SCO Files For Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

You’ve probably heard by now that SCOX has filed for Chapter 11. It gets worse though, as it seems almost half of its finance department has either quit or been fired. Two of the people who quit had over ten years’ experience. I’ve been through a couple Chapter 11’s and they are never fun. That being said, when the financial people start to flee, something is severely wrong. It’s looking more and more likely to me that we’ll end up with some kind of shareholder lawsuit before this is all over with. Oddly, it seems SCO is blaming competition from Linux for some of its financial shortfall. If they would have tried to compete in the first place, they almost certainly wouldn’t be in this position now. Some companies are unduly vilified… but SCOX is not one of them. The question now becomes who will end up with the smoldering remains of SCO? One hopes it will be either IBM or Novell, so we can put this whole thing behind us. There’s always the small chance that some patent troll will try to pick things up for pennies on the dollar, even though it’s clear the case is nearly unwinnable.

–jeremy