It's not really a pool. It's free. For simplicity's sake, I will put up the prize. 50 USD

The rules:

1) Entries restricted to non-lurking members of the Empeg BBS. You must have at least two posts to this BBS prior to 20:00 hours Pacific Standard Time March 25, 2004.

2) One entry per humanoid. Duplicating entries from alternate BBS IDs such as Jesus Christ or Saddam_Hussein will invalidate any entries from the IDs of their real owners.

3) How to enter: Post your entry here in a response to this message. E-mail a copy of your entry to the e-mail address listed for this BBS ID (jimhogan) with the subject "SCOPOOL" and with your legal name in the body of the message. It will be assumed that the e-mail address is the address to which $50 Paypal will be sent in the event that you are the winner. If you can not accept Paypal, you must include a postal address to which $50 in funds can be sent in the event you win in order for your entry to be valid. There will be no dickering after SCO dies! If you did not provide a valid Paypal e-mail address or valid postal address, the prize will go to the next runner-up!

4) Definition of SCO "death" for the purposes of the contest: You must guess the dates both when SCO share price (listed on NASDAQ under SCOX) will first drop below $5.00 and when it will drop below $1.00. A "perfect" prediction of death would be if you pick both dates exactly for a score of zero (no variation from actual dates of death). and this low score would win.

5) Entries are first-come, first-served. Your entry may not duplicate the dates of any previous entry. Please check your entry after posting and before e-mailing. If Tony or Tony snuck in there with the same dates, go back and edit/adjust your entry!

6) Scoring for imprefect entries: Once the actual dates for $5 and $1 death are known, entries will be assessed additional points as follows: One point for every day (early or late) of variance from the actual $5 day. *Three* points for every day of variance (early or late) from the actual $1 day (on the premise that the $1 day is the more critical indicator of death).

7) Unforseen circumstance will be dealt with at the discretion of the pool manager! If SCO tries some crap like a 1-to-85 split to avoid delisting, well, I'll deal with it and let you know. If the SEC e-mails and threatens to sue me for rigging the market and selling SCO short, well, I can say that I don't own any stock and I'll do the best I can.

8) You may elect a "SCO Lives!" entry (by putting this in the body of your post/e-mail). If, as of March 25, 2005, SCO has not died according to contest criteria, all SCO_Lives! entries will be put in a hat and a $50 winner chosen at randomy by my buddy's 4 year-old son, Fritz.

9) Entries must be logged before 12;00 noon PST on April 1, 2004. If SCOX has dropped below $5 before the April 1 dealine then the $5 scoring will be nullified. If SCOX drops below $1 before the contest deadline then the contest will be aborted in favor of some localized dancing and singing.

Let the entries begin!

SCO Lives!

Gawd, I hated typing that! But I don't think the stock will drop below $1 until they get creamed in the IBM trial, currently scheduled to begin on 4/11/05. I'd be happy to be wrong, though

--John

I think that you are mistaken. It is obvious that we own UNIX, Unix, unix, uNiX, *nix and Linux. We intend to aggressively persue users who do not hold the required licenses for our software, and are prepared to litigate where necessary.

We believe that at least 4000 users of these 'empeg' car stereo things owe us $600 each for Linux licensing . If you would all forward us your mailing address so that we can invoice you it would make our lives much simpler.

In addition, we also own FreeBSD, OSX, Beos, Qnx, Windows and Doors. Our legal team is working on the lawsuits as I write. We also believe that any use of glass as a transparent divider infringes on our trade secrets, patents and copyrights, as does any example of a moveable divider. In fact, our ownership claim of Doors extends to any property, tangible or otherwise, that goes by the name of Doors, doors, dOoRs, dOOrs, The Doors etc. That obviously includes the music produced by that band who used our copyright without our permission. As a matter of fact, we own all music. Our legal team is currently notifying all the artists and audiences of music that they must license the right to perform or listen to music from us. We believe that a very reasonable licensing fee of $100 per song will be welcomed by the public.

In the extremely unlikely event that our lawsuit with IBM fails in its first hearing, I'd like to remind you that we own the alphabet, and will license the letters "I", "B" and "M" to them for a suitably large amount. We will also notify the judge that he owes us _lots_ of money for the use of those letters after his name. We will also persue the Federal Reserve Bank for infringing on our trade secrets by distributing letters from the alphabet on millions of pieces of paper without our permission. In fact, by definition, we own all those pieces of paper.

As you can see, we have nothing to fear. SCO will not go bust.

$5: 4/18/04
$1: 6/7/04

Er, can we have the dates in ISO8601 format please?

$5 2004-04-12
$1 2004-06-18

1) It would help if you put your BBS handle in the subject of your e-mail (SCOPOOL - yourhandle) in case there are a lot of entries.

2) Yes, can we use ISO dates to avoid any possible confusion for subsequent entrants? That would be YYYY-MM-DD or thereabouts, eh?

3) I would like to amend the closure to April 1, 2005 -- one year from deadline. This shouldn't affect the first SCO LIVES! entry and has a better ring to it. OK?

$5: 2004-05-28
$1: 2004-10-01

$5: 2004-11-02
$1: 2005-01-31

3) I would like to amend the closure to April 1, 2005 -- one year from deadline. This shouldn't affect the first SCO LIVES! entry and has a better ring to it. OK?

That's fine. I stand by my "SCO Lives!" prediction.

--John

In addition, we also own FreeBSD, OSX, Beos, Qnx, Windows and Doors.

Oh, SWEET!! My 'GEOS' Operating system for the C=64 is safe!

Whew.. Was getting worried there..
Me.

But I don't think the stock will drop below $1 until they get creamed in the IBM trial, currently scheduled to begin on 4/11/05.

Part of my putting this "pool" out there was to see where people's opinion fell on this. 'Course, unless there are more entries, you may have a lock on the SCO Lives! position!

I also put the pool out there because of my sense that the prospect of a 2005 trial would only help SCO up to a point. I don't think they are going to be seeing any new donations of $50 million, their attempts to extort license fees don't seem to be having much effect. With Boies and Company having a stake in the company, it may be that they can keep valuation higher than it should be, but I don't see how they can keep market price high if the market at large decides that their chances against IBM are zilch.

Anyhow, my impulse to put this prize out there was to increase the fun of watching them go down the drain. They so deserve it. Nothing personal, but I hope you don't win!

Was there something that inspired you to post this? Some important revelation in the case that I missed?

Was there something that inspired you to post this? Some important revelation in the case that I missed?

Not *really*. I am not a business major nor a follower of Wall Street. I have, from time to time, though, looked up SCO's share price and saw it hit a transient around 8. Then I saw EV1's CEO regretting his decision....and it came to me that SCO was probably circling the drain (IBM lawsuit or no) and wouldn't it be fun to have a morbid SCO pool....

I then thought "Hmmm, organizing a *real* pool where everbody throws in a buck would be a real headache" so I decided to front for the prize. I didn't have $50 million to hand, so cast about for another sum. $5? Naw. $500? Nope. So, $50. I added the "must e-mail me" loop to minimize the chance that anybody would stuff the ballot box.

Yeah, go figure!

$5 - 2004-07-16
$1 - 2005-02-02

$5 - 2004-10-10
$1 - 2005-01-23

$5 2004-11-25
$1 2005-03-13

As SCO drops, Novell just keeps climbing

Approximately 2 hours to the closing of the "pool". Our one "SCO Lives!" entry has no competition. At least one entry didn't observe the rules re: e-mail. I have e-mail from:

rompel
philip_ohare
whitey
frog51

(unless other e-mails got killed by spamassasin for some reason).

All of the few posted entries to date are from well-known BBS-ers, so I am not going to sweat the e-mail unless there are last-minute entries from less-well-know persons. To make it unambiguous, though, an e-mail would be good, lest I bbrated for changing the rules. How about by end of April 1 in the time zone of your choice?

Jim

$5 2004-08-25
$1 2004-08-25

In reply to:

---

Entries must be logged before 12;00 noon PST on April 1, 2004

---

Seems I picked the wrong week to go on holiday...

(FWIW, I would have submitted a "SCO Lives!" entry - not because I believe it, but the chance of financial recompense would have sweetened the injustice of it)

Hmmm i did send an email, although it may have been html format...
I sent another in plain text even tho it's too late..

cheers,
Jaidev

I sent another in plain text even tho it's too late..

Fear not. All entries posted to this thead are A-OK.

SCOX at 10 bucks today. One person has a lock on the "rebuttal" position (SCO remains over $1 until 4/1/2005).

Most interesting entry is genixia's. He gets perfect score if SCO drops from 5.0+ to < 1.0 in a single day. Maybe he knows something about when SCO and other companies announce quarterly results and have their chats with Wall Street analysts....!

Most interesting entry is genixia's. He gets perfect score if SCO drops from 5.0+ to < 1.0 in a single day. Maybe he knows something about when SCO and other companies announce quarterly results and have their chats with Wall Street analysts

Yea, he's guilty insider trading.....

They're betting the farm on their legal claims, and the stocks been shorted to the point of a squeeze. When they go down it's going to be fast.

When they go down it's going to be fast.

Can't disagree with that analysis at all. Yeah, I wonder what earnings report will precipitate the meltdown (but I don't know enough about that stuff...)

Not worth a new thread, but I just stumbled across this press release. What a hoot! A SCO Forum 2004 in Vegas.? I mean, IT folks are great at convincing management that "I really need to attend Goatfuck 2004 in order to stay current." (or bullshit to that effect), but SCO Forum 2004??? I mean, who would be caught dead wandering around the SCO Village of the Damned in a polyester leisure suit?

I am half tempted to go to Vegas to look!

Let's all go and make an empeg meet out of it. We can crash the party and cause a big ruckus, while showing off our empegs that we definitely haven't paid $699 to run Linux on.

Come on, let's do it!

Let's all go and make an empeg meet out of it. We can crash the party and cause a big ruckus, while showing off our empegs that we definitely haven't paid $699 to run Linux on.

Tempt me!

Heh. "The $300 conference fee will be waived for those who stay at the MGM Grand and register for your stay on this web site. "

Is the hotel refundable if SCO tanks first? Pretty sad, actually. look at the current PDF of the conference exhibitor floorplan. It is early, sure, but I want to look in a few months to see if there's anybody listed other than SCO.

I could do that that, though. Wander around the MGM with an international orange "Warning! Unlicensed IP!" T-Shirt on? Sure. Let's talk.

Baystar Pulls Out

$8.32 in after-hours trading.

I saw that... scox made the list of top 20 losers of the day...

See, if SCO does die, who's gonna get the UNIX ownership then?

who's gonna get the UNIX ownership then?

In bankruptcy the remaining assets would be auctioned or sold off to claw back some money for the creditors. Stockholders are the lowest class on this list, below employees owed wages, business suppliers owed money, and investors holding loan notes or preferential shares.

There are always creditors when a company goes belly up. If SCO dosen't sell the rights before dying, the bankruptsie (spelling?) court will sell off all IP. Including the rights to UNIX weither its worth anything or not.

See, if SCO does die, who's gonna get the UNIX ownership then?

Is this some sort of trick question? SCO doesn't actually own UNIX. The trademark is owned by someone else. The copyrights are claimed to be owned by SCO and Novell both, so if SCO dies, I'd presume that leaves Novell with an uncontested claim. All SCO really owns of UNIX (as far as I can tell), is the right to sell and collect license fees for Novell, some documentation, and some historical legacy code (to which they don't necessarily own the copyright, so really have no control over).

I'd forgotten that whole "who owns Unix" quagmire. Let's ignore it for a second.

I wasn't looking for the theory of who would get "it" (whatever SCO owns) but the actuality of who would get "it". My point is that IBM would seem an obvious candidate, but I don't know that I want a major Unix vendor owning "it", as they could conceivably force Solaris, HPUX, Irix, etc. (wow, the crowd is getting thin) out of the market by refusing to license, leaving AIX, which I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

except that even IBM seem to prefer linux right now
Although someone out there could actually attempt to buy 'it' in an attempt to restart the legal cases.

Apparently there are companies out there who specialize in buying IP from failed companies only to try to screw money from everyone else in court.

Just bumping the thread since DaimlerChrysler made a motion to dismiss SCO's lawsuit with prejudice today. Looks like they were as low as $6.27 today.

Not that this has any direct relationship to your post, Jon, but it's important to note that even though everyone seems to be predicting SCO's death, SCOX is still trading at twice the price of two years ago:

IIRC, they were hurting pretty badly back then. Not to mention that there hasn't been a single major ruling one way or the other. As soon as they get ruled against, I imagine the stock price will dip further.

True. I've only ever seen two SCO installations in my life, so they must have been living solely on Unix licensing. Maybe the lawsuits weren't engineered by MS; maybe they just had no other funding source.

I've only ever seen two SCO installations in my life, so they must have been living solely on Unix licensing.

They (I am talking the original Santa Cruz Operation now, not Caldera) were quite strong player in their best days. After licensing Xenix (early System III port to 8088) from no less than Microsoft (who in turn licensed the SysIII source from AT&T) around 1980 SCO nursed it until more capable processors came out, and Xenix/286 and Xenix/386 in various versions and flavours were quite popular. A bit later came SCO Unix (later called SCO OpenServer), a relatively good, 386+ port of SysVr3, which is virtually unchanged to this day. I saw hundreds of them. The main competitor (there were many) was Interactive Systems Corporation product, also SysVr3 (significantly better than SCO, IMHO), and the competition was quite brisk. A month or two after ISC launched SysVr4 as one of AT&T's principal publishers, Kodak sold it to Sun, which ruined then discontinued it in short order. Soon AT&T sold its Unix System Laboratories (with Unix and excellent transaction monitor Tuxedo, now owned by BEA) to Novell, which didn't quite know what to do with it, but continued to develop a version of SysVr4 half-heartedly. It became UnixWare. Then SCO bought Unix operation from Novell (Unix name went to X/Open, Tuxedo to BEA), had mostly failed joint development effort with HP, focused on Tarantella (whatever that might be) and sold Unix to Caldera, which itself was Linux-focused startup by ex-Novell people.

My company was a very early adopter of Unix on Intel for business applications, so I lived through all of this. Fascinating history.

Er, what I was actually trying to say, there are many SCO OpenServer and UnixWare installations.

They (I am talking the original Santa Cruz Operation now, not Caldera) were quite strong player in their best days.

Great history! Yes, tons of small-mid business installs like PoS. In 1999, I was faced with the task of installing SCO on 50 Panasonic Toughbooks for a mobile blood banking systems (at ~$500 per seat IIRC). We kept asking the vendor "...and this doesn't run on Linux *why*?". I left that project later in 1999, but I hear it runs on Linux as of 2000-2001. I think lots of SCO customers were asking that type of $25,000 question.

SCO under $6.00 this fine Monday AM.

Note: to be consistent with my stated rules, I was going to mark the day that SCOX first trades/drops below $5/$1, not the day it *closes* below those prices. I think Genixia's instincts (re: rapid downward acceleration are good.) Maybe he wasn't pessimistic enough, though!!

A handy link to the SCO ticker on Yahoo, for those lazy folks following this thread.

tick... tick... tick...

I'm not a financial whiz, so help me out. There's been a lot of talk about people looking down on Google for having two different stock classes, the more influential of which will be held onto by Google insiders. First, why? Who cares? Second, what would the difference be between the Google folks hanging onto (to make up numbers) 5000 of these shares that are worth 10,000 normal shares and not having these special shares and just keeping 50,000,000 normal shares? I just don't get it. I don't get why anyone cares one way or the other.

Current price as of 4pm, May 10th: $4.992

w00t! Unless I'm mistaken, I'm the closest entry posted here... Wonder if anyone else emailed Jim with something closer.

Now for a nice, gradual descent to below the $1 mark...

w00t! Unless I'm mistaken, I'm the closest entry posted here... Wonder if anyone else emailed Jim with something closer.

W00T! Yea! All legit entries are also in posts here so you can see if anybody beat your 18 points. Oh, time for me to build that scorecard and do some math!

Ah, SCO circles the drain...

(Now back to work, Jim!)

A fine birthday gift, except I didn't guess it. I guessed my father's birthday. Oops.

Well, SCO reportedly took a hit in the DaimlerChrysler case today...trading at $4.25 as of this writing... as low as $4.14 today.

OUCH.

JaBZ = jaidev
hmmmmmm when did I respond with two completely different sets of dates? :P

EDIT: ahhhhhh

well, I'm in the top 10!

Quote:
well, I'm in the top 10!

Well, for every day that passes between now and January 31, your score drops by 3 points while several others go up by 3.

Go, go, go! S-C-O!

A bit late for an answer, but here is my understanding of it.
Having a two-class stock structure is a mechanism to decouple the share price from influence and eventually control over the board of directors. Class A shares, which were sold in the public offering have one vote per share, whereas Class B shares have 10 votes per share. Class B share are - at the option of the owner - convertible in Class A shares(1:1), whereas Class A shares can not be converted.

Quote:
There's been a lot of talk about people looking down on Google for having two different stock classes, the more influential of which will be held onto by Google insiders. First, why? Who cares?

Class A shareholders have less influence over strategic decisions. Some financial experts claim that the mere presence of a super-voting-power class, depresses the market value of the normal-voting-power class. It makes takeovers less likely, wether this is good or bad depends on the color of your flag. For the founders it protects innovation, experimentation and the do-no-evil approach, while it's obviously an unfortunate structure for those who would like to takeover. IIRC there are some economical theories that would accuse this system of beeing undemocratic.

Quote:
Second, what would the difference be between the Google folks hanging onto (to make up numbers) 5000 of these shares that are worth 10,000 normal shares and not having these special shares and just keeping 50,000,000 normal shares?

If the founders held the same class of shares as the average shareholder they would need more than 50% percent to be absolutely sure to keep control. With the dual class structure they are able to maintain that control even if their stake drops below 50%. Effectively it allows one to sell more shares while at the same time keeping absolute control.

But essentially all they're doing is holding onto ten $10 bills instead of a hundred $1 bills. Sure, it takes up less room in your wallet, but why does anyone care? If they just had one stock class and kept 50% of the shares behind closed doors, no one would care, right? But people seem to be up in arms just because they have a different denomination. Which raises two inverse questions. First, why do people care? It's not as if they were going to sell more than 49% of the shares regardless of how they're distributed. Second, if they knew it was going to cause this backlash, why would they bother? It's not as if they actually need to save space in their wallets.

Back up to $3.13 now, but new 52-week low of $2.96 this AM.

Novell produces 'smoking gun'

Amused me this morning - (I know I'm a few days late, but I was busy all weekend )

Wonder what this will do to SCO's value? Will it drop enough before delisting to bring out a pool winner.

As much as I hate to say it, should there be a TiVo Death Watch Pool.....

I think so. I'd also say that at $300 Million (in today's market place) they're seriously over-valued. An article I just read (like so many others) comments on acquisition, but I believe anyone savvy enough would wait for something closer to a firesale.

As I've said before, TiVo still has a lot going for it that other products don't have, but these features are getting fewer and farther between. They're also fairly simple/trivial features to add to already robust software from NDS and Digeo. A lot of people seem to think TiVo is about "the service" - well, it's not. It's all about "the software." The "service" is just the little myth they use to tie you to a monthly bill. Their major recurring cost is listing data supply - and that's a similar cost for everyone in the industry. Companies that have already rolled this cost into their current non-DVR products, and therefore your cable/satellite bill, can afford to deploy DVRs at significantly lower prices (per month, etc..) I'm not saying they will of course. Most of these companies also won't have imediate control of the software and will have to licence it - but given their customer volumes, their per-unit pricing is sure to be very low. NDS/DirecTV having the same parent likely have the sweetest deal going.

Bruno

This feels a lot like the MSIE/Netscape wars. One product was (at least initially) markedly better, but the one that was easier for people to get won hands-down. Bad news all over. People just don't care about quality anymore. I long for the days when thing were built to last.

All,

I wasn't even thinking...If SCOXE gets delisted, how to determine stock price??? Are the other listings legit/transparent/trackable? Usable for this contest/pool? I gather that it is common to delist when price drops below $1, but didn't anticipate this circumstance. If I had, I might have made criteria "less than $1 or delisted". Too late now, though.

I do not see for what reason NASDAQ would be motivated to consider a SCOXE appeal. Why would they want to keep a listing that smells like rotten fish? Doesn't do much to enhance the prestige of NASDAQ.

Anyhow, any sound advice from non-entrant stock market experts appreciated.

John/Rompel,

Feel free to object, but I am leaning toward using delisting as "dollar day". From what I can see, there is no way to track SCO share price accurately after delisting and the $1 price point was picked in great part because it would have been the point that they would fall off the board from delisting due to low price.

Had I to do it again, I certainly would have put "or delisted" in the rules.

This is much less satisfying to me than watching their share price drop to $0.99, but I have no sway over their auditors. I certainly still think that they are still headed for smoldering cinderdom, and that it won't take as long as you think, but that NASDAQ just won't be our guide anymore to the murky death spiral.

Thoughts?

Looks like TiVo is partnering with Comcast for now. Maybe that'll delay their death for a while.

This says it all:

Quote:
Financial terms of the multi-year, non-exclusive deal with the Philadelphia-based Comcast were not disclosed.

The skuttlebutt earlier was that Comcast wanted terms that TiVo found unacceptable. Now, they probably crawled back and got even less. Who knows whether TiVo's going to see much revenue from this. The real question for me, as somebody who really likes my TiVo, is whether this move will lead me to dump my DirecTV if and when I can get better TiVo support with a different platform.

Well, the date has arrived, the markets have closed, and SCO was even *up* a bit at the end of the day (weird)?

I suppose that this is as good a time as any to tell you all that the pool, the prize -- all of that -- was a practical joke. A hoax, I guess you could say.

Ah, well, thanks for coming!

Cheap B*stard!

SCO Lives!

I don't think I'd make this bet for another year. Then again, SCO has shown an amazing ability to drag this thing out. They might just make it another year. Let's all hope not!

Quote:
I suppose that this is as good a time as any to tell you all that the pool, the prize -- all of that -- was a practical joke. A hoax, I guess you could say.

I suppose you'll be asking PayPal for a refund at some point

Sorry I wasn't paying attention when you wanted to change the rules. Seems they were able to drag things out with NASDAQ too, so the point was moot.

Thanks again for the $50.

--John

Another tidbit: no smoking gun!
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5789132.html?tag=nl.e589

So it's been almost a year now; time to resurrect a SCO thread with this little development.

So how did people do? SCOX is now below $1 quite emphatically (and that makes me very happy, btw)

Hugo

How coincidental. We were just talking at lunch about SCO's final crushing defeat and I thought immediately of this old thread.

I didn't do so well with my guesses. I can't believe they drew it out nearly this long. Finally!

It's over! (well, hopefully... chapter 11 didn't affect us so much )

SCO Group files for bankruptcy
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070914/ap_on_hi_te/sco_group_bankruptcy

Now it's really over.

SCOX was de-listed from the NASDAQ this morning.

But in a move worthy of George Romero:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080214125705140

Of course this is a proposed $1M financing.

And the link through Bill Gate's buddy seems pretty transparent. We here in the U.S.A. will now once again beg to be saved by the EU Commission.

The Axis of Evil does exist after all!

Wow. Unbelievable. Bill really hates the penguin doesn't he?

This is a really old thread but SCO still refusing to die. Economic downturn and yet there are people out there who think that investing in SCO is a good idea...

They just won't go away:

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/08/25/the-roller-scoaster-continues-fight-with-novell-heads-to-trial/

"In any event, the company got a big boost on Monday when the Tenth Circuit ruled that the company has a right to a jury trial on its claim that it owns the Unix operating system. The ruling reversed a lower-court judge who, in 2007, had granted summary judgment against SCO, in favor of defendant Novell Inc."

-jk

I look forward to one day seeing my grandchildren update this thread.

So how did SCO pay for this lawsuit that took 6 years. Do they make anything ?

They were funded by Microsoft.

From the article Bitt linked:



Has anyone ever really thought of SCO as David taking on Goliath.

I guess he was wrong.

SCO trading suspended - the saga continues on...

... and it's finally the end...

Not really. Chapter 7 is just liquidation of assets. The assets (including the litigation) are being purchased by a bigger corporation with even deeper pockets. At least, that's how I understood it.

SCO pops its head up again :-/

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130326120115166

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2013061516065416

It just won't die...

Still twitching...

SCO Linux Suit Against IBM Stirs In Utah

Heh...I just came in to post that same link

What FOOL started this POOL?

$

And... it's done.

Well, that only took, what 12 years?

Practically the blink of an eye!

It was a fun re-read of the thread!

Can it really be over?

-jk

As long as lawyers continue to exist... Likely not.

Looks like the zombie is still twitching....

I kinda wonder if Oracle vs. Google (with respect to the use of Java on Android) is in the same boat of "lawsuits that shall never die?"

This might explain why Google has stuck with Java6 (and is now adopting a limited form of Java8 rather than the real deal). Kinda too bad, since Java8 is a much nicer language.

(But Kotlin is even nicer still, and Kotlin works just fine layered atop Java6 and Android.)

The beat goes on!

-jk

Amazing. Sad. Unsurprising.

Meanwhile, Oracle vs. Google is still on appeal. Google has adopted Java8 for Android but has also adopted Kotlin as a "first class language", which means that Android + Kotlin can and will eventually eliminate Java from the lives of most Android developers in much the same way that Swift has eliminated Objective-C from most iOS developers.

You can see an engineering path, via Kotlin, where all the original Java classes go away, but then Oracle will inevitably find a way to bring "derivative works" into the equation.

SCOTUS ruled Google was OK, citing fair use of Oracle's IP.

The SCO zombie watch is still going! Except now it's Xinuos v IBM.

...and here I was about to post the same thing

I'm assuming the answer to my question is because $$$ and $$$+$$$ because IBM....

But why haven't they (IBM, RedHat, <insert other parties with vested interest in Linux) bought the "IP" from dead SCO/Oracle/whoever owned it last and buried this for good?

I assume the lawyers are doing very well out of this.

I'm assuming it's for precedent. SCO/Oracle/whoever doesn't actually own any "IP" being infringed on. It's a shakedown. The only "copied" code that's been shown in the last decade have been a few sections of a few header files for common APIs. IIRC, those are defined in specifications, but even if they weren't, any junior engineer would come up with a similar clean-room implementation from a set of man pages. If IBM rolled over and payed out money for this sort of dubious claim, that would open the door for everyone and their brother to make similar claims in the hope of a payoff.


Except for SCO's lawyers. I think SCO ran out of money and couldn't pay them.

I'm aware of the situation, but buying the "IP" wouldn't be a verdict on whether or not an infringement occurred as least from my very nieve non-legal standpoint, it would however nail the coffin firmly shut. Maybe the law sees it differently, paying out royalties/penalties would be an indication of infringement but that's different (in my eyes) from buying the "IP".

Regardless of whether or not IBM/whoever bought the "IP", these types of claims will still happen regardless because patent trolls exist.

I think this is just such a specific situation that potentially has such dire consequences that I would have thought that obtaining would have been in linuxs be interest.

The problem with that is, again, there is no IP to buy. So even if one "bought" it (something), there's nothing to prevent future shakedowns from continuing.

As a side note, quite fun to read this thread from back in the day.
Just saying.

Dismissed with prejudice. But..., in case you missed it, Xinuous, which bought something from the SCO firesale, launched a new lawsuit against IBM, for what seem to be the same IP claims, along with some new ones about conspiring with Red Hat... or something. So I'm not sure this ought to be counted as dead, quite yet...

For the tidy sum of 14.25 million dollars...

I wonder what 20 years of lawyer fees cost?

Must have been 100s of millions