Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on May 22, 2003 10:03 PM
There are a couple of problems with the thesis that Microsoft had no overt or preplanned strategy in this. As Bruce pointed out, companies don't suddenly wake up one day and just decice, "hey lets sign a multi-million dollar license agreement", especially one that likely isn't even needed. Instead, these usually occur over MONTHS of negotiation and discussion. Hence, any plan for Microsoft to sign on and announce licensing of SCO's stuff had to have been in the works for sometime now. Yet, the timing of their own announcement so well fit into SCO's timeline of announcements that it could hardly be co-incidental.
Also, in negotiating a license, one does not expect the business your negotiating with to not disclose what it might do. Certainly if we presume Microsoft and SCO had been discussing licensing for several months, the idea of SCO dropping unexpected bombshells during those negiations seem highly improbable.
The question that is left is if Microsoft pressed SCO to greater action than it might have undertaken otherwise to conclude a license agreement, or if they simply were happy to mearly help facilitate and participate in it. But the idea of Microsoft being completely ignorent of what SCO was planning and mearly taking advantage on a sudden impulse seems ludicrous.
The other part I find interesting is that Mr. Sontag repeated promised over the past few months to SCO investors to expect significent revenue increases in the next two quarters. Where were these revenues to come from? Surely not from SCO's linux business; even without abandoning it, they were not deriving the revenue needed. Existing SCO unixware and openserver licenses? No, these were at best a declining business. The IBM suit? If any revenue is seen from that, it would obviously be a matter of years, and not next quarter. So where were these mythical significent increase in "next quarter" revenues to come from? I see only one licensee that might be able, at no real cost to itself, make a 50-100 million contribution to SCO....
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The non-microsoft theses; problems
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on May 22, 2003 10:03 PMAlso, in negotiating a license, one does not expect the business your negotiating with to not disclose what it might do. Certainly if we presume Microsoft and SCO had been discussing licensing for several months, the idea of SCO dropping unexpected bombshells during those negiations seem highly improbable.
The question that is left is if Microsoft pressed SCO to greater action than it might have undertaken otherwise to conclude a license agreement, or if they simply were happy to mearly help facilitate and participate in it. But the idea of Microsoft being completely ignorent of what SCO was planning and mearly taking advantage on a sudden impulse seems ludicrous.
The other part I find interesting is that Mr. Sontag repeated promised over the past few months to SCO investors to expect significent revenue increases in the next two quarters. Where were these revenues to come from? Surely not from SCO's linux business; even without abandoning it, they were not deriving the revenue needed. Existing SCO unixware and openserver licenses? No, these were at best a declining business. The IBM suit? If any revenue is seen from that, it would obviously be a matter of years, and not next quarter. So where were these mythical significent increase in "next quarter" revenues to come from? I see only one licensee that might be able, at no real cost to itself, make a 50-100 million contribution to SCO....
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