Re: Goddam
@ratfox - I think that SCO spent about $100 million on the case. About 80% of that though was money from a certain large software company who wanted to see Linux dead, and most of the rest was from another software/hardware company who also wanted to see Linux dead. The details came out when an outside business consultant who was handling the transactions didn't get what he felt was the full commission he was owed, upon which somehow or other one of the emails outlining the deal got leaked.
We can assume that IBM and Novell also spent a fair bit of change as well.
In addition, SCOG also sued various retailers, manufacturing companies, utilities etc. over what they claimed were "Linux" issues, but were actually based on SCO Unix licensing claims (most of the trade press at the time could be counted on to reprint SCOG's bullshit verbatim). SCOG picked on former SCO Unix customers who had switched to Linux and sued them on alleged past violations of SCO Unix licenses. A number of these companies settled out of court because they couldn't afford to fight the claims. Chrysler fought them, and because the case ended up in a Michigan court instead of the very dodgy Delaware courts, SCOG had their arse handed to them by the judge in less than a week.
SCOG was solvent at the time they went into bankruptcy. It was simply a tactical move because a judge in Utah was about to hand down a ruling which would have flattened SCOG entirely. However, a couple of days before that was due they filed for bankruptcy in Delaware (the state is to dodgy corporate registration in the US what Liberia is to decrepit oil tankers in the shipping industry). Bankruptcy court trumps all others, so that put a freeze on the counter suits while letting SCOG continue to sue world + dog while being granted immunity from counter action. They then proceeded to piss away all their money on lawyers in a series of hopeless cases.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
