From the ‘SCO is Still Around!?’ files:
Two years ago, I wrote that SCO was (mostly) dead. Back in 2010, Novell won the critical ruling against SCO (once famously referred to as the ‘Smoking Crack Organization’ by Linus Torvalds), asserting the Novell and not SCO own the trademarks to Unix.
At the time Groklaw declared: Stewart Rules: Novell Wins! CASE CLOSED!
Fast forward two years, SCO is still kinda/sorta around, but not for much longer. Groklaw (love PJ!) has reported that SCO has now filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. A Chapter 7 bankruptcy is essentially a liquidation bankruptcy as opposed to Chapter 11 which is a reorganization effort.
In April of 2011, SCO sold off its Unix business to UniXs, so there really has been much left to reorganize in over a year. That said, SCO still want to pursue its legal actions against IBM, until its last dying breath.
On April 11, 2011, the Debtors sold and conveyed to UnXis, Inc. the UNIX® system software product and related services business. There are no other assets in the Debtors’ estates other than certain unfair competition and tortious interference claims asserted by the Debtors’ estates against International Business Machines Corporation (“IBM”) in an action (“District Court Action”) currently pending in the District Court for the District of Utah (the “District Court”).
With SCO not owning the copyrights to Unix, there really is little basis on which they could make a claim, even if the claim itself was in any way valid. That has never stopped SCO before and even though this company has never won a legal decision against any Linux associated vendor, they still persist.
I personally suspect that Chapter 7 isn’t the end of SCO yet either. I’d bet that as the zombie shell that is SCO will persist in this state for another few years yet. Zombies after all aren’t easy to kill since they’re dead already.
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.
