Royal Bank of Canada Cashes Out of SCO; SCO Begins Layoffs 585
jbell99999 is the first one to submit news that the Royal Bank of Canada is divesting itself of SCO stock. They're selling part of their preferred stock to Baystar, which has already indicated that they want to redeem their shares, and converting the rest to regular stock, which they can presumably sell on the open market. In other SCO news, Versicherung writes "The Santa Cruz Sentinel is reporting, SCO is laying off 10 percent of its worldwide workforce. The cuts come less than a month after the company brought on a new chief financial officer and just before the company ended its second fiscal quarter April 30." See also stories at Eweek and Linuxinsider.com.
I again refer you to my post dt. July 02 (Score:5, Insightful)
or just the quote below...
Differently seen companies chasing their tails in copyright infringments, trade protocol violations and intellectual property rights are generally the ones which are going to fall pretty soon.
Short on cash and not being able to earn/fund the millions they were used to in the dotgone era they are metamorphosing into scavengers and opportunists
SCO is a shining example The crummy economy is bringing out the best in a lot of Companys, their legal team thinks, "we are getting irrelevant (as a team) , lets think up something to make some money and make sure we dont' get laid off," "hmmm... patent # 5551212 seems to be worth looking into" and there starts their Road to Hell [lyricsdepot.com] [lyricsdepot.com]
Easy money (or so they think)
the legal team is now the marketing team
Re:good (Score:5, Insightful)
Layoffs are not nice (Score:3, Insightful)
The begining of the end... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not over yet... (Score:3, Insightful)
I know some of these people ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Regards,
John, human
Stupid RBC (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, theres no point in whining about it now, as they've made their money and are getting out of it probably with a bit of profit at the expense of people even stupider.
Still, it makes me question the bank I've used exclusively over the past 20 years. I'm forced to take a closer look at what they're doing with my money.
Investment Strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
- Have a product
- that is involved in sales
- to customers
- generating revenue
SCO seems to have none of these things.Re:I know some of these people ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Martyrdom (Score:5, Insightful)
--
Re:Thank "The Doors.".. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll catch hell and lose all my karma for this but perhaps we shouldn't be so quick to cheer this on. Darl is an evil bastard but I feel bad for the people who have the misfortune of working there (and who might not have anywhere else to go -- the economy sucks) that are about to get pink slips because of his ill-advised legal battle against IBM.
I doubt you'd be so quick to cheer if a member of your family worked for them -- or if you owned stock and have been watching Carl & Co. run it into ground.
Re:I know some of these people ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Thank "The Doors.".. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Intellectual Property Claims? (Score:3, Insightful)
Then again, it would be SMARTER never to have had the stocks in the first place...
Re:I know some of these people ... (Score:3, Insightful)
April employment stats released this morning reveal 625K new nonfarm jobs [yahoo.com] the last two months.
And with unemployment currently at 5.6% [bls.gov], that's lower than it's been the last 30 years, [bls.gov] excluding the dot-com bubble 1996-2001. (You'd be hard-pressed to find an economist who would indicate that unemployment of 4.2%, as we had in 1999, is good for the economy, much less sustainable.
If your friend can't find a job, perhaps he needs to switch location, career, or both. It's quite possible there aren't a lot of open positions for Unix gurus in Southern California these days.
Re:good (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Thank "The Doors.".. (Score:4, Insightful)
If I were an employee there I would have been looking for a new job for months and months and months... Not because I hate SCO but because I would consider the job to be too unstable. If they couldn't have the foresight to do the same... screw em.
"Screw 'em"? Nice attitude. What if they have been looking and can't find another job? And my comment gets modded down? Geesh!
Re:I know some of these people ... (Score:4, Insightful)
A bad thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
[usual disclaimers here; I'm a layperson who has to deal with issues related to things like this occasionally]
The difference between a real company and an intellectual property holding company is that a real company has some skin in the game when it comes to treating patents as trading cards. An IP holding company doesn't.
As a simple example, consider two companies, "A" and "B", with a patent portfolio of 100 patents each, and real products that they are trying to sell.
When company A says to company B "you're infringing patent A17", B can use its portfolio defensively, and come back with "yes, but you're infringing patent B34; let's trade licenses".
If company A is an IP holding company, there's nothing company B can do but pay whatever extortionate price: Company A has no product, and is therefore not infringing any of B's IP. B is pretty much hanging in the wind.
The only place this isn't true is where B has some IP that A acknowledges is the basis of derivative IP held by A, _and_ A values the ability to continue sublicensing it without B raising sublicense fees for the original work in response to the extortion suit.
IF SCO is, effectively shedding their vulnerable assets, and IF they really have IP assets, this could be an entrenchment where it could end up being very hard to dig them out for a very long time.
The only real recourse to this sort of business model is for company B to attack companies that are infringing B's portfolio, and which are owned by the same people who own company A - effectively countering extortion with blackmail.
Yeah, I'm one of those people who think we need intellectual property law reform.
-- Terry
Re:I know some of these people ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not a Good Stock to Own (Score:4, Insightful)
And as ~46% of the stock is held by insiders, it tells me that a whopping 92% of shareholders who aren't insiders think it's gonna go down.
Thems not good numbers.
Re:good (Score:2, Insightful)
Really, who the hell is still there? Maybe only those who've been looking for the last 6 mos and couldn't get a job anywhere else...?
Anyone with hardline skills should have found work a while ago and walked.
Re:Thank Churchil (Score:2, Insightful)
This is not even the begining of the end.
But it is the end of the beginning.
Re:Thank "The Doors.".. (Score:5, Insightful)
Kind of like how you might feek bad for telemarketers (the employees), but were happy when the do - not - call list went into effect.
Re:I know some of these people ... (Score:1, Insightful)
Welcome to the fucking club.
Re:Where have you been? (Score:5, Insightful)
Last year, in June, but I think even up until October, SCO claimed to have 330 employees.
When the recent layoffs were announced, they said they were laying off "way less than ten percent" of their 275 employees.
275? I thought they had 330?
Since SCO currently has 275 employees, the "way under ten percent" must mean they are laying off 27 people, which would be 9.81%.
This leaves them with 248. This means they have lost 82 people (330 - 248) or 24.84% ("way under 25%" using SCO speak) of their workforce in less than a year. Perhaps even in just six months.
Now since SCO didn't have layoffs until now, how do you suppose they dropped from 330 to 275 employees in the meantime? (I won't say anything about rats and sinking ships.)
Now why do I just bindly assume in SCO speak that "way under 10 percent" actually means 9.81%? Because if it were under nine percent, they would have said "way under nine percent!". So instead of laying off 27, they could have laid off 26 (9.45%) or laid off 5 (9.09%), in which case my above quackulations would need adjustment.
No, it goes like this. (Score:4, Insightful)
But, you say, they'll lose all their money if they lose!
That's not true either. Baystar can invest another X in Linux companies, which, if SCO wins will see their stock rise by, suppose, Y%. As long as X * Y > X + 80 million, Baystar will make a profit. And, if SCO wins, they make an emense profit.
Re:Bre-X (Score:2, Insightful)
I see, so you are objecting to the message based on what a word in it was spelled like. I am afraid that I cannot compete with this, such clearly blinding fire of wisdom and logic that is your mind.
Forgive me for I have trespassed on the sacred ground of thought in English language, a field that is defended fiercely by truly fearsome Palladins: the spelling Nazis.
Depends what they're doing (Score:3, Insightful)
Such lawyers destroy, people employed by Linux companies create, and generate real economical value.
Re:I know some of these people ... (Score:2, Insightful)
How offensive!
Please. In the future...
Do not compare the devil to SCO. Even the Bible says something about not slandering celestial beings (book of James?).
Selling to Baystar? Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I know some of these people ... (Score:1, Insightful)
If you going to dislike Bush fine, but PLEASE find a rational excuse for doing so.
Re:Thank "The Doors.".. (Score:5, Insightful)
yes, it has nasty repercussions for the folks in the SCO cube-farm, but what kind of legal seal-bashing would be encouraged by letting SCO get away with this? If they got away with it this time, some other C?O with an ichy palm would think that these kinds of anti-FOSS/GPL antics were a neat way to mint money. Can you imagine the digital landscape in 2-5 years if we let Darl cart away the cash because big-bully-bill set him up to take cheap shots at the penguins?
Perhaps BayStar will be a little bit more thorough in vetting the business plans of the companies they invest in? Maybe people will stop trying to rewrite/reinterpret their old contracts to get a better footing for creativity killing lawsuits? Maybe companies will return to the good old days of creating and selling products that consumers want and are willing to pay for, not just threatening people with lawsuits from ToonTown, UT.
Yes, our fellow techies are losing their jobs, but did you ever cry over Vader's poor unknowning Stormtrooper henchmen as they ate blaster-fire like the faceless minions they are? C'mon, if you're an employee of a company pulling antics like SCO, then you should either get your CV in order and start seriously looking for employment elsewhere or just lie down like a dog and get the whuppin' that's likely to come down the tracks.
SCO is not a corp.; it's a publicly traded lawsuit (Score:2, Insightful)
So much of the company's value is in its claim to Unix/Linux and so little in its actual products. If the suit fails, SCO will go.
Sell!
Re:Thank "The Doors.".. (Score:5, Insightful)
SCO is doomed with or without Darl. The sooner this ends the better. Think of all the resources this is wasting in companies like, IBM, Novell, DaimlerChrysler, Autozone, SGI, Redhat, etc. That could be much more profitably put towards new products, R&D, etc. How many new jobs might be created, instead of wasted on these legal struggles?
And whil
Re:Layoffs are not nice (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually SCO systems were used in some tanks. There were stories going around about patches etc being downloaded in the field in the early 90's.
That's probably this one [ncl.ac.uk]. Way back in REM-time, with BBS's still going strong.
The control system for the cabin of the Boeing 777 also used to run on UnixWare.
Not anymore [lynuxworks.com]; but I never really understood what a browser has to do with an operating system.
Re:Martyrdom (Score:5, Insightful)
He's been saying pretty much that for a while now. Called Linux users terrorists because he got hatemail for being a moron (well, he had more "justification" than that, but what I just said is pretty much what it boiled down to in the end...) I think they're his favorite scapegoats because they often point out how dumb he is, and that threatens his livelihood of writing BS articles...
In case you're wondering, why yes, I did spend quite a while researching him to see what his connections to SCO were after he started writing some of this nonsense. My conclusion was that he's not being paid by anyone, he's just a contrarian type who liked generating some controversy, because people calling him stupid reinforces for him the idea that he's smarter than them all, having "seen through" whatever "popular misconception" he's writing about today.
The best strategy for refuting him is to stick to points of provable, technical error (e.g. those points which do not depend on oppinion at all, however well-founded that oppinion might be) and politely call him on them. Preferably every single time he makes those mistakes (and trust me, there are plenty...). In doing so, CC whoever he's writing for (since he does guest columns and such, mostly), and chide him for not doing better fact-checking.
In other words, avoid any sort of ad hominem, and stick to the facts. Enough of that might get publications to reconsider his role as an "analyst"
Re:I know some of these people ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in Santa Cruz, and know some of these people who were laid off recently. I don't like what SCO is doing, either
Regards,
John, human
It can be a terrible thing for someone to lose their job, especially given that they probably were in ideal positions before Darl came along. But honestly, these folks shouldn't be at all surprised that they are being laid off. The writing has been on the wall for about nine months now, and for the last six or so it should have been blatantly obvious that anyone who doesn't add value to the litigation should not even count on a short term future with SCO.
I feel bad for these folks because the management decided to wreck their company, but that happened last year.
Re:Selling to Baystar? Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oh, shut the fuck up (Score:2, Insightful)
I have stood up for what I believe and have paid the costs more than once. IOW, I have quit and been fired for refusing to do the wrong thing & I do have a family.
Re:Layoffs are not nice (Score:2, Insightful)
First off, what's wrong with manufacturing weapons? The reality of the world today is that weapons are still necessary. In fact it's highly unlikely that weapons will ever be completely unnecessary.
Second, since when does the act of not manufacturing weapons become an excuse for immoral behaviour? I'm pretty sure if I came home and said "Hey Hon, I banged some hookers on my way home but at least I didn't manufacture any weapons!" I'd still end up homeless.
What an assinine comment, insightful my ass.
Pierre
Re:Thank "The Doors.".. (Score:4, Insightful)
The economy most certainly does not suck. These are not the dot com days, but that was fantasy land anyway and best not returned to (it will only cause another crash). Non-farm payrolls today were excellent, the unemployment remains at 5.7% (low), interest rates are low and rises over the next two years will be gradual and low in historical terms. The household balance sheet is robust, consumer spending reasonable and corporate investment good. Successful global trade has the benefit of keeping prices of goods and services down allowing income to be spent on even more.
The economy most certainly does not suck.
Besides, a company losing 10% of its ~270 employees is less than the local fast food store going out of business... at least the employees of the local fast food joint had more belief in what they were doing - any SCO employee with ethics would have got out far sooner.
Re:I should hope NOT (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you sure about that? Facts generally get overridden by whoever is yelling the loudest.
Re:Bre-X (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Thank "The Doors.".. (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't stand people who are laid off and then whine "but I didn't see it coming!" Yeah, you had your eyes shut. Keep 'em open next time, eh?
SCO employees have made their beds; now it is time for them to lie in them.
$80 million? It was $20M before today (Score:5, Insightful)
Baystar has what, $80 million in SCO?
What? The original Baystar/RBC investment was $50 million combined, of which, Baystar's part was $20 million. RBC picked up the other $30 million. Today, RBC converted one-third of its investment into SCOX common stock. The remaining two-thirds was sold to Baystar for an undisclosed sum of money, but you can bet it's a helluvalot less than the original $20 million Baystar spent for the same quantity of Series A-1 shares in October.
To be blunt, RBC took it in the shorts on this investment. Baystar screwed them hard. Baystar hooked RBC up with the original PIPE, and then turned around and flushed the value down the toilet with their notice to SCO that they intended to get their money back. They didn't give any indication to RBC about the grounds they were using to justify their demand for the return of capital, so RBC had to stand by and watch their own deadline for making a similar demand expire.
Once that deadline passed, Baystar effectively had first-dibs on picking over SCO's carcass in an ensuing fight. RBC would have to wait until after Baystar got its money back (even though Baystar's investment was smaller) before making any attempt to recover its own investment. This forced RBC's hand. They could sit around and watch their entire $30 million get flushed down the drain, or they could sell (at a loss) most of their investment to Baystar and convert the rest to common stock (at a price that's nearly 2.5x the market price for those common stock shares) in the hopes that they'll get something if SCO wins the lottery.
Unless RBC never expected to make money on this deal for some obscure tax benefit, they got hosed badly. I'd expect to see the idiot at RBC who signed off on this deal resigning very soon to "pursue other opportunities."
Baystar, meanwhile, doubles their position in SCO's Series A-1 convertible preferred stock for a sum that's almost certainly a lot less than the $20 million they paid for the other 20,000 shares, thus reducing their average share price and giving them an ironclad fist around SCO's throat.
Baystar's not as stupid as we originally thought. RBC, meanwhile, comes off looking much stupider than we originally thought.
Re:Thank "The Doors.".. (Score:2, Insightful)
When someone takes a job as a telemarketeer they are deliberately setting out to do something they should know pisses people off. So to hell with telemarketeers.
Most people, when they take a job as a telemarketer (or any other job the performance of which is likely to annoy or offend us) are doing so to feed themselves and their family. Not everyone is lucky enough to have an education, a high level of technical expertise, or the time or money to obtain one. Not everyone needs a fulfilling career. Some people just need a job.
Re:Thank "The Doors.".. (Score:4, Insightful)
I know it's fun to make extreme statements, but a little compassion ( or at least empathy) might be in order here.
Re:Not a Good Stock to Own (Score:2, Insightful)
You're perceptive, however (Score:5, Insightful)
Best case scenario is (a) Novell does in fact show that it owns SYS V (because all claims against Unix would be gone because Novell has released GPL code (b) IBM wins the suit and owns the remaining SCO assets (c) Daryl freaks and essentially closes the company (d) Baystar is left holding the bag (e) some DA grows a set and starts an investigation and indicts a lot of people
You've got to admit, that would be justice in every quarter. Complete win for Linux.
Re:Bre-X (Score:3, Insightful)
It's called a hedge, and it's absolutely rudimentary investing. You see in the one hand RBC has a lot of stock in organizations that would be seriously financially penalized if RBC won their case, so in the other hand they wanted to balance that by holding some of the potential threat -- if SCO somehow won, RBC would have a winner to slightly offset the losers.
RBC is cashing out because it's become obvious that SCO is sitting on nothing but promises so there is little risk to the other equity.
The only task remaining... (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course the lawyers are getting away with most of the profit, but everyone knows that shooting lawyers is the only way to keep them from getting rich off of everyone else's problems so there's no polite solution there.
Re:Thank "The Doors.".. (Score:4, Insightful)
The original poster didn't say they want to be annoying, he said that they are deliberately pissing people off. And for that, they deserve all of the verbal abuse that they get. If they're going to assist in lowering people's quality of life, they shouldn't expect any better in return.
Re:What if....... (Score:3, Insightful)
We could consider numerous "what-if" scenarios. Most of the good ones would require smarter, more visionary executives than Caldera or SCO ever employed. Part of Red Hat's continued success is due to strategic investments in research and development, especially the kernel improvements by Alan Cox, Stephen Tweedie, and Ingo Molnar. SuSE has made similar investments, garnering the attention of IBM and Novell.
I don't think OpenServer and UnixWare were good enough, especially under the care of such a small company, to compete with Linux or BSD. System V was a significant, though largely symbolic, asset. Caldera could have parlayed it into success in the Linux market. (Who knows: UnitedLinux might have grown to 1.1 or 2.0.) Instead, it was eaten from the inside out by old-SCO opportunists.
Re:Dirty drug infested hippy town (Score:3, Insightful)
Or, if you prefer, dirty Christian-infested towns. Why it's illegal to smoke a joint but perfectly legal for zealots to brainwash children, to deny adults the right to make their own medical choices, to teach women that they are secondary to men, to send the poor and minorities off to die while the rich laugh, to allow corporations to dictate legislation and to force the values of a few hypocrites onto people who don't agree with them, I will never understand.
I live in Santa Cruz, and I believe in letting people live the life they have chosen for themselves, to the greatest extent possible. You will never find me living in a bible town in Georgia, because I refuse to surround myself with backward, living-in-denial unhappy religious fanatics taking out their unnatural angst in the area I live in.
To those of you who practice religion and let it simply influence your innate sense of moral purpose, I give my compliments. If you must chose one, always chose the Covenenant of Grace over the Covenant of Works.
-Elentar
IP (Score:5, Insightful)
This might be poignant, but at least if I were to murder someone and the news media were reporting on it they would say "...an alleged murderer"... Why can't they say "alleged intellectual property rights" as SCO hasn't proved anything yet and there is still doubt here.
----
SCO... An alleged company with an alleged business plan.
Re:You're perceptive, however (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless you are saying that both Baystar and Royal Bank of Canada knew this prior to their investments; AND Baystar just wanted to replace the management and take over the company "assets" from the very beginning when they considered their investments. In that case, it's who's playing who. But I don't think so, I think they realized they were fooled and Baystar now realizes they have a tough decision to make whether it's worth to grab onto the last straws. Because the way the lawsuit is heading right now is that SCO is not providing anything substantial, while IBM will likely nail SCO in their countersuit. So what would you do from this point on if you were Baystar in this situation? I'd want my money back too, and what Baystar is doing is the only way to get it back.
Re:People without kids talking smack. (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey, I know the feeling of quitting a job that sucked and I was glad I was in a position once to do that once upon a time. It's great! But it's a luxury, and some things are worth sticking with the most soul crushing job in the world.
I, for one, wouldn't want to set your example for my kids. Yeah, some jobs you should keep in spite of how much they suck, but some jobs require you to leave them regardless of whether or not you'll be working again soon after. Your actions have greater ramifications, and the moral lessons you teach are just as important, if not more important, than the fiscal lessons you teach.
Re:Bre-X (Score:3, Insightful)
No, actually I learned a lesson that ./ readers do not read past the first line of any post. The message actually was about how we Canadians are not wonderful and if we think we are better, we will end up doing stuff which our American cousins are not so proud of. And immediately I got hammered to the ground for a spelling mistake. Quite a sad lesson. And totally unexpected one. It was an indefensible position indeed, except it was my spelling Nazi attackers who were in it.