Perhaps Fortune should spawn a sister publication and name it MisFortune.
Darl could be on the first cover.

SCO doesn't have any patents. I think they're asserting rights to code that was added to derivative versions of System V by their licensees. But their story changes every few weeks or so. Re "post-SCO", I'd be interested to see what Groklaw morphs into if and when the SCO case settles down. Maybe they'll perform a similar service (analysis of legal documents and courtroom proceedings) for other IP property disputes with widespread repercussions in the tech industry.

Some are already saying that SCO may be the tip of the iceberg as far as FOSS IP problems are concerned, even as SCO's case seems to be declining. (See the current issue of Fortune magazine, with Darl McBride on the cover, unfortunately not available online except to paid subscribers). Of course, one can argue that proprietary software should be held to same standards, but in practice FOSS is an easier target because the source code can be examined by hungry lawyers and they can always bring up the worldwide, quasi-anonymous nature of development of some projects.

I wonder what will happen to the patents that SCO allegedly owns should they go bust or get bought out.

What, say, if Microsoft were to buy them all, as they seem to be in the habit of doing? I think they would be a SCO worse than SCO.

SCO bought UNIXWare and the System V Agency from Novell, they certainly can sell it to someone (with Novell's approval).

There's still millions of deployed SCO UNIX boxes out there (in every McDonalds and many other major retail chains), the product is worth something to somebody.

My guess is that System V licencing goes back to Novell (they get 95% gross anyway), and UNIXWare & OpenServer go to Computer Associates or some other graveyard.

Groklaw has done a great job in dispelling Darl's FUD. Nobody takes SCO's threats seriously any more. Of course, Cravath and IBM are doing the heavy work, but nobody would notice without Groklaw. It's not at all common for pre-trial motions to be followed this closely.

The remaining question for SCOX is "how low can it go"? Except for that bump in early April, when SCO tried, unsuccessfully, a stock buyback to prop up the price, the decline from 14 to 5 has been close to linear. If you just project the line out, SCOX goes to zero around late summer. It probably won't go to penny stock levels for a while, though; they have some cash left. But with no licensing revenue and a huge legal burn rate, they can't go on for all that long.

The real question at this point, and it's one the players in the Open Source industry need to think about, is, who ends up with the rights to UNIX when SCO is gone? Sun? IBM? Red Hat? Boies?

It's sad, in a way, to realize that the best thing the original UNIX can do is go away.

Groklaw has only worked so well because (1) SCO/Darl are so ridiculously wrong and have no case, and (2) Everyone in the Linux world is unified against SCO.

Thank you for keeping your site "unmonetized", your tireless work, your insight and frankly wonderful genius.

The funny thing is that PJ doesn't actually live anywhere near IBM. She just got a PO box there to register her domain with...

That, and she had 2-3 different hosts for Groklaw as it expanded, not just ibiblio.org which runs on IBM computers

Moreover, I seem to remember that the IBM computers were donated well before she started Groklaw, if I have my timeline straight

Oh per-lease: Pamela Jones lives close to the IBM headquarters so that means she's an IBM lackey. What b/s.

Groklaw must have been sponsored by IBM, nobody would be doing the kind of work one sees there for free?

Ever since PJ was hired by OSRM, Groklaw's focus has changed dramatically. Early on it was "just the facts" about the case. Lately it has become more and more of a GPL zealot site, that tends to attack anyone and anything that is not wild about the GPL, including non-GPL open source!

There is one disturbing Groklaw trend that bothers me; it goes like this. It starts when a self-proclaimed IP holder, or an analyst, or a reporter says something absurd or uninformed or uneducated or something in bad faith about Linux - this quote, article, statement, etc... then makes it onto Groklaw's toplevel story, a sense of outrage and injustice is built up, worst-case scenarios are explored, and then there is a constructive, facts-based, breaking-down of the rhetoric. That's all fine, in and of itself, but the way I see it, all you need to do is break down the facts once and it becomes obvious that the situation is not quite as bad as you can make it out to be if you freak out about it in your own mind. It's another implementation of Hades to have to do this every day for the rest of eternity. I find sometimes that it's easier to remain calm, and not worry. So my concern is that there appears to be a need to amplify, or that Groklaw has, at times, amplified the FUD, prior to breaking it down. Instead of amplifying the FUD, ignore it, then you don't need to break it down.

Groklaw is cool, and some of the people that post there are some very experienced programmers - I have learned quite a few things from reading the posts over there.