An Objection to SCO's proposed reorganization, Feb 29, 2008

Time to catch up with numerous filings in the bankruptcy. Folks heard about the proposed reorganization and may be smelling money in the air, I gather, because here comes a creditor, Citi Financial, who's decided it's worth it now to hook a car to the creditors' train and send in their lawyers.

SCO has filed its 10K Annual Report for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2007. What a year it has been.

Wow. SCO has withdrawn its motion, the "emergency" motion, to sell its assets. No reason given. Maybe all the peals of laughter from the IBM and Novell attorneys at the hearing? And all the "Oh, no you don'ts"? Here's the docket listing:

IP Innovation LLC has just filed a patent infringement claim against Red Hat and Novell. It was filed October 9, case no. 2:2007cv00447, IP Innovation, LLC et al v. Red Hat Inc. et al, in Texas. Where else? The patent troll magnet state.

I thought it would be fun to include some of the media reaction to the news of the SCO bankruptcy filing. Some of the headlines are inspired. The winner has to be "SCO files Chapter 11 bankruptcy - Seeks court protection from its own lawsuits".

I hope the process that chose the standard for electrical outlets wasn't like this. People could get killed.

The Free Software Foundation has now issued a press release in response to Microsoft's July 5, 2007 claim that it is somehow exempt from GPLv3.

Heise is reporting now that there is an uproar over how the OOXML vote was handled in Germany. That happened in Switzerland too, where two formal objections have been filed. Portugal was a bit of a mess too, from reports we've heard. Now the same kinds of complaints are being heard from Germany.

SCO and Novell have jointly filed their Status Report, in which they answer the judge's question as to what they believe is the effect of his August 10th Memorandum Decision and Order. What's left for the trial? They've talked it over, and they don't agree.

I thought it would be useful, judging from some recent confusion in the media, to highlight the latest goings on in all the ongoing cases in the SCO saga

Want to laugh? Microsoft Says It Is Not Bound by GPLv3" -- they think they can so declare, like an emperor, and it becomes fiat. It's not so easy.

Here Microsoft has more money than God, and when a bunch of good-hearted volunteers give the world some wonderful free code, Microsoft's reaction is to club it to death with patents. What could ever justify such a horrible course, we are thinking.

You have to take a look at Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz's blog today. He has pledged the company will use its patents to defend Red Hat and Ubuntu.

... they sent out emails to 354 programmers, some of whom are never going to use the GPL anyway, like the Apache developers, who are great guys but they already have their own license. 332 emails reached their targets. Only 11% of those asked even responded. And of that number, 32 of the 34 said pretty much what Microsoft must have hoped they'd say

So the real question is this: is this in fact a patent cross license on specific patents after all? If it is, are we looking at a GPLv2 violation on its face?

Let Microsoft sue if it wishes. If there is one thing we've learned from the SCO saga, it's that FUD doesn't kill you, so long as you know better than to give in to it.

[SCO] wanted Groklaw placed under a gag order, so it couldn't cover the SCO litigation any more. It also wanted Linus Torvalds, Eben Moglen, and Eric Raymond to be prevented from commenting publicly about the litigation.

Nasdaq, as expected, has sent SCO a letter, which it has filed in an 8K with the SEC.

We're getting into deep waters now, because in some cases, Novell is carving out portions of SCO's claims.

More unpleasant insinuations, as you may have noticed by Paul McDougall on Information Week with the unbiased (ha ha) title, "IBM Helps Fund Web Hosting For Anti-SCO Site Groklaw." Yessir. No point of view there. What a stretching of facts to suit a purpose!