[Linux-aus] Interesting take on SCO/ Canopy Group actions

[Tim Bowden]

First thing I have seen that makes any sense in explaining why SCO is 
making so much noise about Linux

http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/linux/story/0,10801,83452,00.html 


<quote>

So, what do you do when you have no real business but your stock price 
keeps going up? We all learned that lesson during the dot-com bubble: 
You use that stock as currency.

That brings us back to Vultus, which was majority-owned by The Canopy 
Group, former Novell boss Ray Noorda's personal investment fund. And 
Canopy -- surprise! -- also controls SCO, as well as some 30 other small 
companies.

Last week, SCO didn't disclose much information about the deal. But in 
fact, the details were already on the record in SCO's recent filings 
with the SEC.

It turns out SCO didn't simply use stock to buy another company. SCO 
printed up about $3 million in new stock. Then, in the complicated deal 
in which SCO acquired Vultus, the stock was cashed out, with most of the 
proceeds going to Canopy.

Some went to Canopy as a Vultus shareholder; the rest went to Canopy as 
compensation for taking on Vultus' debt, some of which was presumably 
owed to Canopy.

Got all that? If it sounds like a shell game, well, that's the way 
Canopy likes to move its companies around. But in effect, Canopy used 
SCO's stock price, boosted by SCO's Linux threats, to rake in a couple 
of million dollars in cash behind the scenes.


</quote>