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Half of SCO's Accountants Quit 371

Posted by Zonk from the rats-know-when-to-leave-a-ship dept.
Groklaw Reader writes "Apparently, SCO's lawyers were working overtime last Sunday, because they wrote a quick plea to the bankruptcy court for permission to hire accounting temps. Why? Approximately half of SCO's finance department has resigned or been fired. Two who resigned had over ten years of experience each. One can only assume that they know what's about to happen to SCO."
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Half of SCO's Accountants Quit More

Half of SCO's Accountants Quit

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  • Almost done. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 17, 2007 @06:47PM (#20645163)
    Good!

    Half the accountants? How about some of the lawyers too?

    I guess the rats are leaving the ship.

    • Re:Almost done. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by betterunixthanunix ( 980855 ) on Monday September 17, 2007 @07:20PM (#20645549)
      I wonder what would happen if there were no employees left? What would the bankruptcy judge do?

      • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday September 17, 2007 @07:30PM (#20645661)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re:Almost done. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Zeinfeld ( 263942 ) on Monday September 17, 2007 @09:06PM (#20646447) Homepage
          With no employees, it would be up to the officers of the corporation to execute any orders the judge issued to the corporation.

          Or they can apply to put the company into liquidation, that is Chapter 7. At the moment SCO is in chapter 11, that is reorganization. If the company cannot continue to function it is not reorganizing and has to liquidate.

          The problem for SCO here is that it can only reorganize in Chapter 11 if it has a good chance of demonstrating that it can secure the agreement of its creditors to the reorganization plan. The current management only have 120 days in which they have the exclusive right to propose a reorganization plan. After that they would have to pursuade the court to extend that right.

          The question I would be interesting in knowing the answer to is what the situation is with respect to Novell's claims. Clearly SCO is going into bankruptcy before the bench hearing to determine what SCO owes Novell. Certain types of lawsuit get stayed by bankruptcy but it would seem odd if a case that had been decided on the merits and was only waiting for damages to be determined to be stayed by a voluntary liquidation when the only 'business' the company has is litigation.

          The end of SCO does not necessarily mean the end of the case. I seem to remember that Boies and co have a bunch of charges against the assets of the company which allow them to acquire certain SCO assets and continue the litigation. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, given the amount of time and money that has gone into the case and given that it looks like SCOs case is utterly toast it might well be better for it to at least result in a precedent.

          It should not cost $50 million to force a plaintif to state a valid claim. There should be a clear precedent that ugabugah copyright lawsuits where the plaintif fails to state what the allegedly infringing content is get tossed out in future.

          • The best bet here is that the Novell monies (per the court judgement, this is money belonging to Novell and illegally "converted" [i.e., stolen] by SCO) are not subject to the bankruptcy process; instead, Novell gets to recover that amount before the Chapter 11 reorganization. It seems logical for the bankruptcy judge to either allow the Utah court to establish the amount of that judgement, or simply declare "It all belongs to Novell," before proceeding with a reorganization, given that the Novell judgement

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by Zeinfeld ( 263942 )
              The best bet here is that the Novell monies (per the court judgement, this is money belonging to Novell and illegally "converted" [i.e., stolen] by SCO) are not subject to the bankruptcy process; instead, Novell gets to recover that amount before the Chapter 11 reorganization. It seems logical for the bankruptcy judge to either allow the Utah court to establish the amount of that judgement, or simply declare "It all belongs to Novell," before proceeding with a reorganization, given that the Novell judgement

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Dynedain ( 141758 )
        Not possible. There still would be at least the executive board of the company (CEO, CFO, and whoever else might be on the board of directors). They may be unpaid, but they are in effect the responsible entities for the corporation. By definition (both legally and practically) you cannot have a corporation without an executive board.

    • Re:Almost done. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Harmonious Botch ( 921977 ) * on Monday September 17, 2007 @07:27PM (#20645631) Homepage Journal
      Lawyers? Not yet. Lawyers leave after the rats. ( Some things, even rats won't do. )

    • How do we know half the accountants quit? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 17, 2007 @08:03PM (#20645967)
      Who counted them?

    • Re:Almost done. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by semiotec ( 948062 ) on Monday September 17, 2007 @08:10PM (#20646027)
      while I am as glad as most people here about SCO's deserved and inevitable downfall, sometimes I couldn't help thinking whether it would have been better if Novell hadn't stepped into this fight.

      Sure, I understand that they are protecting their rights and IP and that they are right to do so. But by pulling the carpet out from under SCO's feet, they also prevented SCO's claims that "millions of lines of codes were copied from UNIX to Linux" being thoroughly tested (and debunked) in court.

      I think that it was a good thing that SCO targeted IBM, who 1) had the resources to fight SCO (and their sponsors), and 2) happened to be on the side of Linux developers/users. So it would have been an excellent opportunity to quash this claim once and for all. Despite SCO's bluster and chest-thumping, I think it would have been extremely unlikely for them to be able to convince any person of even limited intelligence of their claims (including Enderle, Didio and O'Gara).

      But all we have now is a statement from Novell saying that there is no Unix in Linux. With Novell being so deep in bed with Microsoft, I am slightly nervous with Novell's overall position and and disposition towards Linux.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Just Some Guy ( 3352 )

        sometimes I couldn't help thinking whether it would have been better if Novell hadn't stepped into this fight.

        By defending themselves in the lawsuit that SCO filed against them [wikipedia.org], you mean. I know what you mean, but they did what they had to do in order to defend their interests.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by VGPowerlord ( 621254 )
          Of course, SCO sued Novell because Novell said "We own UNIX." It turns out the judge agreed with Novell.

      • Re:Almost done. (Score:5, Informative)

        by thej1nx ( 763573 ) on Monday September 17, 2007 @09:07PM (#20646457)
        IIRC, the SCO claims were never going to be tested in court anyways, because from what I understood, the case they actually filed was entirely different from whatever nonsense Darl McBride was spouting.


        They may have claimed about millions of lines of codes being copied, but the actual case filed was only regards breach of contract. They claimed that IBM had donated its AIX code to the Linux kernel. Their second argument consisted of "Boohoo, Linux would have been nowhere if not for IBM. IBM created a competitor for us. We hate competition. Boohoo!".

        The only piece of code they ever showed as being part of the Linux kernel, turned out to have already been released under a BSD license by the original creators and had already been replaced by better alternatives in the Kernel, which made their whole claim seem to go up in smoke.

        All in all, it was just FUD sponsored by possibly an under-the-table deal between Microsoft and Darl McBride, with the aim of stemming the expansion of Linux in the server market, till Microsoft got its slightly-more-stable-than-xp vista OS out. It might be interesting to observe in future, whether any more information regards this possible deal comes out, and whether Microsoft can be sued under another anti-trust, unfair-practices case for its part in generating the controversy.

      • Re:Almost done. (Score:5, Informative)

        by burnin1965 ( 535071 ) on Monday September 17, 2007 @10:17PM (#20646993) Homepage

        they also prevented SCO's claims that "millions of lines of codes were copied from UNIX to Linux" being thoroughly tested (and debunked) in court

        Actually that is not true. The SCO Groups claims have been thoroughly tested in the court system and The SCO Group are where they are today because the facts discovered in the SCO Group vs IBM case revealed that not only were they lying about finding millions of lines of infringing code but they knew full well they were lying.

        Initially they claimed millions of lines of infringed code including line for line copying down to even the comments. When called on that bluff by IBM in the court they produced no evidence and the judge proclaimed an "astonishing lack of evidence" on the part of The SCO Group. Later it was revealed that internal SCO Group e-mails communicated the results of their own investigation of infringement in linux and found "aboslutely nothing" at which point their story changed and it was no longer literal copying but instead obfuscation of copied code. But still when they were compelled to produce the evidence which supported their claims they produce abosutlely nothing and instead changed their story again to claim that somehow they held ownership of "methods and concepts". Unfortunately The SCO Group holds no patents so they have no protected "methods and concepts" either.

        This entire debacle was a scam from the beginning and it didn't go to a jury trial because the judge realized that The SCO Group's intention was to baffle the jury with the same bullcrap in hopes of making them believe that some how they must own something in linux when in fact they don't own squat.

        Oh, this case has been tested, not just beyond a shadow of a doubt but beyond a frickin' eclipse of a doubt. Scumbags and grifters through and through.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jthill ( 303417 )

        Novell didn't prevent that testing. SCO's claims *were* tested in court.

        The judges repeatedly ordered SCO to provide actual evidence of their claims. They repeatedly ... didn't provide any. That led the judges to remarks like "the vast disparity between SCO's public accusations and its actual evidence -- or complete lack thereof", and eventually to actually toss almost all of SCO's claims entirely [groklaw.net] (the order includes that quote).

        Judge Wells didn't just dismiss the claims for lack of evidence. SCO told

  • Can't pay themselves (Score:5, Insightful)

    by no_pets ( 881013 ) on Monday September 17, 2007 @06:47PM (#20645175)
    Heck, the accountants probably know that there is no money to pay themselves. So, why work?

    • Re:Can't pay themselves (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Monday September 17, 2007 @06:53PM (#20645261) Homepage Journal

      Heck, the accountants probably know that there is no money to pay themselves. So, why work?

      Reminds me of a company I once worked for. The accountants (finance people) were sworn to some sort of secrecy not to disclose to other employees what they were doing. Basically only paying accounts when there was dire cause (and in some instances the cheques were immediately pulled from the mail bin and locked in a drawer after the vendor agreed to free things up.) After the fall someone finally told me what was going on. Accountants know the games that are played to keep a semblance of business as usual even when the precipice is looming

      Those who stay on risk receiving pay cheques which will not cash.

      • Re:Can't pay themselves (Score:4, Funny)

        by TheViffer ( 128272 ) on Monday September 17, 2007 @07:54PM (#20645885)
        Suppose they could start paying their employees with stock options ...
    • Let's say you work for a business that used creative accounting and it's going down in a month or so, are you (an accountant) going to wait till the news breaks and then look for another accounting job or are you going to go out and get a job using your current reputation before the public learns the facts.

      Not sure if this is the case but even if the accountants had nothing at all to do with it, they'd be Mudd by association of any bad accounting news came out of this.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Eivind ( 15695 )
      Dunno about USA, I'm guessing worker-protection laws are lax ?

      In Norway there's no particular reason not to work for a company that is in danger of collapsing. There is mandatory insurance for outstanding pay for everyone that is not part of management for a period of up to 3 months.

      There is also an exception from normal bankruptcy law for nonpaid wages. Normally if you file to have a company bankrupted, there's an associated fee. That is to discourage annoyance-filings and bankruptcies over details (they o

  • Crumble Crumble.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by beheaderaswp ( 549877 ) * on Monday September 17, 2007 @06:48PM (#20645183)
    I think the biggest worry I have now... which may actually be moot- is who ends up with SCO's assets and IP?

    Once they hit chapter 7, as the money runs out, the court will dismember them. Hopefully, the assets they do have end up with IBM.

    I'm not so sure about Novell's alignment in the open source world yet.

    But even better is this:

    If one of their accounting people was a CPA- they could be in deep do do if
    there are problems found.

    I know this, I'm watching a corporation pull the bond out from under a CPA right
    now. The liabilities are incredible and the end game is scary.

    Maybe an accountant will have damaging information heh?
    • I guess it depends on what "assets" you are talking about. Most of the time for situations like this, the person who gets the assests is the first to run off with it... When it get to this point, it is kind of a every man for himself type business model...

    • Re:Crumble Crumble.... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Daimanta ( 1140543 ) on Monday September 17, 2007 @06:55PM (#20645281) Journal

      Once they hit chapter 7, as the money runs out, the court will dismember them.
      Ouch, please remember me never to get bankrupt.

    • SCO's assets and ip (Score:5, Insightful)

      by falconwolf ( 725481 ) <falconsoaring_2000@yah o o .com> on Monday September 17, 2007 @07:19PM (#20645547)

      I think the biggest worry I have now... which may actually be moot- is who ends up with SCO's assets and IP?

      What assets and ip?

      Falcon

      • Re:SCO's assets and ip (Score:5, Funny)

        by shadowbearer ( 554144 ) on Monday September 17, 2007 @08:07PM (#20645995) Homepage Journal

          There's probably a good number of chairs.

        SB

      • Re:SCO's assets and ip (Score:5, Informative)

        by InvalidError ( 771317 ) on Monday September 17, 2007 @08:08PM (#20646005)
        According to filings, SCO has a $7.5M outstanding debt and about $15M in cash or other assets.

        However, SCO is also illegally holding onto ~$36M of Novell's Unix licensing loyalties.

        The one who will get first dibs on SCO will be Novell since that ~$36M is Novell's capital (not a debt/credit) which SCO is trying to convert (fraud) into its own... a detail which SCO apparently conveniently failed to mention to the bankruptcy judge in the first hearing.

        Novell licensed its Unix to SCO and asked for a ~95% royalty on sales. SCO sold Unix licenses but never gave any of the money back to Novell. Novell is suing to get this capital back. SCO does not want to be curbed right away so it now attempts to stall by filing for bankruptcy. Tomorrow, Novell, IBM, RedHat and others will surely point out the many faults in Monday's SCO declarations and the judge will very likely order the Novell vs SCO counterclaims suit to proceed in order to establish how much capital SCO owes Novell since settling capital disputes preempts negotiating debts.

        By the time chapter 11 proceedings are completed - presumably after Novell is awarded about $20M - SCO will be ripe for chapter 7.

        • Novell licensed its Unix to SCO and asked for a ~95% royalty on sales.

          No. Novell licensed its Unix to SCO, and offered SCO a 5% handling charge on collecting Novell's royalties. What's the difference, you ask? The difference is that such money from the licenses that SCO hold is Novell's in equity, not as a creditor. Novell are like the people who leased SCO a photocopier: it's their's, and they can take it without reference to other creditors.

          If you steal a car and then go bankrupt, your creditors

      • Re:SCO's assets and ip (Score:4, Funny)

        by Ziest ( 143204 ) on Monday September 17, 2007 @09:29PM (#20646651) Homepage
        What assets and ip?

        The several dozen copies of the Book of Mormon ?

    • as proven by the court and who the hell wants a bunch of 2nd hand SCO servers?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by thue ( 121682 )
      I think the biggest worry I have now... which may actually be moot- is who ends up with SCO's assets and IP?

      Is that really a problem anymore? The judge has already ruled that Novell owns the copyrights, and Novell has already waived any liabilities Linux may have. Such a waiver does not seem retractible to me.

      If somebody bought SCO's rights then they would first have to get that judgment overturned. And then there is the little detail that it turned out that SCO's claims of Unix code in Linux turned out to

  • Need to accrue Novell payment? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by seanadams.com ( 463190 ) * on Monday September 17, 2007 @06:48PM (#20645187) Homepage
    Something I have not seen mentioned yet is whether SCO needs to accrue an estimate of what they should be paying Novell - whether they have the cash or not, it needs to go on the books. Their current balance sheet does not reflect it, which is probably one reason why the company is still grossly overvalued at $4.72M.

    • Re:Need to accrue Novell payment? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 17, 2007 @07:16PM (#20645511)

      At a reasonable guess, the accountants quit/were fired because they refused to sign the financial statements that were submitted with the Chapter 11 filing. Signing those statements would be professional suicide for any accountant. SCO is probably going to find it difficult to hire anyone who has the necessary standing to vouch for the correctness of an out of date balance sheet whose date was changed.

      I think we can now expect the FBI will soon start hauling in SCO officers and lawyers on RICO and SEC charges. Fraud doesn't get much more blatant than submitting such obviously bad financials to a bankruptcy court.

    • Re:Need to accrue Novell payment? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by HiThere ( 15173 ) <charleshixsn.earthlink@net> on Monday September 17, 2007 @07:16PM (#20645515)
      There's a problem here. Novell's money is Novell's, SCO is just holding it for them.

      As such, SCO can't legally use Novell's money to pay it's own debts. "Unfortunately" SCO has been keeping lousy books, and didn't keep straight which money was Novell's. The legal hearing that they've stalled with this bankruptcy plea was to determine the size of the amount of money owed to Novell.

      As such, I think any CPA involved in this scam *SHOULD* be in serious trouble. It's not certain that this will pierce the corporate shield, and allow Novell to go after the management & the board's personal assets...but it's also not clear that it won't.

      Another interesting question is criminal charges. Clearly several laws have been broken, and felonies have been committed. It's not clear that any charges will be filed. "The corporation did it" is a common defense, even when all acts of the corporation were, in fact, performed by people. Personally I would rephrase "the corporation did it" by "it was a conspiracy", but this doesn't seem to be legal custom.

      Caution: IANAL

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by debrain ( 29228 )
        There's a problem here. Novell's money is Novell's, SCO is just holding it for them.

        This concept is a trust [wikipedia.org], and in particular in this case, a constructive trust [wikipedia.org]. Good eye and intuition, if I may say so.

        The key point in this is: Under Chapter 7 (liquidation; should they get there) debts are prioritized, and trust priority is different than a general judgment award priority. Assets deemed to have been held in trust may (though not necessarily in this case) be considered a secured debt (which may have, I vagu

    • Something I have not seen mentioned yet is whether SCO needs to accrue an estimate of what they should be paying Novell - whether they have the cash or not, it needs to go on the books. Their current balance sheet does not reflect it, which is probably one reason why the company is still grossly overvalued at $4.72M.

      From what I recall Novell asked the judge to create a trust the money Novell is owed, or claims to be owed, can be put into. But SCO argued it had the money and could pay if ordered.

      Falcon

    • Re:Need to accrue Novell payment? (Score:4, Funny)

      by dbIII ( 701233 ) on Monday September 17, 2007 @09:10PM (#20646495)

      which is probably one reason why the company is still grossly overvalued at $4.72M.

      Is that $4.72 Monaco dollars or Moldovian dollars?

  • In other news... (Score:3, Funny)

    by nebaz ( 453974 ) on Monday September 17, 2007 @06:49PM (#20645195)
    SCO sued Novell, IBM, and Anderson Consulting, declaring that SCO owned the intellectual property entitled "Accountant" and that their proposed licensing scheme of $699 per day, per "accountant", had been rebuffed by said companies. Details to follow.

  • What about the other half? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Trillan ( 597339 ) on Monday September 17, 2007 @06:52PM (#20645247) Homepage Journal
    Seriously, what about the other half? Do they have some sort of personal reality distortion field?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 ) *

      Seriously, what about the other half? Do they have some sort of personal reality distortion field?

      They've either got iron-clad guarantee of compensation or they are afraid to leave, go look for another job, what have you.

      Ultimately they will all likely find things do not work out and that Bob is indeed not their uncle.

    • Pessimist. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Weaselmancer ( 533834 ) on Monday September 17, 2007 @06:59PM (#20645317)

      Darl can totally turn this thing around. Just you watch. It's just another minor setback. They'll be vindicated - just you see. Soon as they get over this small bump, they'll start raking in the cash from all those UNIX licenses that they're going to get from every single Linux user out there. Just as soon as...

      Ok, a joke's a joke but I can't type anymore. My fingers started spontaneously bleeding.

    • who knows maybe going through a bankrupcy is worth more in experience than they're paid anyways
      a resume sent to IBM could read "Knows where SCO's skeletons are buried"

    • Re:What about the other half? (Score:4, Funny)

      by SpaceLifeForm ( 228190 ) on Monday September 17, 2007 @07:51PM (#20645861)
      Translation: Nearly half resigned, and nearly half were fired.

      They have no one left to cook.
  • The two accountants with the longest experience immediately took a weekend break in Switzerland, to do some skiing (and visiting friends in the banking sector).
  • ...if they didn't know 'til the bankruptcy filing that it's time to abandon ship.
    • Maybe they were banking on a victory over Linux users.

    • The exact contrary is the case (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Flying pig ( 925874 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @02:38AM (#20648627)
      A very smart accountant I knew once deliberately left a good job in a successful company to go and work for a company that was in the UK equivalent of Chapter 11 (voluntary arrangement with creditors.) He reckoned that the experience would accelerate his career. How many companies do you think get into trouble every year? How much of a premium do you think they are prepared to pay to accountants who know how to deal with that stuff? When the shit is really deep, that's when you are prepared to pay a lot of money to the guy with big rubber boots and a large pump.
  • It's hard not to gloat on those rare occasions where a bunch of corporate assholes get what they deserve.

  • Half of seven? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Fred Ferrigno ( 122319 ) on Monday September 17, 2007 @06:59PM (#20645319)
    Groklaw says they started with seven accountants. "Approximately half" is either 3 or 4, and I'd wager that they would have said "more than half" if it were 4. Two of them were the 10-year veterans who resigned, leaving just one guy who was fired.

    • Re:Half of seven? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by 3vi1 ( 544505 ) on Monday September 17, 2007 @08:25PM (#20646157) Homepage Journal
      Still... if you have that many accountants with that much experience quit at the same time then either a) It's their educated opinion that the company won't be able to pay them much longer. or b) They've being asked to do something they consider improper/illegal for the bankruptcy proceedings and decided to get out on the best of possible terms (i.e. other companies won't be afraid they're hiring whistleblowers and SCO will still give them good references).

  • Seven people in accounting? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DaleGlass ( 1068434 ) on Monday September 17, 2007 @07:09PM (#20645425) Homepage
    What's there to account at SCO besides the wages? Do they even still sell something?

    • Yes. As someone commented in the last article about SCO (announcing their bankruptcy filing), they recently completed a large contract to some company somewhere. Whoever signed that deal must really hate themselves right now.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HiThere ( 15173 )
        IIRC, the "large contract" was to sell software to some bank in Russia. Don't know how large the contract was, as I didn't bother to look. Now if we were to consider why a bank in Russia would buy their software from SCOg, then we might begin to speculate that the bank wasn't surprised at this result...and may have received other considerations that make the contract worthwhile as long as they don't have to actually *use* SCOg's software.

        (If you doubt my assessment of their software quality [fair, since I

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by dbIII ( 701233 )
          The bloodthirsty side of me is curious about what will happen if a Russian Bank finds out they wasted a lot of money on a worthless contract and then they decide to have a few personal words with Mr McBride. His paranoia and armed gaurds from before might actually be justified.

    • Re:Seven people in accounting? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by sfonative ( 1031350 ) on Monday September 17, 2007 @07:36PM (#20645719)
      "Do they even still sell something?" ........

      I work in IT at a small company that uses SCO unix on some servers. We configured a new server and had to buy another license about six months ago. (Don't shun me. We also have several linux servers, but this one needed SCO.)

      I was on the phone with our vendor and said to him, "We may be the last people to ever buy this."

      He replied, "You're probably right."

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Just Some Guy ( 3352 )

        Don't shun me. We also have several linux servers, but this one needed SCO.

        Out of curiosity, have you tried running your SCO applications on FreeBSD? It has all sorts of interesting cross-platform binary support, to the extent that Solaris for Linux runs fine on it. It's rumored that the SVR4 compatibility layer can handle SCO as well as Solaris binaries.

        Might be worth a shot if you can't get rid of some applications but detest the rest of the system.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jimicus ( 737525 )
        I work in IT at a small company that uses SCO unix on some servers. We configured a new server and had to buy another license about six months ago. (Don't shun me. We also have several linux servers, but this one needed SCO.)

        Oh, so it was you. Everyone else thought it was Sun.

  • Oooooh! (Score:2)

    by fm6 ( 162816 )
    This sounds like a big deal, until you get to the part where SCO only had 7 accountants! So 3 or 4 people quit or were fired. Not the most shocking event at any company, never mind one that's just declared bankruptcy.
  • In the wake of Enron, etc., accountants are looking over their shoulders whenever they are asked to do something unethical. I am betting that not only are the accountants seeing that they might not be paid on time or at all, but they are also seeing that they are being called upon to do something unethical, something that would be a blight on their careers.

    You can bet that these accountants were not working for SCO because they loved Daryl. So late or non-existent pay + ethical lapses = hasta la vista, baby.

  • When the accounts pack up - run! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by flyingfsck ( 986395 ) on Monday September 17, 2007 @07:25PM (#20645607)
    In my experience, when the accountants pack up their stuff, then you should trample them on the way out, cause you are likely not going to get paid for that month - Better to start your job search early than wait for the bouncing salary cheque...

  • Novell sends in the big guns (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 17, 2007 @07:34PM (#20645693)
    Novell is sending five lawyers to tomorrow's hearing. Their resumes are truly impressive. It's all part of the greater scheme to leave a smoking crater in Utah.

    They will probably be trying for two things:
    1. SCO's attempt at chapter 11 gets rejected on the grounds of bad faith. groklaw post [groklaw.net]
    2. Even if they don't get chapter 11 pitched, they want the trial in Utah un-stayed.
    Given SCO's record, it seems likely that Novell will succeed. Given a checklist for bad faith in bankruptcy, SCO meets most of the criteria.

    It seems to me that SCO's bankruptcy petition is a bit of a Hail Mary pass attempt. I'm not sure what else they were supposed to do though. Their goose has been cooked for quite a while and they have been doing a masterful job of putting off the final resolution as long as possible.

    • Re:Novell sends in the big guns (Score:5, Informative)

      by kilgortrout ( 674919 ) on Monday September 17, 2007 @09:05PM (#20646431)
      Motions to dismiss for a bad faith filing are hardly ever granted even in egregious cases and are generally limited improperly filed Ch13 consumer cases. There is no such motion pending so don't expect that to be argued tomorrow. Motions to lift the automatic stay are usually only granted to secured creditors under very specific circumstances. Again, Novell hasn't filed a motion to lift the stay, so, no, that ain't happening tomorrow either. Even so, stay and bad faith litigation require the filing of briefs for and against and an evidentiary hearing, all of which have to be scheduled. None of this has happened.

      The main issues in the case will be whether, and to what extent, Novell can grab SCO assets out of the bankruptcy case on the theory that SCO was holding the MS and Sun payments in trust for Novell. You can predict that SCO will argue that the contract with Novell only creates a debtor creditor relationship with Novell and Novell can stand in line with the other creditors.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by chromatic ( 9471 )

      It's all part of the greater scheme to leave a smoking crater in Utah.

      Sort of a caldera?

  • Rats fleeing (Score:3, Funny)

    by jpvlsmv ( 583001 ) on Monday September 17, 2007 @07:59PM (#20645931) Homepage Journal
    Remember, the correct response is not "Gee, I bet that's a nice ship now that all the rats have left".

    --Joe

  • disambiguation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by buss_error ( 142273 ) on Monday September 17, 2007 @08:27PM (#20646163) Homepage Journal
    SCOX had seven people in the accounting department. 3 were terminated or resigned. SCOx's problems are obvious enough not to blow this all out of reason and make it sound like a thundering cavalcade ran for the door. The truth about SCOx and Darl is quite bad enough without inflating the facts. That's a SCOx tactic, and one we need not indulge in since SCOx does it so well.

    Not that I am a SCOx supporter. Far from it. I think Novel should go after Darl in his own natural person to recover court costs. And if Darl dies while I'm still able to get around, count on it that I'll fly to his grave site to relieve myself on it. Twice. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well.

    A more damming metric would be to quote how many engineers SCO had on staff, vs. how many SCOx retained. Answer: Not many! SCOx has allowed their product to lag behind hardware to the point that the OS is irrelevant on modern hardware. It simply doesn't work on the new stuff, and doesn't support many current technologies. That's a death knell for any OS.

    SCOx concentrated on a niche market, and they didn't pick it any too carefully. That SCOx finds themselves bypassed and disfavored is a mark of just how badly they chose to grow. It's never pretty when a technology company chooses to become a litigation company, it's even worse when they choose the wrong technology to litigate against.

  • We're getting closer (Score:4, Funny)

    by BanjoBob ( 686644 ) on Monday September 17, 2007 @08:46PM (#20646287) Homepage Journal
    Maybe this image that I saw on Groklaw will be an indication of things to come....

    http://www.yourfilehost.com/media.php?cat=image&file=Darl.jpg [yourfilehost.com]

  • What really happened... (Score:3, Funny)

    by bjorniac ( 836863 ) on Monday September 17, 2007 @11:29PM (#20647545)
    They only ever had three accountants, but they all counted each other twice*

    *I know it doesn't add up. That's accountancy.

  • It may not be what you think... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Alpha830RulZ ( 939527 ) on Monday September 17, 2007 @11:46PM (#20647637)
    Back in the day, my accounting 410 prof told us that it is a common tactic in troubled financial times to fire your accountants, and then have your lawyer hire them back. That way, management's interactions with them become privileged communication, and not admissible in court. Perhaps the Country Lawyer could weigh in on this.

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