Linux
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Written by Daniel
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Saturday, 15 September 2007 10:00 |
SCO files for Chapter 11 ARS Technica By Nate Anderson | Published: September 14, 2007 - 04:14PM CT
No business strategy is more time-honored than using a sleepy Friday afternoon to drop some seriously bad news on investors, and SCO has followed the old playbook to the letter. At 3:21pm this afternoon, SCO sent a press release across the wire announcing that it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. That sound you hear is the giddy chuckling of Linux devotees across the globe.
The move comes one month after a judge ruled that SCO did not possess any of the UNIX copyrights it claimed to have received in a deal with Novell, a move that dealt a death blow to most of its Linux-related litigation. Despite putting a brave face on the matter, it was clear that SCO was running out of cash, and observers wondered just how long they could keep going without the hope of a win in court to sustain them.
SCO still tries to spin the bankruptcy as positive news, of course, arguing that it is "in the best long-term interest of SCO and its subsidiaries, as well as its customers, shareholders, and employees," and will enable the business to keep running.
Groklaw, which has a certain interest in this story, has already dug up SCO's court filing in which they lay out their list of top twenty creditors. Amici, a document management firm, tops the list at $500,650, an amount that we would imagine is related to the mountains of paper churned up by the company's legal machinations. Boies Schiller & Flexner, SCO's lawyers, come next on the list. Also present are Microsoft, Sun, Intel, Fujitsu, and HP&emdash;someone's been buying computer hardware and software on some serious credit.... More Comment in the Forums |