-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Monday 16 June 2003 23:32, Fred A. Miller wrote:
Ok....it looks like most, if not all of the "dirty code" that SCO has identified is in: JFS, NUMA, RCU, and SMP. I'd like to know if SuSE has taken at look at all this and what do they have to say about it. IBM, so far, has simply make a denial but nothing else. This is not looking good people.
Fred
Well, the debate rages on on /., if you really want to call it a debate! However, many people are calling into the discussion the history of SysV and Unix. The new twist is apparently SCO is upping the ante to 3 times the original claim of damages from 1 billion to 3 billion - these guys have big cajones if nothing else. No one has "really" seen the alledged "dirty code" in context to date. There have been several translations of the German article related to the individual that had seen the supposed tainted code, none of which is in context and has much of the peripheral identification removed. The way I look at it is like this. SCO is shooting off its' mouth a lot while IBM has remained relatively mute. I net worth is somewhere in the neighborhood of 90+ billion while SCO is just under 40 million. IBM has a 1000 lbs gorilla for a legal team, SCO has no legal team of record (at least on the employee roster and internal payroll). Some guy on /. put it all up. Have a look at it and certain things become painfully obvious: SCO Net Assets: $37.4m (Source: Multex) Total Employees: 340 (Source: Multex & Yahoo! Finance) Legal Department Employees: Unknown (See below*) IBM Net Assets: $96,484m (Source: Multex) Total Employees: 315,889 (Source: Multex) Legal Department Employees: 308 (Source: Law.com) Sources: IBM Balance Sheet - http://yahoo.multexinvestor.com/IS.aspx?ticker=IBM &target=%2fstocks%2ffinancialinfo%2fstatements%2fb alancesheet%2fannual SCO Balance Sheet - http://yahoo.multexinvestor.com/IS.aspx?ticker=SCO X&target=%2fstocks%2ffinancialinfo%2fstatements%2f balancesheet%2fannual IBM Legal Department as of 2002 - http://www.law.com/special/professionals/nlj/2002/ nlj_client_list_who_defends_corporate_america.shtm l IBM Legal Department in 2000 and 1999 - http://www.corporatelegaltimes.com/editorial/surve ys/aug01.cfm *SCO's legal department is not anywhere in the top 200, naturally, and no mention of size or otherwise is made in any SEC filings, etc. However, unlike IBM, SCO has no "Head Counsel," nor is any real mention made of an in-house legal department. From this, I construe that SCO either outsources its legal needs to a third-party firm, or does not employ enough lawyers to require a full "department." The acquisition of David Boies perhaps corroborates the first. Any additional information that anyone has would be helpful. Source: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/16/2248200 Author: Tangfan http://tangfan.dyndns.org/ IBM could well afford to buy SCO, pay them out, or even if they loose their assest out drop for 96.484 billion to 93.484 billion. On the otherhand, SCO could be in a position to loose money as soon as Wall Street gets disinterested or come to the conclusion that perhaps SCO is blowing a bunch of smoke. Then we can expect SCO's stock to fall precipitously. I garner that this is one part of IBM thinking and the other part is to bleed them as dry as possible in legal fees - even if Boise is working on contingency this could get expensive in a hurry. And lastly, perhaps there are other motives at work. One is that by bring this issue to the forefront that any other idiot with Ideas of muscling OSS and Linux for cash via various law suits would be discouraged from doing so if IBM beats the tar out of SCO and crushes them. Also rumors abound about possible moves by AT&T, as well as a couple of others. I could be in the best interest of everyone (except SCO) to play this out, get it settled and be done with it in a way that can relatively assure that this sort of farce would be the least likely of options for any other low life's like SCO. Just my thoughts and HO. Curtis -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.2-rc1-SuSE (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE+71MUiqnGhdjCOJsRArfhAJ9Gj6omomVZS020V75THk0fSaN8pgCfUyVZ yrmJzlsX8dSOfJWnQfQ+Cko= =9MOP -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----