Kieran O'Shaughnessy lauded a US$50 million investment in the SCO Group by BayStar Capital as "refuting the idea that SCO is a dying company" with its Linux intellectual property actions its "last gasp efforts".
O'Shaughnessy also told ZDNet Australia that SCO was yet to decide whether Australian and New Zealand Linux users who wanted to get a licence to "legitimise" their use of the open source operating system would gain access to the deeply discounted pricing presently available to their US counterparts.
While O'Shaughnessy confirmed he "anticipated that pricing will mirror US pricing with exchange rate [adjustments] thrown in," he reiterated that "no [final] decision has been taken on pricing or whether there will be an introductory pricing offer for Australia and New Zealand". The SCO Group in the US extended from Wednesday this week until 31 October a deadline after which it planned to double the current introductory prices for Linux licences.
O'Shaughnessy moved to clarify the local position after the company's US spokesperson, Blake Stowell, said one of the reasons for the extension was that SCO had not had the time to make the [discount] offer globally. "The rationale was that this pricing had not been rolled out in certain regions of the world, where we wanted to offer this introductory pricing in a timely manner," he said. O'Shaughnessy said given that the licences were not due to be available in Australia and New Zealand until the end of the year, the two-week extension in the US was irrelevant.
The US licences presently cost US$699 (AU$1012) for a single-processor Linux server, US$1,149 (AU$1,664) for a dual-processor server, US$2,499(AU$3,620) for a four-processor server, US$4,999 (AU$7,238) for an eight-processor server, US$199 (AU$238) for a desktop computer and US$32 (AU$46) for an embedded device such as a DVD player. These prices are all due to double from 31 October.
On the injection, O'Shaughnessy also said BayStar Capital would have undertaken a strong due diligence before arriving at its decision to invest and would have concluded that SCO was a "strong business with very good prospects going forward".
BayStar bought preferred shares that are convertible at a price of US$16.93 per share of common stock. That conversion that would give BayStar 2,953,000 shares, or 17.5 percent of outstanding shares, SCO said. SCO plans to use the funding primarily to boost its software development efforts, as well as helping to pay legal and licencing costs, Stowell said.
"With a [US]$50 million investment from BayStar, we believe we have secured the capital necessary to fund all aspects of the long-term growth of this company," SCO chief executive Darl McBride said in a statement.
The company had US$11 million in cash on 31 July but now will have about US$61 million, SCO said.
SCO claimed the cash sent a message. "For anyone out there that was doubting we had the necessary funds to fund that litigation, they should rest easy now," Stowell said.
SCO sued IBM in March over its handling of Linux, arguing that Big Blue illegally moved Unix technology into Linux. But IBM has countersued, and Linux seller Red Hat also sued SCO in an attempt to lay the matter to rest.
SCO is scheduled to respond to IBM's amended complaint late Monday, Stowell said.
SCO's software business focuses on selling two versions of the Unix operating system, UnixWare and OpenServer, and on a Web services strategy called SCOx.
Gartner analyst George Weiss, however, believes the US$3 billion lawsuit against IBM overshadows all else.
"There is no coming back from the dead if they lose," Weiss said. "It's all or nothing."
By trying to lience property which they DO NOT EVEN OWN, SCO are running a fraudulent scam.