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Story: Unix decline extends SCO revenue drop

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You wrote: "After cost-cutting in recent quarters, the [Unix] division is profitable, but it faces increasing competition from Linux and Windows." A truer picture is in http://www.ovum.com/news/euronews.asp?id=2660: "SCO over the first six months of this fiscal year the company has spent $1 million less on R&D and nearly $4million less on sales and marketing." This is like cutting off the right arm you were using to defend yourself to avoid a gash on the cheek. The ovum article also said: "We believe that the most likely outcome in SCO's case against IBM is failure and our advice to existing users of SCO's technology is to make plans to migrate away from it."

Autozone migrated away from SCOG several years ago, and quickly completed the last little bit when SCOG filed suit.

SCOG is shipping a new release in June, but who will buy it, considering SCOG's pariah status, the fact that its principal business now seems to be unsuccessfully suing its former customers, and the likelihood that SCOG will be unable to support its current products, much less an upgrade produced while it was cutting back on research?

You also wrote: "SCO ... claimed a minor victory [over] AutoZone ... using Linux. Though that case is on hold until results from the IBM case emerge, the legal discovery process is continuing. Through that discovery, SCO said it found instances in which AutoZone mishandled SCO code, but that because it's now removed, SCO won't seek a preliminary injunction against AutoZone. 'Contrary to AutoZone's various statements to the court, SCO found many instances of copying of programs containing SCO OpenServer code,' McBride said in a conference call. 'AutoZone now has removed the code it used in its migration to Red Hat Linux. Because that claim is now removed, SCO is not going to move for a preliminary injunction at this time.'"

You should have checked SCOG's statements more thoroughly. Here are the facts contradicting the false and misleading statements.

First, the entire case, includiing discovery, is on hold. The limited discovery order expired when SCOG declined to file for a preliminary injunction by the deadline.

Second, SCOG gives the impression that Autozone illegally copied SCOG's source code into Linux. In fact:

a. While migrating away from SCOG's programs, Autozone copied its data, including copies of SCOG's executable products onto a PC running Linux. SCOG could not and did not run SCOG's products under Linux, then or later, and did not distribute those products.

b. Autozone had, and still has, a contract with SCOG allowing Autozone to make copies of SCOG's products. SCOG has shown no evidence of a restriction in the contract against copying the files to hardware running a different operating system, and I don't think that any such restriction exists. Thus Autozone did not mishandle SCOG's code.

c. I think that the sequence of events contradicts SCOG's explanation of its reason for failing to move for a preliminary injunction. Autozone said:
"AutoZone's ... "Spirit" server had some OpenServer compiled programs on it because of a recent restoration of the server after a crash. ... All of the files ... were loaded back onto the machine during the recovery process.... All of these programs (1,130) were removed from the server by October 26, 2004, after copies and backups were made ... The relevant OpenServer agreements between SCO and AutoZone ... are still in place and do not include any prohibitions on AutoZone's use of OpenServer compiled code on Linux machines. Accordingly, most of the OpenServer compiled code discussed above is properly licensed, and AutoZone is under no legal obligation to delete or recompile the code. Nevertheless, because AutoZone does not need the code to be compiled under OpenServer to serve its purposes (or in some cases, because AutoZone no longer needs the code at all), AutoZone has removed or recompiled the code as a courtesy to your client and to a

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