Red Hat borrows $500 million

Posted Jan 7, 2004 5:06 UTC (Wed) by laurent (guest, #7539)
Parent article: Red Hat borrows $500 million

How about Redhat buying out SCO (or just SCO's right to UNIX SV that were acquired for just about the same amount...) and striking a deal with Novell to free (as GPL) all of UNIX related rights...

The beauty of the thing is that they could get revenue from MS paying licenses for use in their products (MS is not likely to use the GPL for any of its products... :-))

Now that's what I would call idemnification :-)

Seriously, what could they use these 500 millions for?

Red Hat borrows $500 million

Posted Jan 7, 2004 5:09 UTC (Wed) by laurent (guest, #7539) [Link]

Or it's maybe just to get a crack legal team :-)

Red Hat borrows $500 million

Posted Jan 7, 2004 5:30 UTC (Wed) by skvidal (guest, #3094) [Link] (2 responses)

They're building a giant frickin' laser!

sorry. it's the only explanation I could come up with.

laser

Posted Jan 7, 2004 9:42 UTC (Wed) by stuart (subscriber, #623) [Link] (1 responses)

brilliant. Here was me fed up with the drudgery of work and this little comment is a ray of light :-)

Stu.

laser

Posted Jan 7, 2004 11:17 UTC (Wed) by phip (guest, #1715) [Link]

Was the pun intentional?

(laser = "ray of light")

Thanks for the good laugh, as I imagined the giant frickin' laser
taking aim at SCO headquarters...

follow sco example

Posted Jan 7, 2004 6:59 UTC (Wed) by ccyoung (guest, #16340) [Link] (1 responses)

to buy out a holding from the Canopy Company

ok - I apologize

follow sco example

Posted Jan 7, 2004 11:00 UTC (Wed) by djabsolut (guest, #12799) [Link]

... or to buy stock in the upcoming Google IPO

Red Hat borrows $500 million

Posted Jan 7, 2004 13:27 UTC (Wed) by sethg (guest, #14970) [Link]

If Red Hat and/or IBM bought out SCO, a lot of people would interpret that as an admission that they couldn't beat SCO in the courtroom. A decisive victory in court, on the other hand, would make it harder to spread FUD about Linux IP "infringements", and discourage other companies with dubious claims to imitate SCO's tactics. And once SCO loses, the company will be a lot cheaper.

Red Hat borrows $500 million

Posted Jan 7, 2004 14:05 UTC (Wed) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link]

Why buy something with no value ? Seriously, I consider SCO to have a negative value at this time. Ofcourse that's not really possible, because even a value of say -1bn$ is still only 0, commonly refered to as "bankrupt".<p>

Now, selling SCO stock short, that's a different matter. A good investment if you ask me. (but you shouldn't, so don't come whining to me when/if it turns out I'm wrong.)

Red Hat borrows $500 million

Posted Jan 7, 2004 20:44 UTC (Wed) by wcooley (guest, #1233) [Link]

Actually, there would be a lot of value in buying out SCOG outside of putting the lawsuit and BS to rest. SCOG had two very good things going for it before it went stupid: It had a very strong reseller channel and a very strong support service, which provided support for all of the major distros. The reseller channel is something Red Hat sorely lacks--right now it only seems to play with ISVs and IHVs, and only really big ones at that; not VARs, systems integrators, etc. I was told a few months ago that something would be in place mid-December, but I haven't seen anything yet. I currently cannot even buy RHES 3 Basic through Ingram-Micro.