TSG doesn't need stock price for funding

Posted Mar 4, 2004 4:13 UTC (Thu) by bignose (subscriber, #40)
Parent article: This week's SCO fun

> Regardless of how many more suits the company files, it appears unable to
> halt the decline of its stock price

[as noted elsewhere on LWN]

Their stock price decline doesn't have quite the halting effect we might hope. Any party interested in perpetuating their action can just buy some "licenses". Microsoft and Sun have already shown how this works for funding TSG (The SCO Group), regardless of the SCOX stock price.

Moreover, purchase of further "licenses" from TSG will enable them to report every dollar as earnings on their report to investors, even as they pour those dollars down the gullet of their lawyers.

Though the patience of courts for delaying tactics is finite, they may be able to drag the affair on for a long time yet. We can't rely on dwindling investment interest to end this; only the conclusive defeat of the whole profit model ("sue your customers") will dissuade funding from interested parties.

TSG doesn't need stock price for funding

Posted Mar 4, 2004 5:07 UTC (Thu) by vblum (guest, #1151) [Link] (1 responses)

Wouldn't funneling money by infinite bogus transactions ("Quick, I need 15 trillion more
licenses!!") be some sort of crime/fraud/etc, at least when committed by a publicly traded
company?

TSG doesn't need stock price for funding

Posted Mar 4, 2004 5:31 UTC (Thu) by bignose (subscriber, #40) [Link]

They need not even be bogus transactions. The company interested in providing revenue to TSG can simply install a heap of GNU/Linux systems, then purchase "licenses" from TSG for each one -- at whatever price they agree upon.