SCO is finally “Dead Parrot” dead

SCO has ceased to be. It has expired and gone to meet its maker. It's joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-company. With apologies to Monty Python's Dead Parrot sketch, SCO, the company behind a series of foolish anti-Linux lawsuits, is finally really and truly dead.

SCO, which has been in Chapter 11 bankruptcy since the fall of 2007, has now gone into Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The difference is that in chapter 11 there is some plan, albeit not very rational in SCO's case, that the company can eventually return to normal business. In Chapter 7, all that's left is to close and padlock the doors and then sell the furniture.

As Pamela "PJ" Jones, founding editor of Groklaw, a leading intectuall property legal news site, said, "Did you ever think you'd see this day? I confess I did not. I thought SCO, now calling itself TSG, or so they told the world, would never let a outsider trustee come into the picture, which they will have to in Chapter 7..."

In SCO's case, with 3.7-million in debt and not quite $150-thousand left in cash, there's really is much for a trustee to do except to switch out the locks and put up the closed sign. SCO's Unix operating system properties, OpenServer and UnixWare were spun out to a new company, UnXis, last year. There really is nothing less.

Even now, believe it or not, SCO still has delusions that the court will rule that its IBM lawsuit will somehow be resumed and that a miracle will happen and that they'll win the lawsuit. That's about as likely as a certain deceased Norwegian Blue parrot getting up from his rest to voom through his cage's  bars.

While SCO never came close to shutting Linux down, it did help set up a pattern of intellectual property lawsuits and threats that plague Linux to this day.

Microsoft, for example, makes more money from Linux-related patent agreements with Android vendors than it does its own mobile operating systems. Recently, Microsoft, which helped bankroll SCO's lawsuits in the early and mid-200s, has successfully gotten a company using Linux servers to pay it for unspecified Linux-related patents).

SCO may be all but dead, but it's anti-Linux IP FUD lives on stronger than ever.

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