SCO still hungry for lawsuits?

SCO, the unflappable litigator extraordinaire, has filed a proposed plan which would dump its UNIX assets onto an unknown company known as unXis Inc.

SCO claims the move will favorably resolve its outstanding debt to clients, creditors, shareholders and partners.

Overview

unXis to Acquire SCO’s UNIX Business

On Monday, June 15th, SCO notified the bankruptcy court that The SCO Group had signed a definitive Purchase and Sale Agreement with unXis, Inc. (unXis) which we believe should help resolve in our favor the motions by IBM and Novell (and the US Trustee) to convert our Chapter 11 bankruptcy case to a case under Chapter 7 liquidation. This sale of the UNIX business, and some mobility assets, to unXis would favorably resolve the bankruptcy for our creditors, customers, shareholders and partners. …

The Court has set the date of July 27 to review the agreement and motions and has stated that it will enter a decision within a few days thereafter. SCO is confident and optimistic that the agreement with unXis will satisfy all conditions and parameters to allow SCO to pay its creditors, satisfy any legal claims, emerge from bankruptcy and to move the UNIX business forward with unXis in a very exciting way.

The Purchase and Sale Agreement (PSA) has been signed by The SCO Group and certain of its subsidiaries as sellers and unXis, as buyer, pursuant to which the UNIX product business will be sold to unXis. unXis has been organized by Gulf Cap Partners LLC and the MerchantBridge Group. MerchantBridge is a London-based private equity and direct investment company with strong links in the Middle East and a prestigious pedigree of transactions in the telecommunications and related sectors (www.merchant-bridge.com). Gulf Cap Partners was formed by a number of private equity professionals from the US and the Gulf to take advantage of the substantial changes in the private equity markets brought about by the financial crisis (www.gulfcappartners.com). Both Gulf Cap Partners and MerchantBridge will take an active role in the management of unXis.

A few of the key components of the PSA are as follows:

• The buyer’s management team is expected to consist of new and existing SCO management that will lead the UNIX business forward.
• The SCO Group will continue with certain natively grown Me Inc. mobility applications and continue its efforts to reach a successful conclusion of litigation issues related to Novell, IBM, RedHat, and AutoZone and other potential defendants. Darl C. McBride will continue as CEO of The SCO Group.
• Most of the current SCO staff, including developers, support personnel, sales and marketing are expected to join unXis.
• All UNIX products as well as the SCO Mobile Server products will be sold to unXis.
• OpenServer and UnixWare product lines will be kept up to date and maintained into the future with new product roadmaps.
• Significant investment will be put into “virtualization” products.
• Significant investment will be made to develop and market a next generation UNIX operating system platform.

SCO customers and partners can feel confident that they will be able to continue to purchase licenses, receive support and development for the core SCO UNIX products now and into the future.

Internet law blog Groklaw points out that SCO is using peculiar language with their press release.

By the way, did you catch the part about “other potential defendants” in addition to Novell, IBM, Red Hat and AutoZone? Everybody pretty much goes to unXis, leaving McBride as captain of the Good Ship SCO, and he gets to sue and sue and sue, while the assets have gone to unXis, so if SCO loses all the litigation, then the victors get no spoils and can’t be be made whole by the legal process. But what particularly struck me is SCO saying that they will be able “to move the UNIX business forward with unXis in a very exciting way.” “With unXis”? In what sense? Is SCO selling to itself? It starts to hint that this is more a renaming, taking in some new management who seem to have financial expertise, and SCO keeps skipping along as unXis, with the dangerous litigation spun off safely into a litigation troll.