28/10 (The SCO Group, Inc.; 07-11337) Filed by Edward N. Cahn, Chapter 11 Trustee for The SCO Group, Inc., et al.. (Fatell, Bonnie) (Entered: 04/01/2010)

04/01/2010 - 1101 - Debtor-In-Possession Monthly Operating Report for Filing Period as of 2/28/10 (SCO Operations, Inc.; 07-11338) Filed by Edward N. Cahn, Chapter 11 Trustee for The SCO Group, Inc., et al.. (Fatell, Bonnie) (Entered: 04/01/2010)

And here's the letter to partners:

****************************

Spring 2010

Dear SCO Partners,

We appreciate your continued loyalty to SCO’s UNIX business as we partner together in providing customers with critical enterprise business solutions.

As an organization we continue to work with the bankruptcy trustee to identify ways to ensure SCO’s solvency and continued dedication to our customers, partners and the UNIX platform. We have made significant progress in reducing costs and continue to work to provide long term solutions for our customers and partners.

We are pleased with the increasing interest and adoption of our UNIX virtualization products as customers find greater opportunities for cost-effective growth and maintenance in this growing technology.

We are pleased to announce the release of OpenServer 5.0.7 for Hyper-V which now allows customers to run their applications in either the Hyper-V or VMware environment with full support from SCO. More information about this key release is available in this newsletter.

As you may know, last August the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit overturned on appeal the primary negative rulings against SCO from the Federal District Court regarding our lawsuit with Novell. We are pleased that we are finally getting our day in court.

Again we thank you for your continued support. We appreciate your dedication and loyalty. If you have questions or concerns, I encourage you to contact your SCO sales representative or alternatively you can contact us at [redacted].

Best Regards,

Hans Bayer
Vice President
World Wide Sale


  


SCO's February MORs and SCO Partner News | 220 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Corrections...
Authored by: chrisbrown on Thursday, April 01 2010 @ 11:36 PM EDT
/World Wide Sale/World Wide Sales/

Or is there only one sale?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Off-Topic Thread...
Authored by: chrisbrown on Thursday, April 01 2010 @ 11:37 PM EDT
Off-Topic Thread...

Clickies Appreciated.

[ Reply to This | # ]

News Picks Discussions
Authored by: chrisbrown on Thursday, April 01 2010 @ 11:38 PM EDT
Post the News Pick Title in your Subject.

Gracias

[ Reply to This | # ]

About Hans Beyer
Authored by: chrisbrown on Thursday, April 01 2010 @ 11:42 PM EDT
About Hans Bayer from Groklaw Wednesday, July 29 2009

[ Reply to This | # ]

Day in court.
Authored by: chrisbrown on Friday, April 02 2010 @ 12:00 AM EDT
"...telling them how happy SCO was to finally be getting its day in court."

And what a happy day it was!

There should be permanent link to that article. "Groklaw's Greatest Hits" or something.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cursed Network Support
Authored by: edfair on Friday, April 02 2010 @ 12:03 AM EDT
Sounds like they have downsized far enough that they don't need a full time
network (or possibly hardware) person anymore and have hired a local outfit to
take care of their equipment.

There is nothing on the Cursed website that would indicate that they support
tSCOg's software other than the claim that they take care of it all, which would
indicate that they could get into an individual machine if it had network
problems.

I wonder if Cursed management is aware of the financial problems with tSCOg and
whether they are charging enough for their services to assume the risk of not
being paid. In similar circumstances I used to make sure there wasn't much of an
accounts receivable buildup.

---
Ed Fair -- the "Over-the-hill" one

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cursed Network
Authored by: PolR on Friday, April 02 2010 @ 12:57 AM EDT
With a name like this I wonder what kind of genius designed the branding. It
definitely inspires confidence. Well this must be the same branding philosophy
than the one behind the perfume called Poison. There must be something I am
missing. Perhaps nobody cares about branding as long as the name is memorable.

[ Reply to This | # ]

That made me laugh
Authored by: MikeA on Friday, April 02 2010 @ 01:24 AM EDT
"...Hans Bayer, now indisputably VP for Worldwide Sales,..."

Haha.

---
“'Unifying UNIX with Linux for Business' are trademarks or registered trademarks of Caldera International, Inc."

[ Reply to This | # ]

How nice! EVERYONE is happy!
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 02 2010 @ 01:39 AM EDT

a Spring 2010 letter to SCO Partners, telling them how happy SCO was to finally be getting its day in court

Well, now, isn't that nice! We are all just one big happy family together!

... possibly with the little difference that their happiness came before the verdict, and ours came after the verdict ... just an unimportant detail...

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cursed Network has a very amateurish looking web page.
Authored by: billyskank on Friday, April 02 2010 @ 03:42 AM EDT
Even in 1998 it would have looked naff.

---
It's not the software that's free; it's you.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Software (UK) Ltd
Authored by: tiger99 on Friday, April 02 2010 @ 04:36 AM EDT
Worth only $4? You can't get much lower than that!

[ Reply to This | # ]

Well "Cursed" they surely are :-D [You just cant make this stuff up].
Authored by: SilverWave on Friday, April 02 2010 @ 06:52 AM EDT
LOL

---
RMS: The 4 Freedoms
0 run the program for any purpose
1 study the source code and change it
2 make copies and distribute them
3 publish modified versions

[ Reply to This | # ]

'with full support from SCO'
Authored by: Ian Al on Friday, April 02 2010 @ 07:10 AM EDT
Can anyone tell me the range of values for the variable, 'full'? Are there any
support folk left?

If so, why has Cahn not sold them off with the Unix assets in order to finance
the litigation?

Feelings of elation are quite ephemeral. Feelings of contempt seem to last a
lifetime - well, seven years at least.

---
Regards
Ian Al

I sentence you to seven years, or more with good behaviour.

[ Reply to This | # ]

At least someone is trying to run a computer company
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 02 2010 @ 08:05 AM EDT

It's nice to see that somebody at SCO is still in the computer business.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Ethical Botosan
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 02 2010 @ 08:05 AM EDT
"Presidential Endowed Chair in Ethical Financial Reporting"
Ethical???? But for ..... ROFLMAO. We need to start a list of "They said this with a straight face ...." quotes.

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • Seconded!! N/T - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 02 2010 @ 03:31 PM EDT
SCO's February MORs and SCO Partner News
Authored by: JamesK on Friday, April 02 2010 @ 08:11 AM EDT
{
We are pleased that we are finally getting our day in court.
}

He appears to have missed a couple of minor details...

---
IANALAIDPOOTV

(I am not a lawyer and I don't play one on TV)

[ Reply to This | # ]

Hyper-V / VMware
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 02 2010 @ 08:55 AM EDT
If Hyper-V and VMware are capable of running OpenServer then SCO must
"own" those, right?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Some calm and rationality, please.
Authored by: brindafella on Friday, April 02 2010 @ 09:42 AM EDT

Seriously, I do not see the 'filing' or the date of the MOR. What are these. please?

Let's not portray this as stupidity when the person had a filing deadline ahead of the decision!

Then again, if the filing deadline was behind the decision, then this is actual stupidity that ought to be investigated by the Bankruptcy Court, the Federal investigators, and so on until this executive is made to feel personally shrivelled and professionally unemployable.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO revenue plummeted in February
Authored by: Baud on Friday, April 02 2010 @ 10:04 AM EDT
SCO revenue was only $295,717 for february. It's a decrease of 42% from
january and a decrease of 49% year over year.

Last revenue projection for FY2010 was $38,949,000 (see #655-5) with a net
income of $19,179,000. Good luck with that, don't panic!

[ Reply to This | # ]

Darl's proposed purchase
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 02 2010 @ 10:55 AM EDT
Has anybody filed an objection to Darl's plan yet?

[ Reply to This | # ]

MOR's as Spreadsheets (updated for Feb filing)
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 02 2010 @ 11:16 AM EDT
Bank Accounts

Liability (two tabs)

Cash Receipts and Disbursements

[ Reply to This | # ]

I wouldn't have thought it was possible
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 02 2010 @ 12:51 PM EDT

At the cost of a considerable degree of depression, I spent some time letting the "reasonable" terms of the Cahn/Gross-approved Yarro loan come in on me, last night, as a result of Thursday's post here on the 8K update. Emotionally at least, I had kept that at arms length, having been focused on the silly "trial" that just finished.

At some time in this affair, I would have thought that it would be impossible to find someone in the current arena that I cared less for than for 1 each Darl McBride. In the course of the above ponderings, it occurred to me that that is no longer the case. I don't think it's even close.

In terms of the personification of evil, irresponsibility, and disregard for the trust of the positions they hold or have held, both Cahn and Gross seem to me at this point to dwarf Mr. McBride. Stewart runs a somewhat distant third. I'm getting to the point where I even find McBride relatively tolerable. His forthright "we didn't need the copyrights to run the Unixware business" during the trial was about the only honest testamony that came from the SCO side, and was even close to refreshing.

The US legal system has enough problems, just by virtue of its antiquity and astounding level of inefficiency, which is becoming less and less tolerable in a modern day world. When its chieftans are chosen from the likes of Cahn and Gross, I don't really see that it has a chance.

WB

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO's February MORs and SCO Partner News
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 02 2010 @ 01:32 PM EDT
I'm one of the first people to port OpenServer to VMWare. It is the *only* way
to assure that your SCO based business software will continue to run, because
modern hardware is fundamentally incompatible with such an old operating system
published by a company that cannot afford to test against new hardware anymore,
particularly with its 1980's style installer and its "you've plugged in a
USB device: rebuild your kernel!!" hash of unpublished flags and the need
to reboot to actually see your hardware.

No hardware vendor wants to waste their energy providing test equipment or any
support to SCO, and with VMWare, you can make a snapshot image, back it up onto
tape, and restart it a year from now without having to keep your old hardware
around. I've helped a few companies do precisely this as part of their switch to
Linux, just to keep the old software around for legacy reporting reasons.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Goodwill $2M - allowed in BK ?
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 02 2010 @ 02:46 PM EDT
I thought bankruptcy accounting was supposed to be cash and asset based. How is
it that SCO can carry $2M, over 1/3 or their assets in Goodwill?

Can any accountant comment. Also this amount does not appear to have been
depreciated over time as it is the same value as it was on the date of the
bankruptcy filing.

Well at least they have not been writing it down as a tax shelter for profits.

[ Reply to This | # ]

cursed wha - sounds funny
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 02 2010 @ 08:52 PM EDT
cursed networks eh?
Guess satan came to pick up the debt owed form darl and found he wasn't
there......

[ Reply to This | # ]

April 7 BK Hearing
Authored by: snakebitehurts on Friday, April 02 2010 @ 09:37 PM EDT
I plan to be there

I request borrowing Chris Brown's "speed pen". Don't need his iron
butt, they have nice cushions there. :) I have multiple gel pens at the
ready.

Chris has certainly raised the bar on reporting. Will do my best.

While this hearing would normally be mundane, there has to be some mention of
the Jury decision. Am curious what will be said at the hearing.

MikeD

[ Reply to This | # ]

Oh Red Hat! Oh Red Hat! Wherefore Art Thou, Red Hat!?
Authored by: sproggit on Saturday, April 03 2010 @ 06:12 AM EDT
On August 4th, 2003, Red Hat Inc filed suit against The SCO Group. PJ wrote an excellent article covering the event, including a full copy of the complaint in text, which you can find here. If you will allow me to summarize the key points of that complaint, you will find that they can be set out thus:


1. A request for declaratory judgement for non-infringement of copyrights.

2. A request for declaratory judgement for non-infringement of trade secrets.

3. A complaint of false advertising in violation of section 43(a) of the Lanham Act.

4. A complaint of deceptive trade practices in violation of the Delaware Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

5. A complaint of unfair competition as prohibited by Common Law.

6. A complaint of tortious interference with prospective business opportunities.

7. A complaint of Trade Libel and Disparagement.


Now, if we take a moment to reflect on that list of issues, it seems to me - and IANAL - that the jury verdict in the SCO vs. Novell case that has just been returned may successfully resolve item # 1 on the above list.

I further believe that in the course of the various cases, The SCO Group amended their initial complaint and withdrew allegations of Trade Secret violation [though I may be wrong on that one]. If so, it is not clear to me whether or not the relatively brief period of time in which SCO's claim was being publicly declared is sufficient to enable Red Hat to press this point of their case. It will be interesting, though.

Now the false advertising claim and the Lanham Act dimension are potentially much more interesting. There is now little dispute (SCO employees notwithstanding) that SCO did not own the Unix copyrights at the time in which they were making their claims. There is also no dispute that Darl McBride, Blake Stowell and others repeatedly claimed the opposite - that SCO did, in fact, own the copyrights. Not being familiar with the application of the Lanham Act, it is not clear to me how this charge might play out, but at a superficial level it would seem that SCO have a case to answer here.

Now the Delaware Deceptive Trade Practices Act might also be interesting. Clearly brought because the case was originally started in Delaware, it remains to be seen whether or not this complaint steps up to relevance if/when Red Hat's case moves forward. As to the final three, well that's anybody's guess. In a sense these last are not exactly moot, but by the time a Court gets done deciding the first four.



Now, I am sure there may be new readers who wonder why I have raised the question of the Red Hat litigation at this point in time. We've recently been discussing the fact that the Trustee, Edward Cahn, believes that SCO can now proceed with their court case against IBM. However, I think it is timely for us to consider Red Hat for one key reason.

That, simply, relates to the clause in the APA that gave Novell the right to direct SCO to take certain actions with respect to licensees, and to step in and take those actions if SCO failed to do so. So in other words, it is likely that the bulk of the case against IBM may become moot. If that were to happen (IBM's counter-claims notwithstanding) is it possible that the Red Hat case becomes even more significant? How would the SCO Management fare against, for example, Lanham Act claims? I'm curious. Given that SCO are in Chapter 11 and given that the Red Hat case was stayed pending the Novell litigation, how do courts decide which of the remaining cases gets to proceed first? Does the fact that the IBM case has already completed discovery put it ahead of Red Hat? Are there other criteria?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Where Auto Zone settlement?
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, April 03 2010 @ 07:38 AM EDT
As is being inquired about elsewhere, I shall do so here, too. Has anyone seen a
specific item about the Auto Zone settlement? Since SCO needed the Yarro loan to
survive the trial, the Auto Zone settlement must have been a pittance. Is it
disguised as something else?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details )