Evidently, SCO Unix is no more. Now all that SCO has left is continuing dreams of taking IBM down in a lawsuit that’s all but over, unless SCO’s bankruptcy attorney Edward Cahn exhibits the good sense not to continue to pursue a case that’s already six feet under.
The buyer, UnXis Inc., is based in Nevada. However, the company’s press release on Monday announcing the purchase came out of Dubai and described the company thusly:
“UnXis, Inc is owned jointly by Stephen Norris, previous co-founder of the Carlyle Group and MerchantBridge, a leading international private equity group with diverse interests operating from offices in the United Kingdom, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates. MerchantBridge has completed nine private equity transactions in the past five years, with an enterprise value of $4.5 billion.”
The same press release also makes some claims about the sale that are raising some eyebrows:
“UnXis has retained all customer contracts, the UNIX and UNIXWARE trademarks and an installed base of 32,000 customer contracts maintained in 82 countries, including McDonald’s, Siemens, Sperbank, China Post, Thomson Reuters and the US Department of Defense.”
As Pamela Jones pointed out on Groklaw, the trademark statement is rather suspicious, since the UNIX mark is believed to be owned by The Open Group. However, Jones is having more than a little fun with this:
“Lordy. This is like going back to Go. SCO made that claim too, if you recall at the very beginning, lo so many years ago, when SCO’s assault on Linux was young and so was Groklaw.
“Let me guess. UnXis doesn’t want Groklaw to retire?”
Jones had announced last Saturday that Groklaw will cease publishing new posts on May 16th since the threat against Linux by SCO seemed to be over. Time will tell if this new development will push Groklaw into extra innings.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
